When I speak at con­fer­ences these days, I often say, “In a for­mer life, I worked in the news indus­try.” That’s only partly true — I still cover con­fer­ences and events as a work­ing jour­nal­ist, and Socialmedia.biz is a site for social media news and analysis.

But my 11 years at the Sacra­mento Bee is rapidly reced­ing in the rear-view mir­ror. After I left the Bee 11 years ago to join Microsoft Side­walk and then jump into a few Sil­i­con Val­ley star­tups, I — along with like­minded folks such as Dan Gill­mor and many oth­ers — prod­ded my news­pa­per col­leagues to embrace blog­ging and the ethos of par­tic­i­pa­tory media (I edited the We Media report on the sub­ject, and Dan named his book We the Media).

In the past two years, we’ve begun to see an accel­er­a­tion of this trend, not only with cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists tak­ing up inex­pen­sive mobile devices and com­mit­ting ran­dom acts of jour­nal­ism by cap­tur­ing pho­tos and video, but with hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple join­ing this col­lec­tive social media ecosys­tem, using social tools like Face­book and Twit­ter for per­son­al­ized news streams.

Recently I’ve begun explor­ing that topic more deeply, and for the next 10 weeks I’ll be help­ing to teach an online class at the ven­er­a­ble Poyn­ter Institute’s NewsU called Using Social Media to Build Audi­ence.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (three or four peo­ple) from 11 news orga­ni­za­tions will be the “stu­dents” in the course, taught by two social media con­sul­tants — Paul Gillin and myself — and course leader Michele McLel­lan.

Course high­lights

High­lights include three Webi­nars, avail­able to the public:

Social Net­works: The New Archi­tec­ture of the Web
April 14 (Tues­day), 2 pm EDT/11 am PDT
One-hour Webi­nar, fol­lowed by 30-minute Q&A, on the impact of the social Web.
Pre­sen­ter: Paul Gillin
Cost: $24.95. Reg­is­ter here.

You will learn:

• Why online “friends” are the foun­da­tion of social net­works’ appeal
• How trusted sources are migrat­ing from mass media to friends’ networks
• From exam­ples of news orga­ni­za­tions that are lever­ag­ing social net­works to extend their influence
• What news­pa­pers can do right now to tap into emerg­ing communities

Social Net­works: Engag­ing Users With News
May 12, 2009 (a Tues­day)
One-hour Webi­nar, fol­lowed by Q&A, on how news orga­ni­za­tions are using — and should use — social media tools to engage users and present con­tent.
Pre­sen­ter: JD Lasica
Cost: $24.95. Reg­is­ter here. Thanks to a grant from The Har­nisch Foun­da­tion, NewsU is able to offer a lim­ited num­ber of par­tial schol­ar­ships for this Webi­nar. To apply, fol­low the instruc­tions here.

This Webi­nar will show you exam­ples of how news organizations:

• Pro­mote their con­tent on pop­u­lar networks
• Use social media tools to engage users on their sites
• Get help from cit­i­zen report­ing and other con­tent from users
• Use social net­works to give voice to the pub­lic and enable com­mu­nity action

Social Net­works: New Rev­enue for News Orga­ni­za­tions
One-hour Webi­nar, fol­lowed by 30-minute Q&A
Pre­sen­ter: Paul Gillin
Cost: $24.95. Reg­is­ter here. To apply for a schol­ar­ship, head here.

In this Webi­nar, we will explore:

• How to think cre­atively about new rev­enue sources
• How to tap into local com­mu­ni­ties for business
• Oppor­tu­ni­ties in search and paid placements
• The poten­tial for cus­tom publishing
• Web­casts, pod­casts and video as rev­enue generators

The course falls under the gen­eral super­vi­sion of NewsU Direc­tor Howard Fin­berg and Knight Dig­i­tal Media Cen­ter Direc­tor Vikki Porter. I’m look­ing for­ward to it.

Related:
• I began explor­ing this topic in depth with my post How to use social media in the news­room. If you’d like to add addi­tional exam­ples of how news­pa­pers, TV and radio sta­tions or mag­a­zines are tak­ing up social tools, we’d love for you to post a com­ment below.

JD Lasica works with major com­pa­nies and non­prof­its on social media strate­gies. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact JD or leave a comment.