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Forgot to mention here that I have a new post up over at MediaShift. This one covers the innovations that Interweave Press and Gourmet are trying out for their new digital products. I think these are both pretty exciting projects that are exploring the “kinesthetic” potential of digital magazines, while also experimenting with social functionality and the possibilities for exciting user interfaces. I’m looking forward to seeing how these evolve.

But do they link to magazines' web sites? Photo by Annie Mole on Flickr.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has posted a summary of its recent study “New Media, Old Media: How Blogs and Social Media Agendas Relate and Differ from the Traditional Press.”

The study compares the variety of topics included in news-related blog posts and tweets with the range included in mainstream media coverage, and found that:

Social media and the mainstream press clearly embrace different agendas. Blogs shared the same lead story with traditional media in just 13 of the 49 weeks studied. Twitter was even less likely to share the traditional media agenda – the lead story matched that of the mainstream press in just four weeks of the 29 weeks studied.

I don’t find these results particularly surprising, but – as a magazine person – I wanted to know how often social media users linked to magazine stories online. I checked out the tables summarizing the PEJ data [PDF] and found that they had added newspapers and magazines together in their breakdown of the sources of links provided by bloggers and Twitter users. Unfortunately, this means that the study – unless the raw data can be broken apart once they’re made available – doesn’t tell us much about whether social media users are linking to magazines’ sites in their conversations about news.

The researchers note that:

In producing PEJ’s New Media Index, the basis for this study, there are some challenges posed by the breath [sic] of potential outlets. There are literally millions of blogs and tweets produced each day. To make that prospect manageable, the study observes the “news” interests of those people utilizing social media, as classified by the tracking websites. PEJ did not make a determination as to what constitutes a news story as opposed to some other topic, but generally, areas outside the traditional notion of news such as gardening, sports or other hobbies are not in the purview of content.

So though newsmagazines’ web sites might be included in the analysis, we probably won’t see many other magazines in the dataset. That’s an understandable limitation of the study, given its specific interest. Magazines are also likely to be less represented because they don’t usually relate to breaking news, as Twitter users would most often be interested in sharing. But if magazines aren’t offering even slower-paced bloggers something to write about, perhaps publishers should be concerned.

I would guess that magazines’ web sites are also rarely linked to by social media users due to their typically poor layout and usability. But I’d like to see some data on social media users’ links to magazines – and think it would be helpful to the magazine industry to see how far they’re being left behind as web users share information and favorite stories using social media. (Or not. But I’m pessimistic.)

This will be another education-related post this week; it’s that point in the semester when I can pretty much only think about teaching. It’s all-encompassing until convocation on May 22!

I’m presenting on Saturday at the 13th CSU Symposium on University Teaching at CSU San Bernardino. My talk title is “Social Networking and Screencasts: A Powerful Combination.”

Some things have changed since I submitted my session proposal; I’m now using WordPress blogs to manage my classes, with help from Blackboard’s gradebook, and we’ve also learned that Ning – the site I planned to present about – will be eliminating free accounts. Ning may decide to offer some discounts or special programs for educators, but its path isn’t yet clear. So, my presentation will be a bit less definitive on the social networking angle than it might have been a month ago, but I hope I’ll still be able to offer my fellow CSU faculty some useful tools to consider for their own classrooms.

With regard to screencasts, I’m arguing that including them in a social networking-enabled course site, as I did on Ning, gives students not only the chance to benefit from multiple reviews of class content or demonstrations, but also the ability to discuss them with each other and the instructor at their leisure. The screencasts also save time for instructors and students on topics where multiple explanations are often necessary, as with some class procedures and content questions.

There are a number of other alternatives to Ning (a long crowdsourced list is here; the short list of possibilities I’d personally try is in this PDF handout). I’m sure some of these will offer a similar experience, and I’m also excited that many of them have mobile apps and texting capabilities so students can access their class materials and communicate with their classmates wherever they are.

Below are my slides and notes for the presentation. I welcome your feedback either before or after the talk!

My new post on “How Magazines Use Social Media to Boost Pass-Along, Build Voice” was published at MediaShift this week. In it, I discuss the many ways magazines are starting to employ Twitter, Facebook, and other social media to connect with their audiences and build their brands:

The lines distinguishing magazines’ print and online content, their social media projects and their advertising will probably continue to blur.

“It might take 10 years until we figure out how to master this,” said [Matt] Milner [vice president of social media and community for Hearst Magazines Digital Media]. “Social media transcends departments — it’s beyond edit, beyond sales. It will inform more and more content decisions in a good way, but it’s going to take a little while.”

In my introductory media class today, I showed a video created by Wired magazine displaying their iPad/tablet edition prototype, and discussing their process of developing it.

Screenshot by Flickr user myuibe.

The big question that arose both in developing my MediaShift post and in my class this morning was: how will editorial and advertising content work together and yet also still remain distinct in this new form?

This seems like an ethical issue that hasn’t been explored fully just yet, as we ogle the iPad and consider its possibilities for shiny new content. (I include myself in that ogling.)

I’d like to know more about how magazines plan to deal with monetizing editorial content by increasingly integrating revenue-generating opportunities – like product purchase options – into editorial content, and how interactive advertising will co-exist with more traditional forms of editorial content. Advertisers will definitely want to take advantage of these opportunities, and magazines need to begin transitioning to this paradigm, as do other print media.

Though the editorial and advertising wall has always been more porous than it appeared, will the iPad bring it crashing down? I don’t think that’s too likely, but there are certainly some significant ethical and editorial concerns involved in its integration into the magazine world.

How far are readers willing to endure the integration of ads into content? What about e-books with built-in ads and links to the Web sites of products that are mentioned? This will be an interesting journey.

Photo by Dean Meyers on Flickr.

I recently read Reuters’ new guidelines for their journalists’ use of social media.

Here’s a paragraph that stood out for me:

The advent of social media does not change your relationship with the company that employs you — do not use social media to embarrass or disparage Thomson Reuters. Our company’s brands are important; so, too, is your personal brand. Think carefully about how what you do reflects upon you as a professional and upon us as an employer of professionals.

I find it highly interesting that Reuters acknowledges their journalists’ desire to have a personal brand here. I don’t think I’ve seen an explicit reference to that emerging reality in any other media company’s social media policies/guidelines so far. (Correct me if I’m wrong about that, please.)

I recently wrote in an academic paper about the increasingly real dilemma that both journalists and their employers will face in balancing individual brands with corporate brands, particularly with regard to the use of social media to establish both. I think that as today’s young journalists come into the profession – especially those who graduate from journalism programs where personal branding and entrepreneurship are emphasized – it may be challenging to find a happy medium between using social media for self-promotion and for corporate promotion.

Can corporate policies like this one help journalists strike that balance by reminding everyone of the significance of both brands? Or does having a social media policy restrict individuals’ ability to establish their own personal brands, to the degree that they begin to resent their employers?

Overall, Reuters’ policy emphasizes the individual journalist’s role in using social media responsibly, and doesn’t set out many strict rules, suggesting instead a string of things to “think about” when using social media. It’s good to see their trust in their employees’ critical faculties, rather than some of the more draconian approaches to social media that other media organizations have employed, though Reuters does still warn that “your manager and/or senior editors will retrospectively review your professional output” and that “We reserve the right to change your beat or responsibilities if there are problems in this area. In the case of serious breaches, we may use our established disciplinary procedures.”

This question isn’t really a problem just for journalism, of course; other professions will also face the challenge of managing employees’ commitment to “take care of No. 1″ – their own personal brands – as well as their employers’, especially when long-term stable employment seems more and more a thing of the past.

Though social media policies, other than Reuters’ version, don’t yet seem to address this dilemma in quite these terms, it appears likely that this will be a more relevant issue as our workforce becomes increasingly reliant on short-term, freelance and contract projects. After all, if one’s employer isn’t going to take care of you in the long run, then you might be prepared to do it yourself, no matter what you have to tweet.