Social Media 101

Yet another special event I was able to participate in this week was a station-wide Social Media meeting where the Creative Services department held several information sessions to inform people about the stations strategies and expectations on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. It was housed in the station's state of the art conference room where producers, executive producers, vice presidents, anchors and the President/General Manager came together to ask questions and get a little more educated on how social media impacts the business.

A big topic of discussion came up when the Special Reports executive producer brought up how the Joe Paterno case was handled. CBS Sports reported (a day early) that Paterno was dead when he really was not.

Journalism 101: Never report on the death of someone unless it is 100% accurate and a reputable source on behalf of the person comes forward. CBS Sports and CBS Inc. was in serious trouble after that false report.   

I say this to say that social media played a huge role in that mistake. Someone, on behalf of CBS sports, reported that story via social networking. CBS, being a reputable source (in my eyes at least), released the story and dozens of other stations took the story and ran with it. Our station, however, waited to report his death--calling it "alleged reports of Paterno's death." If anyone, known to work at 6abc, reported the story (personal or professional) then the station could've received flack for it. This goes to show how powerful social media networking is, and how its changing the dynamics of journalism.