I recently discovered the potential Reddit, a popular social media site, has for becoming a large influence on the future of online journalism.

Reddit's logo

All of Reddit’s content is user generated, meaning that anyone with an account can upload anything they want. This usually consistes of photos, videos, memes and news stories. Reddit’s slogan is “the front page of the Internet” because all the content is voted on by users and only the most popular make it to their front page.

Reddit's front page

Reddit is particularily useful for journalists because it shows what topics are trending. If a topic appears on the front page often, then journalists know it’s hot. In addition to this, users can also leave comments on the stories, telling the journalist what the audience thinks about certain topics.

Expanding your audience

Reddit has quickly become a community of its own, complete with its own culture seperate from any other. If a journalist can learn how to relate and appeal to this audience, then he can effectively expand his exposure to a much larger audience and build close connections with them.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2012 at 2:30 pm and is filed under comm361, tyowens, week7.  Tagged reddit You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.