ABC “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir had a busy day Friday, talking with Meredith Viera about his first 90 days in the ABC anchor chair on “The Meredith Viera Show,” and then appearing at the Mashable Media Summit, talking about social media and journalism with Mashable executive editor Jim Roberts.
In recent weeks, ABC News has launched a social media “newscast” posted to Facebook on weekdays, and used “curated” news alerts to send 10 million alerts–without overwhelming users–on Election Night.
According to participants who tweeted Muir’s comments, he believes social media has allowed viewers to have unprecedented involvement in making “World News” the kind of newscast they want. “I like the idea of handing over the power to them,” he said. “What’s fascinating is that our viewers are dictating where we take the stories.”
Muir does not see social media platforms like Twitter as a means of driving viewers to watch the legacy newscast. Instead, he says, “It’s to signal to them I’m like you, and hopefully you’re like me.”