Multimedia Journalism (for the Social Web)

Dr. Marcus MessnerVirginia Commonwealth University School of Mass Communicationswww.marcusmessner.com

Genworth Financial PR SummitMarch 2, 2011

Key Points

Changing news habits Multimedia journalism Tweeting the news Challenges/chances Discussion

Changing news habits

VCU student survey for Media General 182 students (mostly 18-22 years) All majors March 1-12, 2010

So, where do they get the news?

1. Google.com 20 % (n=37)2. Yahoo.com18 % (n=33)3. CNN.com 14 % (n=26)4. MSN.com 4 % (n=7)5. Nytimes.com 3 % (n=6)6. BBC.com 3 % (n=5)7. NBC12.com 3 % (n=5)8. Wpost.com 3 % (n=5)9. Foxnews.com 2 % (n=4)10. MSNBC.com 2 % (n=4)11. Perezhilton.com 2 % (n=4)12. RTD.com 2 % (n=3)

Changing news habits

Changing jobs of reporters

Multimedia journalism

Online writing Audio/photo Video Data reporting Social networking Entrepreneurship

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Tweeting the news

VCU Social Media Study 2009 How have traditional news media

adopted social bookmarking for Twitter? 199 news outlets in U.S. 36.7% (n=73) offer social bookmarking for

Twitter 91% (n=181) have Twitter account

Ø 6993 followers

Tweeting the news

How are traditional news media using Twitter? 180 news outlets have accounts Only 65.6% (n=118) of the news outlets

tweeted on the days of analysis 1568 tweets Ø 8.7 daily tweets per news outlet

Tweeting the news

How are traditional news media using Twitter? 94.3% (n=1478) of tweets were news

related, 5.7% (n=90) were personal 93% of tweets (n=1458) had hyperlinks

98.5% (n=1438) internal links 1.5% (n=20) external links

Challenges/chances

Challenges/chances

Social media empower the individual Can anybody be a journalist?

Dramatically changing news habits The “Daily Me”

Credibility redefined online Need to build new relationships

Challenges/chances

Social media still mostly filtered through traditional media for mass audience For how long?

Challenges to traditional news media gatekeeping and business models Can they survive? Will new generations turn to “big” media?

This is only the beginning! Twitter is five years old

Discussion

Dr. Marcus MessnerVirginia Commonwealth University School of Mass Communicationswww.marcusmessner.com

Genworth Financial PR SummitMarch 2, 2011