Newsroom With A View

(Originally posted May 26, 2010)

A great example from The Palm Beach Post showing ways to use social networking sites as reporting tools. The summary:

The Post’s social-media editor saw something on Twitter about a popular restaurant closing. She instant-messaged a business reporter, then 1) searched Twitter, 2) searched openbook, a site that lets you find public Facebook status updates even if you’re not logged on or have never used Facebook, and found two posts seemingly related to the business’s trouble, which she sent to the business reporter, 3) did a Google search of social media postings, and 4) tried two search engines for photo-sharing services. As the post says:

“The point of all this is not that Ouzo Blue’s closing is the news of the century (although they did have great melitzanosalata…) but that there are several social-media avenues available to search for information on a news story, to find people to interview and more.”