Traditionally journalists — especially print — have hid behind bylines and their professional personas.

In the name of objectivity, journalists were told to keep their personal lives separate from their professional work. Journalists just reported the news and that was that (just the finished product, not the journey). That worked fine in a pre-Internet world.

But honestly, how many people on Twitter have a lot of followers acting like that? Virtually none. Same with bloggers. 

The Web is an interactive medium, and who wants to interact with a robot? Professor Carrie Brown created a thought provoking video about journalists opening up on social media. In fact, she argues that journalists must open up on social media to harness the platform properly.

“I don’t think social media will really work for journalists, unless we are willing to share a little bit about ourselves and our personalities,” Brown said in the video.

The idea is not to write about issues like politics, who you voted for or other divisive topics, but rather to become more human. Beat blogger Ron Sylvester also has made the same point earlier this year. He has tweeted about how he injured his knee, and it has humanized him to readers.

“People come to social media with a different set of expectations,” Brown said. “They want to see that there is kind of a real person with a personality behind the byline.”

Then there is a the Colonel Tribune approach. The Colonel is not a real person, of course, but it’s a fun and fascinating online persona that Tribune Interactive has created. The Colonel approach might only work once per paper, but it is interesting how people positively respond to a fake persona (instead of the robot approach that other papers have tried). 

This is a tricky road to navigate, however. The last thing journalists would want to do is to turn off potential readers. So, where is the line?

How human should journalists become on social networks? Does your news organization have rules about how to act on social media? Are you allowed to open up?