Social Media in Journalism: What's the Future?

As social media continues to evolve into an everyday necessity for people across the globe, journalists are the ones who are having to learn and evolve the most with the changes. Journalists are having to learn how to use more than just a notepad and a pen but rather online tools like Facebook and Twitter are an essential part of a journalists proverbial "bag of tricks."

In the article "The Future of Social Media in Journalism" by Vadim Lavrusik, he explains what many professors and journalists feel is the future of social media and journalism. According to Lavrusik social media in journalism will eventually see the "death of social media." He goes on to say that "all media as we know it today will become social, and feature a social component to one extent or another."

The article lays out many great points about the future of journalism and social media which I could not agree more with.

I agree that collaborative reporting has and will become more integrated. Sources and journalists will both have their hands in the stories they report and give info to. Also journalists will be more involved with the community they cover. The article mentions that newsrooms will be built to "focus on utilizing the community and enabling its members its members to be enrolled as correspondents." I feel as if this is a great point. With they way social media is now, people are already acting as journalists when they report news via Twitter. It's just the way things are now and like it or not we are all journalists if we want to be.

I'm not saying that social media is killing true journalists. I feel the world still needs true journalists.

The article makes a good point of how journalists will become community managers. Instead of journalists telling the people what they need to know, journalists and the community engage in conversation about news and journalists manage these conversations while still gathering traditional news stories.

Other things the article ponders are how social media is essentially the new news editor in the world of journalism.

Alfred Hermida, a professor of integrated journalism at the University of British Colombia is quoted in the article as saying "Platforms like Twitter can turn our social network into our editor. Once this role was the preserve of a newspaper editor, who decided what the public should read that morning. Now people can turn to their social networks to find out, 'what do my friends or people I respect think I should read about this morning.'"

Throughout the article there are topics covered that one can say are already beginning to happen throughout the world of journalism. As journalists we need to strive to change and grow with the new concept of media becoming completely social. There really is no room to resist the change, its either roll with the punches or die trying to resist them. I would strongly suggest that others heed these thoughts and concepts in this article by Lavrusik in order to keep growing with the new concept of journalism today.