How to survive your reporting semester

Photo courtesy of mojourcomm via Wikimedia Commons

By Ryan Levi

We have a unique opportunity as journalism students at Mizzou. We get to work in professional newsrooms as part of our course work. Every day, students report for an NBC affiliate, an NPR member station and a community newspaper.

It's great experience, and it's also a lot of work. But you can get through it. I asked around on Twitter and Facebook and got some tips and advice from folks who have been there and done it.

Leave it to the users—leveraging audiences to vet content

By Kara Tabor

via SEOPlanter/Flickr

Speak the truth, or get demoted on social media. That's the impetus behind Facebook's newest feature allowing its users to sort the truth from the fake --and no, I'm not referring to whether or not your friends' Instagram snap truly has #nofilter. With the addition of an option to label a post as false information (within the post reporting feature that already gives users the ability to flag content that they may object for any of a variety of reasons), users can now have their say in one of the fundamental questions of the internet: Is this for real?

Welcome back, Journalism Tigers!

By Katy Mersmann

Creative Commons photo from Wikipedia user AdamProcter

Hi and welcome back to Mizzou! We’re so excited for a new year of Online News Association and we are looking forward to getting started. We’re planning a variety of events to help students grow and develop their skills as news writers and editors, as well as provide a place to network with each other and media professionals.

Study shows Facebook leads in news views

By Hannah Schmidt

Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons

My Twitter feed is filled with news organizations, from The Huffington Post to CNN to BBC News. And whenever I find an interesting story, my first instinct is to retweet the link. But a new Pew Research Center study shows it might be time I start sharing articles on Facebook, too.

Sixty four percent of U.S. adults, with an adult classified as a user 18 years or older, use Facebook. Nearly half of these users view news from the site. These numbers should encourage news organizations to invest in building a stronger Facebook presence to gain more attention from this demographic.

Facebook mobile-ad revenue expected to grow, but still looking for business model

By Erin Dismeier

Facebook's mobile-ad revenue is projected to grow, but
the service is still looking for a sustainable mobile model.

Facebook or Twitter?  Even though Facebook achieved popularity sooner, a recent report by online marketing-research firm eMarketer shows Twitter in 2012 will take in more U.S. mobile-ad revenue than Facebook.

This is partially because Promoted Tweets, a huge ad-revenue source for Twitter, are well-integrated into the service's "core user experience," making the "shift toward displaying mobile advertisements relatively simple," according to eMarketer. 

"Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO, boasts that Twitter was developed with mobile in mind," according to Digital Trends. "As the company began selling mobile ads earlier this year, just weeks into its mobile ad program, the company garnered more ad revenue from its Promoted Tweets program on its mobile platform than on its desktop app."

Offline success in the online age

By Nicole Garner

Image Courtesy of ChocoNancy1 on Flickr

It’s become a common practice for journalists to tweet from the field, find sources through social media and engage with audiences through their online profiles. But what happens when you work for a media outlet that doesn’t have a social media presence?

This summer, I interned at WEIU TV, a news station in Charleston, Illinois, which didn’t jump on the social media bandwagon until after I arrived. The news director hadn’t used any form of social media before and was hesitant to start Twitter and Facebook pages for the station (for reasons unknown).

Free journalism training through... Facebook?

By Andrew Gibson

Twitter has been in the news a lot lately.

When Keith Urbahn tweeted the first news about Osama bin Laden’s death, “over 300 reactions to the original post were spreading through the network” within two minutes, according to SocialFlow.

And Weinergate wouldn’t even have existed without Twitter.

So, what about Facebook?

Perhaps that’s a question best saved for Vadim Lavrusik. Facebook hired the Columbia University journalism professor and former Mashable community manager to lead its journalists program, of which the “Facebook + Journalists” page is an integral part.