Social media: professional or personal?

First, I just want to say thank you to everyone who came to the SPJ meeting on Monday. I love having everyone in on discussions, and it was great getting to know the new members more.

During the meeting, we watched a video from the eCampus section of the SPJ website about using social media. Although parts of it seemed silly and obvious, it sparked a great discussion about what you can find out about people online. We talked about pipl.com and the "see friendship" feature of facebook. Both can be great reporting tools to find out background on your sources, but it can also be a big wake-up call as to what is online about us. These are things that everybody - friends, family, sources and potential bosses – can all see.

I've attended several SPJ workshops about social media and the general comment I seem to hear is that professional journalists either keep their facebooks and twitter completely personal or completely professional. In general, having two of each (one personal and one professional) seems to be a bad idea to most professionals I have heard speak about the topic.

But I think college journalists are in a unique position. It would be hard to keep our social media sites completely professional or completely personal because a lot of the time our sources are fellow college students.

What is the best way for college journalists to approach social media? Also, we are always told employers look at our facebook pages and twitters before hiring for jobs or internships. But how true is that? And if they do look, what are they looking for, either good or bad?

To help answer some of these questions as well as other social media concerns, SPJ wants to have a panel of experts, professional journalists and employers to discuss social media and the college journalist. We are planning the panel for sometime in February.

Do you have something to say about this topic or suggestions for panelists? E-mail me at mslaby@indiana.edu.

Behind the stories from Haiti

It was the last day of the convention and after checking out of our hotel and grabbing breakfast and coffee at Starbucks, we made our way to Planet Hollywood for more session before we had to return to Indiana. For our first session, Stephanie and I along with Professor Joe Coleman chose to attend "Haiti Earthquake: Covering the Tragedy with No End in Sight," where two journalists shared their experiences of covering the earthquake.

Jacqueline Charles covered Haiti as her beat and works for The Miami Herald. She speaks creole and when her plane landed in Haiti she was met by the president and his wife. Her dedication was amazing - when she couldn't use her phone or email, she sent stories in via text message. Also, it was really great to hear from someone who covered Haiti before and is still covering the country.

The second journalist was Carrie Kahn from NPR. She told us that she sent her boss an email that said "I'll go" after the earthquake hit an the next thing she knew, she was on a plane to Haiti. Her bravery impressed me. Not only did she volunteer to go, but she had no connections when she got there and didn't speak the language.

But I think the biggest thing I learned from these two reporters is that when we as journalists go to areas where there has been a disaster, we need to understand the culture of the place and know that the problems it faces are usually more complicated than just the disaster.