Journalism Gets Social

It was one thing when the pow­ers that be at AP Style­book, often referred to as “the journalist’s bible”,  changed “Web site” to “web­site”, but now they offi­cially “fan” social media. “Fol­low” their lead and “friend” their new social media guidelines.

(Yes, “fan”, “fol­low” and “friend” are all defined as verbs in the AP’s new social media guide­lines. You can “LOL” at that if you would like.)

(“LOL” is also in the new guide­lines, and yes, it is all capitalized.)

(paren­the­ses)

Here’s the offi­cial press release, from the kings of the press. The new AP Style­book also offers def­i­n­i­tions for “trend­ing”, “hash­tag” and “crowd­sourc­ing”, among other social media terms.

Addi­tion­ally, the new social media guide­lines drop some knowl­edge on jour­nal­ists about how to use social media and vet their social media sources. Now, when some­one tweets about how ter­ri­ble your ser­vice is, or how your prod­uct just broke, at least it will be prop­erly cited.

Why does this mat­ter to your busi­ness? Well, this legit­i­ma­tizes social media as a func­tion of jour­nal­ism. You know, that big pub­lic­ity engine that can kill your com­pany (what up, BP) or put it in a shin­ing light (the media loves them some Apple).

Fan, friend and fol­low away.