Speaking at the Online News Association conference Friday, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said that social media is “underhyped” and underused in most news organizations:
“Social media for many media organizations is a distribution method. What they miss is the power of social media as a platform for engagement with the audience and as a platform for newsgathering.”
Schiller said NPR used Facebook as a tool during the Haiti earthquake to help map the destruction in that country, and the network plans to use it on Election Day to report on voting activity. “Facebook is in the journalism business,” she noted, because the platform is open for news organizations to use it.
Schiller added, “We have more Facebook fans than any other news organization in America,” and it is a robust journalism platform for NPR.
