Identifying and training social-network leaders critical

Identify local social networks in the community and have them report their passions. The Next Newsroom’s news coverage plan will be organized around the interests and needs of identified local social networks in a community. The Next Newsroom will map these social networks, identify key participants in these networks, and ask champions from within these to help devise news coverage and gather news from the networks.

Train leaders of local social networks to be better journalists and photojournalists. The Next Newsroom will host training sessions, give seminars in higher-level Web based tools like Microsoft Vista, and offer basic training in Journalism 101.

These Training programs could be organized through a local college or perhaps at a major university. The University of Missouri already has expressed an interest in this project.

Their training would include:

• Understanding social networks;
• Digital advertising, and digital technology;
• Use of electronic  tablets;
• How to write for the Web, photograph, video for the Web, verify for the Web.
• How to develop community databases for content purposes and to sell at a premium;