5 lessons journalists can learn from bloggers

I am fascinated at the technological evolution of how we communicate. Even more so, how our expectations as an end user of media have also evolved. Gone are the day of yelling at the television in vain. If we have something to say, or ask, we simply do so through a number of tools.

I am also fascinated to watch journalist and traditional news media outlets hold on dearly to old mentalities and ways of communicating. I would argue, traditionally journalists and the stories they wrote/broadcast were the last word. In a sense, we took their information and went forth. There wasn’t any narcissism associate with this, it’s just the tools used didn’t allow for anything more. The creating and implementation of social media has given the receiver the ability to respond to these stories with comments and questions basically throwing the ball back in the reporter’s lap.

It is, however, very rare, almost non-existent, for a reporter to reengage in a story, add to it after the fact or respond to these question and comments of their public. This is, in my opinion, where traditional media outlets (newspapers, television and radio) fail and, if they don’t start engaging their publics, these people will leave them for alternative outlets that do listen and respond. This, by the way, is not my opinion; it is proven through a variety of communication theories

Make no mistake, I hold journalists in high regard. At times it is a thankless job and always open to scrutiny. We can learn a lot from them; objectivity, balance, fairness, etc. They do reporting better than anyone on the street. But as news organizations enter into the realm of social media they can learn a lot from non-traditional media outlets who generate content solely with the use of social media.

Listen to your audience’s comments and respond – Too many if not all comments generated by readers/listeners/viewers go unanswered. This is your audience, engage them. After all, they are paying your bills (without them your advertisers will also vacate). Imagine a business talking to a forum of customer and when they ask for comments and comments are given the audience hears crickets while the company packs up and walks out the door.

Don’t ever, ever turn your comments off – I have seen this more than once. Here is the deal, if it is your policy to allow comments then jack, jack on trade back. Besides, do you really think turning comments off will discourage people from talking? More to the point, you have communicated more than you know and given your audience a whole new topic to discuss.

Master, as best you can, one social media tool before you take on another. After the elections and CNN’s, etc. use of Twitter I watched all our local media join the march. Here is the rub; the purpose twitter is to engage in conversations. If you aren’t following your audience and only using Twitter to broadcast your stories, you might as well go back to using your rss or e-mail distribution. Trust me; those following you on Twitter know how to use these tools.

Don’t use social media (Twitter) to only broadcast headlines/stories -  Trust me when I tell you this, breaking news is broken on twitter minutes or hours before you ever get pen to paper. This is the beauty of Twitter. While you are writing your story, unless it is truly a story in which you broke, Tweeters are already talking about it in short little bursts of information, pictures, video, etc. How many of us saw the image of flight 1549 in the Hudson and how long was it before we had our first story in a traditional media outlet.

Finally, engage your followers in story generation – If you are looking for stories, ask your followers what the want to read about, know and think everyone else should know it, etc. Bottom line, for the media, your readers know more about what is happening in their world than you do. In fact, in most cases, they, or their organization are the story. If you don’t engage them and report on it their stories, as social media tools become so mainstream everyone has a (fill in the blank) site the concept of news will be redefined to meet their needs/wants everyone will become an ad hoc journalists (in the sense they are breaking stories all the time). If your audience takes on the role of story generators how long will it be before they take over and become citizen journalist. Then, how long before someone figures a way to consolidate these folks to aggregate and monetize their information.

What am I missing? What else could they learn? Share your comments below – please!