Lessons from Reporters - by David Cohn on Monday, June 2, 2008 11:18 - View Comments

Interview – Beth Kanter: Learning from the Nonprofit World

Learning to beat blog is really about learning how to do online organizing. That is not unique to journalism. It’s a skill/mind set that nonprofits, politicians, individuals and all sorts of industries need to learn.

One great teacher is Beth Kanter. She is fantastic at explaining the basics of how one should start to approach online organizing and social media. Below she explains the "cute dog theory."

Kan

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  • http://www.cfcausa.org Judy-Anne Goldman

    Great interview, Dave! Thanks so much for speaking with Beth Kanter! She gave some really helpful information – going to share it within our comm. department here at CFCA.

  • http://theory.isthereason.com Kevin Lim

    It’s nice seeing Beth up close and personal. She mentioned Groundswell, which I’m glad I have on order from Amazon. My personal advice for organizations getting into social media: Forget the control paradigm, and instead take on the risks vs. rewards perspectives.

    Beth’s Cute Dog Theory wiki is at http://cutedogtheory.wikispaces.com/

  • http://beth.typepad.com Beth Kanter

    Dave,

    I’m impressed! You’re fast! I’m still suffering from jet lag – and have yet to finish all my videos!

    BTW, we’re experimenting with FriendFeed and set up a NpTech Room – and doing an exercise in resource/knowledge sharing. Come join us!~

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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
David Cohn is the founder of Spot.Us and former editor of BeatBlogging.Org.