Friend Request: Facebook Reaches Out to Journalists (Plus: Video)

By: Shane Shifflett

As it grows relentlessly, Mark Zuckerberg’s juggernaut continues to present sticky questions for reporters. Should journalists really be finding, friending and marketing to their sources on Facebook? And how can they navigate the fine line between their public personas and their private, friends-only Facebook profiles? Facebook offered some suggestions at its first-ever journalism meetup, held at Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto last week.

Vadim Lavrusik was the evening’s moderator. He’s the new community manager of Facebook’s journalist program, with social journalism bona fides as an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University and Mashable’s former community manager. Lavrusik presented several use cases for Facebook in newsrooms to a roomful of industry experts and reporters that included researchers from Standford University, online strategists from Northern California Public Broadcasting and several Bay Citizen journalists, among others. For his part, Lavrusik is bullish on the state of the industry. “Journalism isn’t dying,” he blogged recently, “it’s being reborn.”

“What people say about the news is just as interesting as the news itself,” Lavrusik told the crowd, before citing Nicholas Kristof’s recent work in Cairo. While reporting on the events in Tahrir Square, Kristof used Facebook to share interesting details that didn’t make it into his main columns, and tens of thousands of users showed how much they “liked” this idea.

Four local journalists who regularly use Facebook in their work were on the panel for the evening and offered tips from their experience. Laura McClure, new-media editor at Mother Jones, liked how Facebook can make stories and reporters more accessible through Facebook. Mark Milian, a technology writer for CNN, appreciated how easy it was to find sources for the “everyman” style of interview. Katherine Zaleski, head of digital news products for The Washington Post, said her biggest challenge was getting reporters to answer readers’ questions in Facebook comments on their stories. They agreed that Facebook is a good tool for sourcing on straightforward stories, but for tough topics and investigative stories, virtual contacts can be as scarce and hard to reach as in the real world.

Lavrusik rattled off more examples of good Facebook usage by journalists, but when questions surfaced about how the company would handle sensitive issues like privacy matters, answers were harder to come by.

“A lot of people have to come me with concerns about Facebook’s privacy issues and Zucerkberg’s famous statement last year that the age of privacy is over,” said one journalist in the crowd. “How do you address all of those concerns?”

“I don’t,” Lavrusik quipped. Instead, questions of redesigns, content ownership and privacy were handled by Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s director of media partnerships (I came to think of him as the evening’s Public Relations Response Generator), who stepped in to offer lots of reassurances about Facebook’s continued interest in journalism. I started to wonder, who really benefits when journalists use Facebook for their craft: news companies or Facebook?

With Facebook claiming 300-percent increases in referral traffic to media organizations since the beginning of 2010, the industry needs this platform. But with the potential to surgically squelch conversations and wipe out entire groups, as some protesters in Britain claim happened to them Friday during the royal wedding, I had to wonder if the kind of investigative journalism with a capital “J,” the stuff that can change policy and save lives, can rely on Facebook as a safe harbor.

The talks ended on schedule and attendees quickly moved to network over free drinks and hors d'oeuvres. While the evening supplied plenty of useful tidbits for any journalist seeking to expand his or her use of Facebook, decisive answers to many of the deeper questions remain elusive. For now, when it comes to journalism, it seems Facebook is sticking to what it knows best: making friends.

Here's video of the event: