At the end of my current class and at the cusp of working on my Capstone Project, I had expected to be more well versed in social media, have an easier time chasing down stories, and a website true to my initial beat. My attitude to social media has actually weakened. It is clear that social media requires a lot of time investment and you also have to be prepared for making controversial statements in order to gain attention. These are two things I have been reluctant to do. I have not put the time into social media, and I am hesitant to make controversial statements for fear of distancing an audience (Guerrero, 2018). Part of this is because I use social media for my fiction and art. But now I have a news website and my articles stake a position and I have to be ready and willing to get opinions out there.

A few of the things I learned in the class was how little I know about social media, using Reddit, and the difficulties in chasing down a story every week with a full-time job and other commitments. I also learned that interviewees will cancel on you at the last moment and so it is good to have a database of contacts you can reach out to in a pinch. If my only job was journalism, then I probably could chase down and write a piece each week (BBC, 2017). But with other commitments and no journalism job the effort is great and tedious. I think the classes I have taken have focused more on quantity rather than quality and there is also too much focus on social media rather than the work of researching and investigating a story in depth.

I did learn that social media can be helpful in marketing an article, but if I plan to pitch my stories to other publications rather than posting on my website then I need to focus on a personal profile and not a profile focused on my news website.

Bibliography

BBC. (2017, April 5). Original journalism: finding stories. Retrieved from BBC Academy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20130702112133498

Guerrero, R. (2018). The ethical issues of social media in journalism. Retrieved from Medium Media: https://medium.com/@ryan.guerrero/the-ethical-issues-of-social-media-in-journalism-430c85ca8fd1

PICTURE COURTESY OF PIXABAY