Mary Louise Schumacher, art and architecture critic with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was recently tasked with teaching her newsroom about social media and beat blogging.

What worked? What didn’t work? What did her peers think about all this fancy social media?

And most importantly, how can social media and beat blogging improve their reporting and make their jobs easier?

“There has been a lot of buzz in the newsroom about [social media], and people don’t know how to use these tools,” she said about why her paper started offering training. 

The Journal Sentinel has come out as an early leader in giving social media training to its employees. Rather than just encourage its employees to use social media, the Journal Sentinel decided to discuss how to use social media to improve their journalism. Schumacher and her colleagues also had discussions about the ethical dilemmas that arise for journalists from social media. 

The sessions were limited to 6-8 people per training session. This allowed Schumacher to spend the last 45 minutes of each two hour training session talking to individual reporters about how they could use these tools for their beats. Different social media tools work better for different beats, but the idea of beat blogging and expanding a journalist’s network can strengthen any beat.

“Of course what works for me as the art critic is going to be very different than what works for a political reporter,” Schumacher said.

Carefully considering which tools to use and how to use them for each beat and each reporter could lead to less frustration, more success and better results. When dealing with people who are often new to these technologies, more guidance tends to yield better results and also avoid some of the missteps can happen with social media. For instance, Schumacher said that many of the people who came into her training sessions never thought of using social media for beat blogging.

“A lot of people came expecting something very different than what they got,” she said. “But I think people were coming expecting to hear more about how to get our content out into the click stream, so to speak, and how to get our stories out where people are looking at them on the Web.”

While it’s not a bad idea to disseminate content onto new platforms, that’s hardly the best way to use social media. The best journalists and news organizations use social networks to be a part of a larger conversation — to connect with people. Just using social media to bring in more Web traffic would be wasting the vast potential that social media offers for journalism and beat reporters.

“What we focused on in the training sessions is how to use networks and how to build communities around your beats to be better reporters, to actually improve your journalism,” she said. “That came as a little bit as a surprise to people, and I think a pleasant surprise.”

Listen to this podcast to hear why your newsroom should conduct beat blogging and social media training.

Also, don’t miss the fantastic conversation that Schumacher started about which online tools are best for reporters.

Some other topics discussed:

• Why does beat blogging make journalism better?
• What concerns arise with social media and journalistic ethics?
• Has anyone found stories using social media since the training?
• How did the training go over with the newsroom?
• Are certain social media tools going over better with your newsroom than others? Are some easier to pick up?
• What kinds of tips would you offer to people who want to conduct social media training in their news organization?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.