Storify is a tool for journalism
There have been plenty of posts about Storify, a (relatively) new tool in curating social media. It’s a great and useful tool that will certainly help to shape the future of journalism.
I’ve used it a few times myself:
- Curating a Twitter debate about a College Football Playoff
- Taking a look at the new home of the CWS, TD Ameritrade Park
- And even curating advice for college journalists
That’s why I found this blog post, on the great 10,000 words, to be interesting. It’s the pros and cons of Storify. I really hate to critique the post of a new blogger (see Elana Zak’s tweet here — let’s face it, my blog sat empty for months so who am I to criticize), but I have one major gripe.
Zak discusses Storify as if it is a new form of journalism. One in which fact checking “takes a back seat.” She also asks why someone would use this instead of pounding the pavement (as she says it, “why was I using this instead of going out and finding real people to interview?”).
The problem here is that Storify isn’t a new form of journalism. It’s a new tool for journalism. It’s a tool just like Twitter, a computer or a pad of paper and a pen. It’s a way for journalists to harness the discussion on the Internet without having to do a lot of copying and pasting, taking screen shots, etc. It saves time and makes for an easier reading experience.
Going out and talking to a few “real” people about the weather by pounding the pavement is just fine. But, with social media and Storify, you can get the view of hundreds of people. The way I see it, a tool like Storify allows journalists to provide a fuller picture of the story. As journalists, shouldn’t that be something we strive for?