This session was all about how to serve the community better through journalism, and more specifically, social media. I was introduced to Patch, a startup news organization that serves different cities around the country. Each city has a different website and social media accounts and it is tailored to each city’s needs.

Through Patch and the speaker’s tips, I learned that community journalism is about:

• Being part of a community
• Don’t just inform people, engage them in social media and news stories: Use Facebook to ask questions and help finding sources and background information.
• Use social media as a tool: Break news on Facebook, real-time disaster coverage, show appreciation to fans.
• Have a call to action.
• Networking: Connect with community organizations, churches, chamber of commerce, people.
• Just be as involved as you can.

NKU is like a community itself, which is why I think implementing some of these ideas more on our social media sites would work and is a good idea.