Matt Neznanski is the Director of Communications at Brass Media here in Corvallis, OR. Brass Media is a “socially driven media and technology company dedicated to helping young adults better understand money,” according to their website. Neznanski dropped by our reporting class Wednesday night to talk about social networking, his job and his background in the media world along with any questions our class had for him.
Earlier in his career, Neznanski worked in the news room and he first talked to us about having the chance to interview the 44th president of the United States, President Barack Obama, when he was in Oregon. Somebody in the news room asked him if he wanted to interview the president, and he said sure.
Neznanski is also all about Twitter. Twitter was the theme behind most of his talk Wednesday night and I agreed with what he had to say about it. He gets most of his news from Twitter, and he gets the rest of his news from other internet sites as well.
“You got to start a Twitter account,” Neznanski said. “Use all the tools you can.”
He talked about newschallenge.org as well. “The Knight News Challenge is a media innovation contest that aims to advance the future of news by funding new ways to digitally inform communities,” the website said. And its slogan is: “You invent it. We fund it.” The last four winners of this contest have been everyblock.com, spot.us, ushahidi.com and localwiki.org, with all the websites succeeding and doing well. If you have an idea, sent it to these guys and make some cash, Neznanski said.
Most of his talk was about social networking, blogging and being a journalist in general. He talked about how Twitter is more public than the internet and that micro blogging is not going anywhere anytime soon. He left us with a quote that hit me and stuck with me: “I think it’s a fantastic time to be a journalist,” he said. Neznanski attributed this to the quickness of the internet and that there are now so many different ways to be a journalist. It is not just newspaper articles anymore.
However, he will be the first to point out that “online journalism isn’t different from any other kind of journalism,” referring to the research you have to do to write.
Follow him on Twitter @mneznanski.
Given all the cool stuff that Matt got into, don't start a post like this with a title and the motto of Brass Media. Hook your readers. It was good you mentioned that he got to interview Obama, but the key to that anecdote was the fact that he asked readers for the questions to ask. That's what social media is about. Score = 7.5
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