By Bob Gabordi
Our newspaper recently worked on a project on infant mortality among African Americans in our community. Rates rivaled those of third world countries here in the capital city of the nation’s fourth largest state. We posted information on what we were doing on social media. As the responses came in it became clear that the newspaper had to fulfill a traditional role in a new way: We had to be a conduit for connecting the various parts of our community in a new way using new tools. We actually introduced people working on the same topic from different government and educational agencies. Through this process, our community began to work together more closely to give mothers and infants a better start. Serving as a community conduit is more than posting on Facebook or Tweeting. It is engaging leaders and citizens in the democratic process, setting the agenda on what is critical to the health and well-being of our communities. And it is one more thing: It is our competitive advantage over all over media, and I believe our future.
When a 22-year-old Florida State graduate was killed when her role as a confidential drug informant for police went bad, we used social media to reach her peers to engage on our reporting. When we were eventually able to report on how police had mishandled the case, young adult readers were read every word of our investigative reports. By combining our traditional journalistic skills and tools with the power of social media, meaningful conversations can co-exist with simplistic posts about what so and so is having for lunch. It is the union of print with community conversation that is a difference maker.
The Tallahassee Democrat has a Facebook page for its websites, Tallahassee.com and NoleSports.com. We use them to talk to our readers, not at them, but to them. We converse. We join in their conversations about our stories. Combined we have more than 9,500 “friends.” Many of our journalists maintain their own pages and talk about our work. I have close to 1,900 “friends,” for example. For point of reference, people will click off of Facebook or Twitter and onto our websites some 25,000 times in September. Another whole group of people will read our print edition with their computer open and ready to comment. Even before a story publishes, there is already a buzz in the community. The pump has been primed for good, fact-based conversations around our journalism. When the story is published, they are ready to take action, to make a difference.
It really comes down to this: The Internet has yet to prove its ability to attract readers to in-depth enterprise journalism; print has never had the power to deliver good and meaningful conversations. For us, it is no longer something extra. It is how we do journalism. It is not simply posting on social media, it is doing journalism using social media tools. It is important to understand the difference or risk alienating even more readers. For us, it is making a difference in how our community views us and keeping us relevant to new and traditional readers.
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Bob Gabordi is executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com and writes a regular blog on Tallahassee.com. His e-mail address is bgabordi@tallahassee.com.
