Believe it or not, social media has given each of us the skills to produce our own newscast. We know what news we're interested in and we seek it out. Pouring over media sites, blogs and other content providers we discover news relevant to our interests much like a T.V. news producer or newspaper editor does when they're deciding what news to deliver to us.
Not only have we picked up news gathering skills, we have even found ways to filter that news the way we want to see it. Just as a news producer stacks a newscast with the lead stories first, we've developed our own methods (thanks to some innovative social media tools) for arranging and filtering the delivery of our news. I can stack my favorite RSS feeds at the top of my reader, or filter out the useless feeds with a service like Social Median. I can even prioritize what order I read each section just like I would with a newspaper using tools like Firefox add-on Morning Coffee that open website tabs in the same order everyday. Want to monitor the scanner, or man the phones? Just jump on Twitter or FriendFeed and stay in the news loop.
I'm not saying we know how to choose the 'best' news sources, but generally I think we know what's good and what isn't. I'll take that over being forced to change the channel because I don't want to watch celebrity news or hear about the same old thing. Most of us are not great writers, and probably not photographers either, but we're certainly becoming producers. Bloggers as journalists? Depends on who you ask. I don't think we're there, yet.
Social media is more than a trendy description, as a few bloggers like to refer to it. Social media is a new way to communicate and interact with each other. It's a way to share photos, videos and more - things we used to rely on traditional media to provide.
This is just one example of how you're replacing traditional forms of media already. What's next, Beating traditional media to the story? Just ask Scobleizer how Twitter beat CNN.
Original post on PitchEngine - The Fast Future of Social Media PR