As president of the St. Louis Chapter for the Society for Professional Journalists, my job is simple: assist journalists in doing their jobs and trumpet their successes. As a committee member with SPJ national, I work with others around the country to do the same on a much broader stage.
A portion of that stage will be here, on Posterous, one of the must-visit lifestreaming sites on the Web, and another trumpet heralding new ideas and experiences. Journalists the world over are encountering new technologies and challenges in their jobs — among those challenges, the rise of social media and public newsgathering. Some would say this rise creates interference for traditional newsgathering practices that defined credibility and dependability in the larger media. Others welcome the broader reach of information sharing by everyone, not just traditional media, hastened by fast-evolving technical innovation.Regardless, both views will find a voice in this space, and perhaps other voices will have their utterances recorded here as well. The key is finding ways to make social media and technology work for journalists, not the other way around. Because when it comes to being heard in the 21st century, intellect must trump ignorance, facts must trump fallacy, and sound judgment must trump noise; otherwise, our wonderful and varied means of communication, no matter how advanced, will devolve from tools into toys. And our republic will follow suit.