1. Journalists are late to the party

    By Jeannie L. Rodriguez

    This Friday, the Internet was overflowing with content from this years news:rewired journalism convention. The convention had speakers such as Liz Heron, social media editor for the New York Times, talking about how social media is changing the landscape of journalism. 

    No one should disagree that social media hasn’t played a major role in the transformation of journalism today.

    According to newsrewired.com, Heron praised social media in her address and encouraged journalists to “be strategic, be different, and strive for meaningful interactions.”

    “We know we have to keep innovating and changing our approach,” she said. “Our challenge will be figuring out how to inform and empower our readership through social journalism in a way that makes their voices count more than they ever have before.”

    Journalists have taken on the challenge to explore social media. They’re all over Twitter; and with over 845 million active users, Facebook has become a major hub for journalists to interact with its readers. 

    They use it to “create conversation” or “crowd source news;” others use it to pump out their articles. The main idea is to go about using it in a “new” and “fresh” way; what can we bring that is different? 

    But the question is, why is Facebook being stressed upon journalists now? Why didn’t we take advantage of this when the Facebook Subscribe feature was first introduced?

    Wannabehacks.co.uk said we talk about it like if we were the first to embrace the landscape and innovate it, but the truth is we’re not.

    We’re late to the party. 

    What has the industry been doing this entire time? 

    As a journalist myself, I sense we’re skeptic to change. New forms of social media are born everyday, and we like to hold back to see if it will catch fire; if it will stick. Once it grows and gains momentum, we qualify it as a valid medium for crowd interaction and marketing. 

    This still doesn’t discount the fact that it has taken us this long to truly learn and embrace the uses Facebook, Twitter and Google+ offer us. 

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