Twitter: Friend or Foe?
The worst part about my news day is trying to find information about USC. The irony comes on so many levels. Whenever USC releases a press release or informs their students, it’s always after it’s been in the L.A. Times or on the evening news, so being a student at USC surprisingly gives us little advantage. However I have come to rely on social media as a daily go to. I always keep Facebook and Twitter open and check it as faithfully as I do the wires. This week we heard about shirts stolen off a clothesline for the week-long Take Back the Night event that we incorporated into our newscast. Sometimes I have come to depend on them to relay breaking news even faster than the wires and I have bystanders with questionable grammar to thank for the heads up. Or I can thank campus activists for inviting me to a protest about an issue I had no idea about over Facebook. While social media has become an important part of my daily newsgathering process, I never fully rely on it because unlike the AP wire, I don’t know who is posting and what their motives are.