The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. The line is fading between social media and traditional media. IDG’s Matt Yorke talks about the rise of social and how IDG helps marketers create social campaigns. Read more.
Digital media, as many a Mashable reader is aware, is evolving at a rapid pace. It’s three months in to 2011, and already we’re witnessing the realization of many of our predictions for news media, digital advertising and startups this year.
Social tools, such as Facebook and Tumblr, are coming to play a new role in news reporting and distribution, while brands are taking on the role of the media by creating and publishing content themselves. Meanwhile, consumers are beginning to access digital content across more devices, often simultaneously, and content creators are responding by creating content for multiple platforms and selling access to them in new subscription offerings.
Those are just a few of the trends we’re observing across digital media, which we explore in greater depth below.
1. New Tools for Reporting and Distribution
Twitter, YouTube and RSS, among other platforms, have long been lauded for their roles in news reporting and distribution in the age of real-time and social media. Now, a new crop of tools is emerging to help journalists tell stories, engage audiences and expand their reach.
Although hardly a new player, Facebook is playing an increasingly important role for working journalists, as Mashable’s Vadim Lavrusik pointed out in an article last week. During what has become known as the January 25th Revolution, Facebook helped journalists in North Africa and the Middle East identify planned protests, gather information and find relevant sources, among other things, notes Riyaad Minty, Al-Jazeera English’s head of social media.
Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, on the other hand, uses the platform as another distribution outlet, posting regular updates to the 200,000 fans of his page, and NPR regularly posts messages to find sources.
In some cases, Facebook itself is part of the story. In a recent article for The Washington Post, Ian Shapira used screenshots of Facebook status updates to illustrate the heartbreaking story of a woman who died from post-pregnancy complications, showing — rather than telling — exactly how much her friends and associates valued her.
View the Original article
