Magzalez’s eyes on media

I am magzalez!

So I’ve recently climbed aboard the Twitter wave. Twitter is what I and others call microblogging. I had my reservations about it before, but I accept it as a fun social medium.

So without futher ado, here is a list of some of the people I follow on Twitter and why:

• Selfmadepsyche: Megan Taylor is a cool cat. She is a former classmate of mine and has been doing the Twitter thing for quite some time. It’s fun to know what she’s doing because she’s so damn zany. Mainly though, she just knows where this whole online journalism thing is heading.
• Schwanksta: Ken Schwencke is a smart guy. He knows his programming and how it can help journalism. He’s also the managing editor of online media at The Alligator.
• gotoPlanB: Dave Stanton is the coolest journalism teacher around. He’s keeping me filled in on what’s around the corner for online journalism.
• Greglinch: Greg Linch keeps in the know for online journalism. He also is a former co-intern with me and currently interning at The Miami Herald. Mainly I just like to see what’s coming out of there.
• UFWebAdmin cause that’s where I work.
• Wimbledon because tennis is what I love. I just found this one today.

The main thing I’ve seen with Twitter is that it is fun and useful so long as you keep it under control. Just like your RSS, only subscribe if you are going to read it or else you’ll be inundated. The other thing is that the whole microblogging idea, to me anyways, is like the new online note taker. You put your thoughts into Twitter, and you collect your thoughts in a blog post. It doesn’t have to be all business though, which is what makes it fun.

Soon I’ll do a post about who I WISH had Twitter.

I regret to inform you that I have been regularly updating Twitter lately. I’ve given into peer pressure. I blame Megan and Dave.

I am magzalez on Twitter.

In other news, I’m covering a melon festival for video, photos and possibly a print story in the near-by city of High Springs, Fla., this Saturday, June 7.

I am putting this bad boy on Technorati because social networking is primarily a good thing.

This is my own rebuttal to my last post.

In the last couple of days, while researching this topic, I’ve discovered that there are plenty complaints about journalists’ misuse of Facebook.

Liz Losh of VirtualPolitik wrote in August that she believes newspapers, including her hometown paper, The Los Angeles Times, have been using Facebook to collect details about crime stories from the involved parties’ Facebook profiles.

A grossly neglectful attempt at reporting, Losh likens the lazy practice to her students writing entire papers based on Wikipedia articles.

I typed “according to his Facebook profile” into Google and quickly got a hit. The first article that showed up was from the Yale Daily News. The article makes numerous references to facts scraped off a recently arrested man’s profile. Here is another example from The (Charlottesville, Va.) Daily Progress.

Check out why one Northwestern University student thinks “Facebook is a better journalist than you are.”

*Update: Check out Facebook hurting journalism.

It is interesting how much I hear about journalists using Facebook–the networking Web site formerly for college students and recently open to the public. From what I have seen first hand, the uses of Facebook for journalism have been positive. It has been used to check names, affiliations and activities. It is by no means a first source, but an easy way to make sure people exist, how to spell their names and how to put a face to a name.

Facebook can also serve as an online directory of sources from stories past. It’s a good way to keep posted on what sources are up to. Joe Grimm of the Detroit Free Press tackled some questions about Facebook and journalism on the Poynter Institutes’ Web site. Grimm shutters at the idea of “friending” sources, but he understands the value of Facebook as a networking tool.

Check back for my next post on how Facebook could hurt journalism.