(Vivian Vahlberg)

Thoughts about the exploding social media world and its implications for the news media were buzzing around in my head as I drove to work this morning.

Yesterday, I had spent the day with social media experts, executives from advertisers, agencies and traditional media, academics, and bright young students. We all attended a fascinating Social Media Marketing symposium, organized by graduate students at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and cohosted by Kellogg and Media Management Center.

So it’s perhaps no wonder that one particular news story seemed to leap from the radio directly into my consciousness: the news that MySpace will hold a series of town hall meetings on college campuses with U.S. presidential candidates. The candidates will field questions not only from forum attendees but also from MySpace members, who can instant message their questions and watch the whole thing online. While MySpace members are doing that, they can also look at the special section MySpace is devoting to pages for each of the candidates, to enable them to connect more directly with potential voters.

If ever there were a story that should serve as a wake-up call to traditional news media to pay attention to social media, learn to understand it, and get involved with it, this was it! There is no more hallowed ground in all of journalism, nothing more core to its mission, than the job of informing voters about the choices they make as citizens. We in the news media believe we are the critical link between the electorate and those who would like to govern.

And yet here, taking the lead in trying to engage a new generation of voters in the electoral process, is not the news media but a social networking site that some in the news media look down upon as just a place for teen-age socializing.

It’s a wake-up call because it graphically demonstrates that if the news media does not get up to speed quickly on the power, the pull and the potential of social media, we risk being left in the dust on important matters, behind others who do.

So, over the course of the next week or so, I’ll be sharing with you some takeaways from the Social Media Marketing symposium. Helping to shed light on it will be a crew of very bright Northwestern students -- in journalism, marketing, management and communications -- who have agreed to share their thoughts as well.

The first to report from the symposium is Medill journalism student Daniel Honigman, who reported on the symposium for his own blog here and here.


What do you think? Please share your thoughts, experiences and reactions by clicking on the comment button below or by e-mailing me at v-vahlberg@northwestern.edu.


Vivian Vahlberg is director of digital media at the Media Management Center.