A Time of Great Change

That’s what we’re living in right now. At least according to the panel Using New Media in Changing Times which consisted of guest speakers Elise Hu of Texas Tribune, Rob Quigley of Austin American Statesman and David Doolittle also of the Austin American Statesman. They talked a lot about were journalism is going and they answered questions from the audience. Twitter was a big focus of this panel, with the guest speakers as well as a good portion of the audience updating their Twitter accounts throughout the entire panel.

Even with all this information at our fingertips the panel stressed the importance of not jumping the gun, of verifying the information. David Doolittle told the story of butterflies all over Austin and how he was about to send out that the Monarch migration had come through but at the last minute he decided to verify the information and as it turned out they weren’t Monarch butterflies, they were American Snout butterflies.

There was a lot of mention of the importance of social media for future journalists. It can be a good source of information as long as it’s used wisely and journalistic ethics still need to be followed, even on Twitter.