TweetUp As Poynter Institute Celebrates 35 Years

The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg is a school dedicated to inspiring journalists and media leaders. This year, 2010, marks 35 years of success as an education entity that "carries forward Nelson Poynter's belief in the value of independent journalism."

Journalists work a field that constantly aims to be at the forefront of information and trends so that they are informing readers, viewers, subscribers and more. Technology, communication tools and methods of sharing news have changed over the years and The Poynter Institute's 35-year anniversary will embrace these new tools with special events geared around social media.

"Social media has become such a big part of who we are as journalists and practitioners of journalism that we wanted to focus a couple of our events around, not only where journalism has been but where it's heading," says Ellyn Angelotti, faculty of digital trends and social media for The Poynter Institute.

A virtual, hybrid TweetUp will kick off the anniversary celebration on Wednesday, Nov. 3, from 5 to 8 p.m. It will be Poynter's first TweetUp. The free social event will have in-person attendance from those who interact online via Twitter and other social networking sites, and also live-streamed video attendance from other tweetups in locations around the world.

"There's this intersection that we're facing right now as an industry where journalists are coming from a copyright era where everyone is focused on bylines, and who owns the story and who broke the story," says Angelotti. "Social media is very collaborative, it's this open source world. Right now we are moving from a copyright era into this open source world and the more that we can collaborate and learn from it, learn from our competitors and learn from those who might have different perspectives than us, the better we'll be in the future."

On Friday, Nov. 5, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., The Poynter Institute will host: Finding the Future of Journalism: Poynter's Social Media Day. Industry experts from across the globe will discuss how social media plays into the future of journalism. "This is a huge opportunity for us to reach out to people who aren't necessarily in journalism but are doing great work in social media that we can learn from," says Angelotti. The day will be filled with 15-20 minute discussions and Skype presentations from the following:

    •    Lisa Stone, co-founder and CEO, BlogHer
    •    Betsy Morgan, former CEO, Huffington Post
    •    Charlene Li, partner, Altimeter Group
    •    Christine Montgomery, Interactive Managing Editor, PBS.org and Board President, Online News Association
    •    Vadim Lavrusik, community manager, Mashable
    •    Jim Spanfeller, president & CEO, The Spanfeller Media Group former CEO, Forbes.com
    •    Matt Thompson, editorial product manager, Project Argo/National Public Radio
    •    Gregg Freishtat, CEO, Vertical Acuity
    •    Janis Krums, entrepreneur and citizen journalist (tweeted photo of the Hudson River plane crash)
    •    David Devore, creator of "David After Dentist" YouTube video
    •    Mónica Guzmán Preston, director of editorial outreach, Intersect
    •    Alexis Madrigal, Mathew Honan and Sarah Rich, editors of LongShot magazine

Both events will be held at The Poynter Institute. Click here to register for the free virtual Tweetup and here to register for Social Media Day. Cost for Social Media Day is $35.

Writer: Nancy Vaughn
Source: Ellyn Angelotti, The Poynter Institute