allhealth press club shute may 7 2009

Journalism Gets Social

Using social networking to cover health and medicine

Social media can be used as reporting tools to:

• Find and cultivate sources.

• Follow news and events in real time.

• Get story leads.

• Share interesting stuff.

• Promote yourself.

Find and cultivate sources

• Use Facebook and Twitter to find sources.

• Use sources’ social networks to find other experts on the subject.

• Thank sources publicly, so they’re more willing to feed you good stuff.

Follow and report news

• Use Twitter #hashtags to track specific subjects:

#mumbai, #swineflu, #h1h1

• Use hashtags to cover meetings remotely:

Congressional hearing on the future of journalism was live-Twittered yesterday as #futurej.

• Get real-time reports from sources, including other science writers.

• Report at the scene from your phone or BlackBerry.

Get story ideas

• Follow people or institutions for story leads.

• Use Twitter and Google trend tools to track what’s hot:

• Tweetstats.com/trends• Twist.flaptor.com• trends.google.com

Share interesting stuff

• Embed URLs, audio, video, or post articles to share information you find new or useful.

• Be generous; don’t squander this opportunity by using it just for shameless self-promotion.

• To minimize your hassle, link your social media sites with RSS feeds or Twitter widgets, or use an app like FriendFeed.

Promote yourself!

• Let others know what stories you’re working on.

• Publicize new work by linking to it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and your personal blog.

• Self-publish via Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

• Give people a sense of who you are as a person with photos and personal news.

What do you use Twitter

for?

Thanks to Dave Moser, Liz Scherer, David Bradley, Amy Gahran, Joe Bonner, Leslie Ann Bradshaw, Jay Levy, Denise Graveline, Carl Zimmer, Andrew Revkin, Amy Webb, Sara

Clarke, Ivan Amato, Craig Stoltz, Jay Rosen, Russ Campbell, Paulo Ordoveza, Joe Neel,

Molly McElroy, Allison Bland….

….. and the many others who have helped me learn about social media.

Questions?

• Find these slides at:nancyshute.com/DCSWA-social-media-

for-science-writers

• Find me at:nancy(at)nancyshute.comonparenting@usnews.com

twitter.com/nancyshute