Switching Gears: How Social Media is Changing Journalism

Last Wednesday, my reporting class welcomed guest speaker Matt Neznanski.

Neznanki is the Director of Communication for Brass Student Media and a former reporter for the Corvallis newspaper The Gazette Times. 

Before I get into what he discussed with us, let me just point out (although he didn't really talked about it) the fact that Brass Student Media is SUCH a good idea.  

What BSM does is helps teach students about how money. How to save it, what to spend it on, and so on in a comprehensive way: through a magazine. 

Here's a video about their student program:

Honestly, this organization seems so obvious, but it's probably the only one of its kind that I've heard about. And I know from experience: most students do not know what the heck to do about saving money; let alone credit, equity, mortgages, retirement funds, credit cards, etc.

So basically, Brass Student Media helps students with that. And its great. 

OK, moving on. 

In class, Neznanski explained to us how the emergence of social media (like facebook, twitter, and blogs) has been "career changing" for him, and how he has had to learn to adapt. 

Let me note here that this necessity for adaptation isn't going anywhere: technology and media is constantly evolving, so even youngsters like myself are inevitably going to have to learn something new (and I'm still not even comfortable with Twitter yet!) to keep up with the pace of society, and in journalism, readers and/or viewers. 

                                                             ^^^ This is me^^^

Nothing like good ol' technology to make a 21-year-old feel like a grandma. 

Neznanski, who is also a former Gazette Times reporter who had the opportunity to interview President Obama (cool!), noted that in this new ecosystem of news, you have to use the tools that are out there and "start thinking about your audience, the people you're writing to and about, and what they want to know about." 
But I like to that's how journalism has always been. 

And even though I know  I'll probably have to hop on the Twitter train eventually, I'm just not ready yet. 

Good news for me and my resistant attitude towards Twitter/Flickr/Whatever-the-new-thing-out-there-is though. Neznanksi explained that while "Twitter may come and go, the concept of 'microblogging' [ex: the College Herbivore] isn't going anywhere."

Whew