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Social Media in Beat Reporting

Jay Rosen’s new experiment: These Beat Reporters Will Try the Social Network Way.

Thirteen sites want to see if it works: from the Houston Chronicle to the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, PA, plus ESPN.com, MTV, the Seattle Times… Some of the beats: Child welfare, Dallas public schools, “green” tech, Big Pharma, digital music, Procter & Gamble.

This is going to be an important test of new media. Can’t wait to see how it works.

3 Comments on “Social Media in Beat Reporting”

  1. #1 Jon Garfunkel
    on Nov 15th, 2007 at 7:29 am

    I have two humble suggestions. One, since there are demonstrably already many beat-blogging-with-social-network efforts, it might have simpler to survey them at a distance first. The comments left on the BeatBlogging.org “wall” lend an air of collusion.

    Two, I’d be curious to see what the planned metrics are. Two years ago I had put together a 4-part series Questions for Participatory Media which I left as an open model for any researcher to use.

  2. #2 Jon Garfunkel
    on Nov 18th, 2007 at 6:18 pm

    Dan– you’ve apparently attracted a spammer-commenter above who is so clever that he has copied the precise phrase from my 75-word comment above which contained a typo. The word “been” is missing between “have” and “simpler.”

  3. #3 Dan Gillmor
    on Nov 18th, 2007 at 10:11 pm

    Got it, thanks.. (referring to now-deleted spam).