Lessons from Beat Blogging, Social Networking News - by Patrick Thornton on Sunday, February 3, 2008 17:14 - View Comments

Your Newsroom Could Learn Something from TMZ… Beat Blogging Meetings

Do your story meetings look like TMZ’s? If not, maybe they should?

For those of you who watch the very popular television version of the “entertainment news, celebrity gossip and Hollywood rumors” website TMZ.com, you will know that their meetings are done in the open with seemingly broad participation. Editor and founder Harvey Levin stands at the front of the room and users a clear board to note stories that the show will be using. There is a free exchange as the individual staffers (or are they editors?) offer their story ideas.

Now granted, the TMZ meeting is filmed, so how much of it is done for camera, I don’t really know. And whether or not it has an impact, positive or otherwise, I can’t gauge from my seat on my couch. But it’s hard to argue that their meeting approach is the more positive and likely more productive one. Before you start shaking your head saying that’s TV, pay attention to the meeting occurring in this video:

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About BeatBlogging.org

BeatBlogging.org was a grant-funded journalism project that studied how journalists used social media and other Web tools to improve beat reporting. It ran for about two years, ending in the fall of 2009.

New content is occasionally produced here by the this project's former editor Patrick Thornton. The site is still up and will remain so because many journalists and professors still use and link to the content. BeatBlogging.org offers a fascinating glimpse into the former stages of journalism and social media. Today it's expected that journalists and journalism organization use social media, but just a few years ago that wasn't the case.

About the Author of this post
Patrick Thornton is the editor and lead writer of BeatBlogging.Org. He is @pwthornton on Twitter.