More tools for reporting

There is little doubt that new tools for reporting such as Wikis, RSS feeds, Skype, Twitter, blogging, and Delicious etc will change the way news is reported. Granted, this fact isn’t new, but it’s interesting, at least to me.

The new tools for reporting became a channel for breaking news for both professional reporter and citizen journalists and they offer a new channel to both of them, because of its immediacy and network effects, for example, it’s very quick to publish and easy to spread a news story to thousands of people. Apparently, this appeals to mainstream media as a distribution channel.

However, the new tools for reporting don’t wait for standard journalistic practices like fact-checking. They try to turn out to be correct, but I wonder if this will have harmful effect on future news reporting.

Nevertheless, are they still good? In my opinion, yes! They are good. It’s very good for news reporting. I think it’s great that citizen journalism and the new tools for reporting exist and that they provide such a great publishing platform for it. But I think we need to apply the trust to the new tools for reporting. If that’s the case, then citizen journalism won. If not, we have a problem.

Traditional media will continue to feel pressure from the new tools, as they are scooped by the new tools such as Wikis, RSS feeds, Skype, Twitter, blogging, and Delicious etc. What remains to be seen is how we handle it.

So, what do you think? Do people put too much trust in citizen journalism and the new tools for reporting, or do you think the traditional media have the right amount of skepticism to make it work? How should mainstream media react to the trend? These questions aren’t so boring after all! Instead, it’s a lesson worth thinking carefully.

BearBlogging.org-<http://beatblogging.org/2009/02/11/screencast-how-to-use-twitter-for-reporting/>

If you watch this, you will be quickly understood what is going on. According to this website, this video goes over: – Why I use Twitter for reporting – The importance of a good profile – The value of search.twitter.com – Desktop clients like TweetDeck – How to get an RSS feed of a search term – And more.