Facebook, a.k.a. Sourcebook

True story: I joined Facebook strictly for work purposes.

As a higher education reporter constantly searching for student quotes, I needed Facebook in a bad way. Simply put, young people generally don't have land lines. Colleges list students' addresses and room numbers, but again, that's not much help nowadays. (And you can forget about getting any info from schools about high school students.)

Some Facebook searches are so easy that a reporter almost feels guilty. Like when you're doing a story about students who are against college x bringing speaker y to campus, and you find a group called "Students against college x bringing speaker y to campus."

More often, finding good sources through Facebook is like finding good sources via other methods -- it requires putting to use the shotgun method. Put out a bunch of e-mails and see what comes back. (It takes a few tries to learn the art of crafting the initial message to a student explaining that, no, you're not a creepy stranger or Internet spammer.)

And with social networking sites, you can make more informed decisions about who you contact: You can search by major, year in school, political affiliation, etc.

Journalists are increasingly seeing social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace as treasure chests of sources. Beatblogging.org, a collaborative effort by a dozen news organizations and NewAssignment.Net to think about how journalists can use social networks to improve beat reporting, had a recent post about the importance of using Facebook.

The blog's author makes several important points. He writes:

In [one reporter's] current newsroom, it's a bit unclear how editors feel about using social networks in the reporting process. At his old paper, a lot of his coworkers used social networks to help improve their reporting, but social networking is a new frontier for newspapers. Most papers are still forming policies about appropriate use of social networks for work proposes.

"We still have this situation where all the top editors are the old people," he said. "And they just haven't fully embraced how online can help our jobs."

He tries to stress to his editors that he uses Facebook as a starting point. He uses it as a way to contact students via e-mail, the phone or in person. He does not quote people's profiles.

It's hard for young journalists to believe, but there are still editors and reporters who are skeptical of anything found on a social networking site. That's why, as the blog post says, it's important that reporters make clear that they will take the conversation off Facebook as soon as possible.

That's not to say you can't have a few e-mail exchanges to warm up a source, but, as it always has been, a phone conversation is best. At the very least, a reporter should get Facebook sources to respond through another e-mail account as a way of verifying their identity.