I came across an interesting article in Editor & Publisher that looks at some of the potential “pitfalls” of social media use for newspapers, which include taking private or copyrighted materials off of a Facebook page for use in a story and twittering opinions or misinformation. In the article, editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer Bill Marimow credits social media with providing “a lot of insight,” but says, “The main problem is verification. You have to make sure it is the truth.”
Good advice! In terms of the future, here is an interesting quote from Gannett newspaper executive Michael Maness, “The future of content is conversation.”
Thanks for engaging in this conversation with me. It will be fascinating to see what the integration of newspapers and social media looks like ten years from now! Any guesses?
Newspapers & Social Media 
Indeed, I believe that the future of content will for the most part be conversation, but this also exposes the reader – and society – to a lot of risks. Unsubstantiated opinions do not replace fact, and unfortunately much of society in some of the world’s big democracies, where freedom of the press is cherished and enshrined in the constitutions or through legislation, is misled and misinformed by insomniac ideologues who spend their nights creating “content”. While we indeed need the social networking sphere to stimulate dialogue, the dialogue should be rooted in some semblance of verified truth. Because of this, I hope – for the sake of our sanity and the well-being of our children – that real journalism will never be replaced by bloggers (though with all due respect I love reading your blog).
I agree with you that truthfulness must be the objective. And thanks for the compliment on this blog!
I’ve loved this dialogue and wish it were going to continue. Thank you. Venues like this get us thinking and talking. Specifically, yours has got me thinking about how important truth and verifiability are these days, mostly because they seem to have become almost irrelevant to many people and to some news organizations. I can’t think of any words about this that work better for me than Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”. There’s a truthiness about much of what passes for common knowledge, especially in the United States, that’s downright disturbing because of the fact that people’s acceptance of it seems to me to have stripped them of a great deal of their power, and I don’t think they’ll get that power back when they don’t even know it’s gone. I fear for the state of their nation because of it.
Thanks for your comment and the kind words about this blog…Yes, truth and verifying will be even more critical going into the future, I believe.