• Should a Social Media Editor Use Social Media? (Mashable) — her reply is in the comment section and she has since become active again.
• Using social media is a key to understanding it (BeatBlogging)

Taking a step back, why should any chief social media person even be called an editor? (For the purposes of this post, let’s not debate the use of “social media,” which I happen to like.)

One reason may be so it fits into the traditional print lexicon; thus, it’s easier to understand what that person does because the term sounds familiar. This isn’t horrible, but it’s framing the position in the wrong mindset.

Instead, this position should be established outside the context of any medium. Neither this role nor the person in it should assume the title and implied limitations of a comparable leadership position.

Whoever leads social media at a news org should lead it for all platforms. And one manner that’s often forgotten is (brace yourself) human interaction.

All of this is not to prescribe a universal “social media editor” job description. I actually think that definition is something a news organization should outline on its own. (Like many things, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.)

Thankfully, we have Twitter to help us simplify the various descriptions being proposed. Here’s my less-than-140-character response to a discussion started by Patrick Thornton (@jiconoclast), editor of BeatBlogging.org:

“Social media editor should be a pusher and a user. Moderate, communicate, curate, facilitate & educate.”

I’d recommend reading the other responses, which you can follow and respond to with the hashtag #smed.

How would you define the role of a social media editor?

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Should a Social Media Editor Use Social Media?

This one is pulling in all the tweets that include pdf09.

Enjoy!

Yet another CoverItLive blog! Yes, on Thursday at 1 p.m. EDT I will help lead a Poynter live chat about avoiding social media overload (during my lunch break):

How Do I Help Students Handle Information Overload on Social Media Sites?

The URL is simple and easy to remember (and tweet!), so please share the link with others!

http://bit.ly/poynterchat

Also, please come ready with questions and/or ready to help answer others’ questions.

If you are not able to follow the chat live, you can submit questions beforehand by commenting below or contacting me on Twitter.

I’ll be co-leading the discussion with Poynter’s Sara Quinn, a visual journalism faculty member who oversees the Poynter College Fellowship, which I attended in late May.

Speaking of cool Poynter people…

Mallary Tenore invited me to help with this chat, and I thank her for the opportunity. She’s awesome. If you don’t read her blog or follow her, you should.

I’d also like to thank Ellyn Angelotti, Poynter’s interactivity editor, who you should also follow.

Some background: While at #pcf09, some other fellows and I joined a live chat led by Emily Ingram. Ellyn said if I pitched a good idea, I could lead one too. I mentioned the topic of effectively using various social networks, which soon became this topic. Voila!

I set up this CoverItLive blog to automatically aggregate all the tweets tagged #knc09 #fncm09 #kncmit (translation: Knight News Challenge, Future of News and Civic Media and Knight News Challenge Massachusetts Institute of Technology) so I (and others who can’t follow all the awesomeness minute-by-minute) can read them later.

Enjoy!

I swung by the Dallas Morning News building during my Sunday excursion and snapped this photo at a stop light. I, of course, parked and walked around.

In less than an hour I will begin a new adventure as an online intern at the Dallas Morning News.

That’s right — as of Saturday afternoon, I’m in Texas! After two stopovers at DFW in the past year, I finally have the chance to explore the state.

I left from my parent’s house in Fort Lauderdale and drove the roughly 1,300 miles to Dallas, switching off with my uncle.

Along the way we, stopped in Tallahassee and New Orleans. I’ve posted some photos on TwitPic along the way (the one above is an original for the blog).

As I’ve mentioned before, this will be my fourth internship — the third at a daily. But this will be my first online internship and I’m very excited for the opportunity.

What’s to come in the next 12 weeks? We shall see.

Stay tuned.

Please check back for archived video, which will be embedded here.

Liveblog

UPDATE: The archived audio has been added below.

The Andersons from Greg Linch on Vimeo.