Category Archives: Featured
My career v3.0: Writing and teaching mobile, social media for Poynter
A little over a year ago I blogged here about starting version 2.0 of my journalism career for an ambitious local online news startup in Washington, D.C. TBD.com has been an incredible experience, with some bumps along the way but no regrets.
I may blog sometime later about lessons learned from my time here as the senior community host and now managing editor, but today I want to share that I am soon going to be moving to a new job.
In a couple weeks I will join The Poynter Institute — analyzing, writing and teaching about mobile and social media in the new news system.
The staff of Poynter Online are filling Poynter.org with outstanding coverage of the news industry, and I’m excited to contribute to that in some of the most exciting and fast-evolving branches of technology. I’ll also be involved in training programs at the institute and consulting for individual companies who are looking to take their social, mobile or community engagement approaches to a higher level.
The big goal of my new position at Poynter is “thought leadership” for the mobile and social news industry — bringing analysis to the big issues and developments and helping anyone who’s interested figure out what it means and what to do about it. However, I don’t expect to do this by shouting from a mountaintop.
I’ll be carrying forward the things I learned at TBD about the power of community engagement and involving users in the entire content cycle. Thought leadership isn’t really leadership if no one’s following you, so I hope you’ll all come along with me to help explore and discuss. My door is always open at jeff(at)jeffsonderman.com, on Twitter @jeffsonderman, or my relatively new Facebook page.
I want to hear from you about what you’re doing in the mobile or social space, or what you want a news provider to do for you. What do you think is being done well? What are the biggest questions that need attention?
UPDATE: For those of you I’ve gotten to know here in D.C., yes I will be staying in the area and working from here. Also, thanks to Steve Buttry for his very kind words about my move.
Malcolm Gladwell’s errors on social media activism
Malcolm Gladwell in 2008. Photo by Flickr user Pop!Tech
New Yorker writer and sociologish author Malcolm Gladwell has a new essay out in the New Yorker that seeks to draw a line in the sand between social networks and “real-life” relationships when it comes to producing significant social change.
My first reaction was, this reads like hyperbolically contrarian linkbait — in the vein of “X Is Dead” headlines sprawling the tech blogs today. Maybe that’s true. But I’d like to think he’s serious about this, and so I’d like to give the proper context to the world of networks and action that he frames. (more…)
What is journalism school for?
I missed the weekly #wjchat Web journalism discussion last night on Twitter, which focused on whether journalism schools are still relevant, and what their roles should be today. As a J-school graduate (Missouri BJ’04) and someone who has seen a lot of recent grads enter and exit newsrooms, I have some insight. (more…)
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