ABC News has noticed that Facebook is a huge social networking site that attracts millions of people from the younger generation. Therefore, ABC News has elected to establish a partnership with Facebook that allows its members to electronically follow ABC reporters, view reports and video and participate in polls and debates. The two organizations plan to sponsor both the Democratic and Republican presidential debates in New Hampshire on January 5th. The announcement is a sign that news organizations are beginning to notice and attempting to capitalize on the power of Facebook and other social networking sites. Media companies like The New York Times and The Washington Post have produced pages to put on Facebook and some newspapers, magazines and television stations have invited users to join special pages that are also set up to follow political coverage. David Westin, president of ABC News, has noticed that debates are going on Facebook all the time. This new collaboration allows ABC News to follow and participate in these debates by providing information and gathering information as well. Facebook members used to only be able to send an email to a generic ABC News email address if they wanted to make a comment. Now, they can send private messages or post directly on an ABC News reporter's wall and reporters can engage in conversations with members. This seems to be an intelligent investment; Eloise Harper, an off-air reporter, used a digital camera to record a 50-second clip of flags falling down behind Hillary Rodham Clinton at a campaign appearance in Iowa. The clip has been viewed over 350,000 times on ABCNews.com and Facebook.
This article reminded me of Chapter 10 when we talked about how news must have an impact on its target audience. We also talked about how people over 30 follow the news more than people under 30 and young people are most likely to get their news online. In recent years, news organizations have had a difficult time attracting the attention of adolescents and young adults, especially in political matters. But news organizations have figured out that one of the most widely used mediums in the younger generation's world is friendship databases like Facebook. I am certain that presidential candidates such as Barack Obama and John Edwards agree with this collaboration because it brings their name to young adult's attention more than it would have been if just mentioned on the 5 o'clock news. If news organizations want to hear the input of younger people in political matters or even bring important issues to our attention, there is no better way to do so then bringing it to our attention when we log into Facebook. From reading this article, I learned that news organizations take into account the opinion's of the younger generation more than I thought they would have. I am happy to see that organizations like ABC News are starting to realize that people my age don't commonly sit down and watch the evening news, and putting political issues somewhere that we are actually going to see it (the home page on Facebook) is a much more logical way to present information to us.
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