I’ve decided to take a rare step back and look at how a project I’m involved in is affecting the social TV equation, so full disclosure up front. Muck Rack has been defining what it means to be a journalists in the age of the social web. With the largest database of verified journalists, the community has flourished by offering a way to see what’s trending among our curated community, navigate within top outlets and find individual journalists Twitter accounts, and understand how journalists “social bylines” are equally as important as their bylines with their outlets. I hope you’ll enjoy the rare occasion where we turn the tables to share our own projects, in the case brand new tools to track thousands of journalists on Twitter and social media.
Today, Muck Rack has launched a brand new design, experience and Pro tools to help journalists learn more about their peers and help communications professionals use the social web to learn more about journalists and provide them better information. The brand new search and media alerts let you track key terms based on the real-time tweets within the database. For example, a quick search for “@lostremote” revealed that New York Times journalists and a Huffington Post blogger had tweeted links to our stories, a powerful way for us to communicate our role in the social TV evolution.
Television is very much a traditional medium with the fact that it’s still broadcast pretty much the same way since the 1950s. On the other hand the individual reporters on-air for TV news stations have extremely influential and interesting presences across the social web. By taking organizing that vast knowledge of tweets and by linking to journalists profiles on Google+, Quora, Tumblr, LinkedIn and more the divide between traditional and social takes a big step closer, for those looking to connect with journalists and for TV journalists to learn from their peers. To quote our about page, “by verifying the journalists on social media who do the muckraking for major media outlets and analyzing what they say in real time, Muck Rack delivers a glimpse of tomorrow’s newspaper to you today.”