Journalist pages on Facebook
Many of us in SA (over 600 000) have Facebook pages. I personally know a host of journalists who live double live. One life on Facebook, socialising and another in real life being journalists. Why hasn't anyone linked these two facets of life?Facebook has indeed done so. I just read and noticed that Facebook pages cater for professionals as well as brands, companies and others. You can now have a Facebook reporters page - here's an example. Instead of garnering yourself friends, you gather "followers" who watch your every professional move.I personally think this is a great idea but wonder how effective or relevant this might be.There are a few angles to take here.Firstly there is a sort of "representation" view. Where the more journalists a media organisation has on Facebook, the more presence and representation that organisation will gain. People can then become accustom to journalists and their beats as apposed to magazines and their genres or themes. Thus allowing readers and Facebook users to familiarise themselves with specific content written by specific people.The other is that people do (and especially journalists) lead double lives to a certain extent. What if a journalist is writing an "object" story about the state of the American presidential race. Their personal political views aren't reflected on their professional FaceBook pages but will be present in their personal page.Now we get in to the area of media restricting employees. This isn't preferable as most employees enjoy a level of separation from their work on sites like Facebook.For me the line has been blurred already as I dislike Facebook immensely already. So I took the decision to make my personal profile as barren and empty as possible so that nothing questionable would pop up on my page and affect my professional profile on Facebook.What do you think? Would you like to follow your favourite reporter or writer on Facebook? Bullard? Ronge? Anyone?I think this is an interesting development and one that should be considered by media organisations.
