It’s amazing the things that we see people tweet about. Personal beliefs. Private conversations. Elicit behavior. Groundless criticism. Uneducated perspective.

Yes, I’m talking about journalists, too.

Sure, some genuine news seeps through to the Twitterverse — the brilliant coverage by Andy Carvin of last year’s “Arab Spring” foremost among the examples. (Remarkably, a year later, his work still sets the standard.) Otherwise, what remains on that social network largely amounts to boorishness and self-aggrandizement, impugning and assuming, snobbery and effrontery.

When I came up through the journalism ranks, any sort of spotlight-hogging was frowned upon as ethically dubious, if not forbidden by company policy. Today, a persistent and effusive social media presence is considered essential to one’s employment, if for no other reason than to continually trumpet a media “brand.”

This deep bow to branding waxes ominous, thanks largely to such popular social media measuring sticks as Klout assigning a manufactured importance to digital socialization — an importance weighted in favor of quantity instead of quality. If we agree to hold up these sticks as accurate, then news reporting via social media is bound not to be.

Why? Because there’s a certain assurance news consumers get from a journalist’s professional detachment, and we see that assurance petering out now as news providers strive to be heard above the loud partisan polemic drowning rational thought — a polemic they help stir up.

The solution, short of wiping social media off the map, is greater attentiveness toward distinguishing personal from professional content. Though there are claims that a personal touch demystifies media and as a result makes news more consumable, personalization also blurs the line separating judgment from fact. And when journalists apply it, they put their profession at risk of being marginalized by “citizen” journalists who insist they’re merely following the example.

So, then, make that example an admirable one:

Separate personal from professional tweets — If this means creating separate Twitter accounts, so be it. And try not to use the company logo or any derivative as a personal avatar.

Exercise care with criticism — Do you love “50 Shades of Grey”? Do you hate the movie remake of “Spider-Man”? That’s fine, but keep those opinions off all professional social media accounts, unless it has a discernible job relevance. Otherwise, inserting opinion only waters down what little objectivity a journalist can muster.

Keep company matters inside the company — There may be discord between management and staff, or personnel matters that prove irksome, but venting discontent via veiled insult on social media not only undermines others’ faith in you, it also could prove actionable in a court of law. In the same vein, honesty regarding one’s own reporting or editing errors may evoke pangs of guilt and frustration, but it  reinforces credibility and respectability as well.

Rein in the urge to be defensive — By its nature, journalism invites criticism, warranted or not. Certainly, some of that criticism can be mean-spirited and vindictive, instead of constructive. Avoid driving a conversation further down the same dark road. As humorist Mark Twain once said, “Never argue with stupid people; they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

Resist posting vacation and food photos — It’s always good to get away from it all when possible; it’s bad to drag readers and viewers along. That beach picture with Diamond Head in the background, while pretty, smacks of braggadocio, and may even suggest to others a laxity at work — especially if the picture puts you in one place while the calendar says you should be somewhere else. Food photos, on the other hand, pose a different problem, one rooted in esthetics. Put simply, food never looks as good in social media as it does in person.

Avoid posting sales pitches — Ensure personal brand integrity by not promoting other brands in tweets through sales pitches or links to special deals. Leave that up to the sales people who are supposed to market those products.

David Sheets is a content editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com, a candidate for Region 7 director, and past-president of SPJ’s St. Louis Pro chapter. Reach him by e-mail at dsheets@post-dispatch.com, on Twitter at @DKSheets, or on Facebook and LinkedIn.

More journalists these days are setting up their own websites where they can profile their work. It’s one of the best ways to grow your brand and display your resume online.

I’ve taken web design classes for four years, and I must admit sometimes I get lost in all the language: CSS, HTML, PHP, HTML5, Flash and the list goes on.  I’m fortunate, because as a freelance reporter I’ve had time to take classes.

But if you don’t have time to learn how to build your own website from scratch or can’t afford  to get one designed; here are a three free website builders  Each of these companies will also host your website for free if you don’t mind the long url  (example: http://www.wix.com/rebeccaaguilar/aguilar-the-reporter ). 

I set up sample websites at Wix, WebStarts and Moonfruit.    It was very easy and fast.  I think the end results look very professional at all three sites.  Check out my Wix sample website.   Each free website builder offers:

• Templates designs for your website
• Text editors
• Variety of font choices
• Drag and drop tools for images
• Video embed tools
• Video tutorials to help you use the site

Wix.com

WebStarts.com

Moonfruit.com

Each company offers a “premium” package,  if you want to buy more tools to use on your website.  In my opinion, what they each have to offer for free is good enough if you need the basics.   You also have the option of paying to get it hosted by the hosting company of your choice.  Now go out there and get yourself a website!

Rebecca Aguilar is an Emmy award winning freelance reporter in Dallas, TX. She is the vice chairman of the SPJ Digital Media Committee, and a board member with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She has 30 years of experience: television news, online news and video producing.  She can be contacted at aguilar.thereporter@yahoo.com

Boy, has journalism ethics when it comes to the use of social media been a hot topic lately.

And lucky for me, it falls right into what I had hoped to do with my joining the digital media and professional media committees for SPJ.

Cross pollination.

As a mid-career journalist, I was hoping to have people from the professional development committee talk about what they needed from the digital media committee. And vice versa.

Little did I know I would soon be pulling in the ethics committee.

How traditional – and new media – journalists handle themselves on this whole new “platform” of “social media” has become the cause de jour. It was the topic of an incredible tweetchat hosted by the DePaul University Chapter of SPJ and archived here:

http://ow.ly/35glD

Two of the guest tweeters were @spj_tweets and Quill Magazine’s own Scott Leadingham as well as TBD.com’s Steve Buttry. Since then, Buttry put out his suggested tweaks to the SPJ Code of Ethics here.

In it, Buttry references another great post by a former Cincinnati Enquirer colleague and current TBD.com social media producer Mandy Jenkins.s

And I will be part of a panel that includes noted media law attorney Jack Greiner (who represents the Enquirer) next Thursday for the East Tennessee SPJ professional chapter in Knoxville. It’s at 5 p.m.  so stay tuned for a hashtag to follow along if you can’t make it in person.

So to continue the theme, I actually interviewed SPJ’s immediate past president and current Ethics Committee chairman Kevin Smith about all this. Kevin is currently a journalism instructor at James Madison University in Virginia and an 18-year member of the SPJ ethics committee. Here is a bit of a Q&A:

James Pilcher: WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA AND JOURNALISM?

Kevin Smith: One biggest concerns facing us and has been facing us (at SPJ) is that so many people are engaged with new media or social media or multi-platform media. Our hope is that they will embrace our existing codes and ethics will fall in line with what has been our legacy.

But that isn’t … what is happening en masse.  So maybe we need to adjust.

JP: YOU HAVE WRITTEN A COLUMN ABOUT THIS FOR QUILL. CARE TO SHARE ITS CONTENTS?

KS: A couple of  weeks after the SPJ national conference, I went back out to Las Vegas and attended Blogger’s World. They had more than 140 sessions and only one was dedicated to ethics. The marketing directors and circulation directors were clearly in charge.

Clearly, there was no interest in this topic. Nobody who planned the conference thought that this would be a lively or relevant topic.

That was a bit indicative of  the things we are facing as journalists. And my column suggests that there needs to be set of standards.

WHAT SHOULD TRADITIONAL OUTLETS DO TO DEAL WITH THIS TOPIC?

This is definitely worth a review and it’s healthy to do that. What I would like to this year is to come up with not specific code for this new journalism … but something address the changes in our industry. I think SPJ needs to come up with a definitive stance on these kinds of things, and to point to specific incidents or generalized problems.

WHAT DO YOU TELL YOU YOUR STUDENTS AT JAMES MADISON? AND WHAT ARE THEY SAYING BACK TO YOU?

There’s definitely a mentality that’s moving away from journalism standards that we have traditionally worked under. And we need to wrap minds around that in how we look at someone doing social media that is outside that standard and make them understand that to point they can make connection to the standards.

James, you’ve had some real life experience and have been taught and learned though actual experience where that line is. A lot younger people do not know where the line is.

I had someone just out of school tell me a story that set me back on my heels. I knew someone recently out of school tell me an interesting story …  She covers city government, and someone mentioned to her that one of the city government councilman’s daughter was on Facebook often times cracks on her dad.

So she “friended” this teen-aged girl so she could stalk her on Facebook and see what she said about her dad and city government, without ever revealing that she was a reporter.  Do you think that is really an appropriate use of Facebook? That is the question facing us every day.

WHAT LESSONS DO YOU TEACH YOUR STUDENTS?

The first thing tell them is that we have an have obligation to independence. You need to ask yourself who you are working for and who you are representing and always tell them that at the beginning. We have obligations to truth and fairness of reporting.

And that’s where it all starts. The public has certain expectations. If you are going to put yourself out there and provide information, they expect that every time they see your name that you are telling the truth and there is a fairness to that reporting.

If not provide that, then you start creating credibility issues. And that’s where we start … with the whole idea of remaining independent and going a long way of short-circuiting conflicts interest.

I am in Seattle today attending Day 1 of the Journalism That Matters event: “Re-Imagining News & Community in the Pacific Northwest,” which runs from today through Sunday.

Twitter hashtag: #jtmpnw, and I’m @jessdrkn.

This “un-conference” intends to explore new relationships between journalism and communities. This event is unlike traditional events or conferences with line-ups of experts telling attendess what they are doing — this is about attendees talking to each other.

I am hosting a table for my website on hyperlocal and community news start-ups, InOtherNews.us, and for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, of which I’m a director.

Seattle and the Northwest has become a hotbed of community/hyperlocal startup activity.  Some participants at this event are:

• Seattle City Club
• The B-Town Blog (from Burien)
• The Salish Sea Network
• The Tyee
• West Seattle Blog
• Xconomy
• YES! Magazine

Other event attendees setting up their tables alonside me in the commons area are:

• Asian American Journalists Association
• Cascadia Times
• Common Language Project
• Countywide Community Forums
• Department of Commnications, University of Washington
• Instivate
• KBCS-FM
• Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in Democracy
• KUOW Public Insight Network
• LocalHealthGuide/Seattle
• Master of Communication in Digital Media, U of W
• Media Island International
• Natural Oregon
• News 21
• Pedro De Valdivia — an artist who uses trash or discarded items for his Modern-Ecoism work
• Reclaim the Media
• Seattle Times
• Sustainable Seattle
• Washington Coalition for Open Government
• Washington News Council

Jessica Durkin is the founder of http:InOtherNews.us, a site that tracks independent community, local and regional news start-ups. She is interested in entrepreneurial journalism and the new paradigm. She is the mid-atlantic director (Region 3) of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

I recently appeared on the TV show Beat the Press to discuss the brave new world of reporting in a totally networked world (bah-dum-dum-ching!)

Here’s me talking about the various ways reporters use social networking sites like Facebook:

I’m curious to know your thoughts on this subject, dear readers. What do you think: has Facebook really changed anything?

Emily Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on Facebook, among other places.

There’s been a lot of discussion about social media policies lately. Media organizations are slowly taking charge and outlining how their employees should use Facebook, Twitter and the like. Here’s a sampling of social media policies adopted by news organizations:

- Washington Post (via PaidContent)

- Roanoke Times

- BBC

- Associated Press (PDF – via Wired)

For more examples, check out this database of social media policies.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this, dear readers. Does your news organization have a social media policy?  If so, tell us about it (and if you can provide a link to it, even better!)

Emily Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter  (@emilysweeney) and find her on Facebook: www.facebook.com/spikeyem

Las Vegas TV station KWU apparently has decided to react to the drop in advertising dollars many news operations are experiencing by product placement on its newscasts.  Anchors recently delivered the news with iced coffees from a popular fast-food franchise on their desks.

As Angela Grant points out on News Videographer:

“In my opinion, this conflicts with several points in SPJ’s Code of Ethics “Act Independently” section:

·         Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.

·         Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

·         Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.

Certainly pressures are building as news organizations adapt to the shift in the way our audiences want to receive the news. But this smacks of at least the appearance of advertisers influencing news content. This also points out  why it’s so important for  SPJ to continue to push ethics at this time of change. We need to maintain a watchdog approach and be vigilant to make sure the high standards we have set over the past century do not erode.

A couple of questions asked by Randy Brown’s class last night still have me thinking today.

Both related to quality and ethics.

What happens to quality, one young man asked, when you’re covering breaking news in this immediate on-line world, and all you have is, say the camera on your cell phone?

I told him about the debates raging in our industry over high-end vs. low-end equipment, best illustrated in hilarious and insightful videos by Andy Dickinson and Cyndy Green.

But I told them that the demand for quality sometimes overlooks the news value.

Arguably, the most notable news video of my generation was shot with an 8mm home movie camera by a dressmaker named Abraham Zapruder. He captured the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It launched thousands of arguments and decades of controversy.

It’s shaky, not great quality even by the standards of the day.  But Life magazine beat the television networks in getting the rights to it and publishing stills of the movie.   This same Life magazine had a reputation for carrying the best of photojournalism, also raced to buy Zapruder’s home movie.  It had news value.

Today, CNN’s I-Report wants your cell phone video

News value has a way of trumping pixel counts or, back in the day, the quality of film.

It really should be about the news.

Which is closely related to a young woman’s question about what I thought was the single most important lesson for journalists.  That was a tough one.  There are so many.

It took me about three seconds to say that the more the business changes, the more it stays the same.

Journalism ethics, I hope, will survive all the changes.

Without high ethics to seek the truth, minimize harm and act independently, we are no better than some of the silly videos uploaded to You Tube or idol chatter on Twitter, or MySpace or Facebook.

There needs to be somewhere in every community where people know they can get information they trust – no matter how it’s delivered, or how that delivery changes over the years.