Is social media harmful for journalists?

By: Mallory Tandy

Are Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook causing stress on journalists? Social Networks such as these, used to be used as a way of getting information, but as time has went on it has become more personal information and not news worthy.

It seems to be causing trouble in some newspapers. At the New York Times, staff members tweeted about information about an internal meeting going on at the paper. They did not mean any harm by doing so but what if critical information could have been leaked out for their competitors to see, it would have been bad for the Times.

Some have solved the issues of mixing business with pleasure by having two Facebook pages, one for personal use and one for busniess and co-workers. But does this solve the issue at hand? Is social media harmful to journalists or helpful?

I can see it from both sides, I can see how it can be harmful but I can also see how it can be helpful. They can find good stories on social media sites, but also can be destructive in how they use their own sites.