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"So when Sandy struck, he and AP social media editor Eric Carvin worked to sift through what they called "a deluge of photos and videos depicting dramatic, genuine moments from the storm" in addition to "an extraordinary amount of fabricated content." This is where the UGC verification process developed by Bell was especially handy."

The graph search friends-based search engine Facebook announced Tuesday can be a valuable source for valuable sources for journalists, and for photos, as well, Journalist Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik wrote in a note on the Facebook + Journalists page.

"Here's a run-down of the finalists of the Shorty Award for #Journalist, presented with Muck Rack. These finalists have done an exceptional job using social media to share breaking news and provide real-time answers to real-world questions, while speaking in a relevant and honest voice."

"Twitter is celebrating its 7th birthday with a video showing a short history of the service, from its humble beginnings and co-founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet, to the present day, when it boasts 200 million users."

"Are a bunch of Internet "vigilantes" behaving more responsibly than professional journalists in the hunt for the Boston bombers?"

"Fox News, ABC and CNN reported Wednesday afternoon that an arrest had been made in the Boston Bombing case. It turned out not to be true. Here is a collection of some of the bulletins from Twitter."

"In a breaking news situation, journalists get an adrenaline rush. There is a palpable eagerness to get the scoop, to be the first to bring the story to the public. In today's world of social media, mobile phones, and the real-time 24/7 news cycle, though, journalists face competition from all sides: eyewitness accounts, official sources, and even friends and family are sharing news before mainstream news institutions have "published" the official news story. To illustrate this predicament, I compiled 26 tweets that "broke" the Boston Marathon bombing news."

"Andy Carvin's official title is Senior Strategist, Social Media Desk at NPR, but that bureaucratic fog undercuts the scale of his work. More emphatically, The Columbia Journalism Review has called him a "living, breathing real-time verification system," while The Washington Post declared him "a one-man Twitter news bureau." The Guardian described him as "the man who tweets revolutions," while The Daily Dot labeled him "Edward R. Murrow 2.0," referencing the World War II-era radio broadcaster often cited as one of journalism's most inspiring figures. Whatever @acarvin's doing, it has many observers reaching for superlatives."

More than ever, people are using Twitter, Facebook and other social media sources to learn about what's happening in the world as traditional news outlets become increasingly less relevant to the digital generation. But the trend toward Internet and social media-based news - and the accompanying rush to be first to report a story - also comes with pitfalls. Some 50% of news consumers have received "breaking news" via social media, only to find out later it was erroneously reported.

News of singer Whitney Houston's death spread like wildfire on Twitter since the news broke with a tweet from Associated Press at 4.57 pm. AP's tweet was retweeted over 10,000 times, as you can see on Topsy's trackback page for the tweet. UPDATE: Using Topsy tools, we found that the story was broken on Twitter 27 minutes before AP by @chilemasgrande in this tweet: "My sources say Whitney Houston found dead in Beverly hills hotel.. Not in the news yet!!". As of this update, this tweet had only been retweeted once. A case of a Twitter user breaking news before the press, caught in action! Original blog post continues below…

only 9 percent of U.S. adults get their news from Facebook and Twitter, although of that group, Facebook is used most frequently as a source of news. That's according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism's State of the News Media 2012 report.

Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old, was fatally shot on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla. The next day his death was a top story on the Fox-affiliated television station in Orlando, the closest big city to Sanford. Within a week it was being covered by newspapers around the state. But it took several weeks before the rest of the country found out. It was not until mid-March, after word spread on Facebook and Twitter, that the shooting of Trayvon by George Zimmerman, 26, was widely reported by the national news media, highlighting the complex ways that news does and does not travel in the Internet age.

As the study describes, Twitter has come to play a crucial role in the way that news functions during events like the Egyptian revolution-like a crowdsourced newswire filled with everything from breaking news to rumor and everything in between, and one that both uses and is used by mainstream media: "The shift from an era of broadcast mass media to one of networked digital media has altered both information flows and the nature of news work … during unplanned or critical world events such as the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, MSM turn to Twitter, both to learn from on-the-ground sources, and to rapidly distribute updates." The evolution of what media theorist Jeff Jarvis and others have called "networked journalism" has made the business of news much more chaotic, since it now consists of thousands of voices instead of just a few prominent ones who happen to have the tools to make themselves heard.

The Associated Press updated its staff social media guidelines today with a new section on live-tweeting news and an updated section on how to connect with newsmakers on social media.

"In short: Twitter and, within the space of 17 minutes, the Internet-accessing world may have known that Philip Seymour Hoffman had been found dead in his apartment before his three young children, with whom he was scheduled to spend the day, and his longtime partner, Mimi O'Donnell."

"Over the past decade, Facebook has evolved from a social network for college students to a source of information, connection, entertainment - and, sometimes, news - for 1.2 billion people around the world. But according to a Pew Research Center report from last year, most Americans who get news via Facebook do so as a byproduct of their other activities there - what one might call "drive-by news"."

"Facebook's News Feed, a homepage built by our friends and organized by our clicks and likes, isn't really a "news" feed. It's an entertainment portal for stories that remind us of our lives and offer something like an emotional popper. In fact, news readers self-identify as a minority on Facebook: Fewer than half ever read "news" on the site, according to a 2013 Pew study, and just 10 percent of them go to Facebook to get the news on purpose, as opposed, say, being assaulted by a breaking news event when you're just scanning baby photos. To see this more clearly, let's compare the BuzzFeed network's most viral stories-i.e.: the stories that go biggest on Facebook-to the top stories on Twitter and the most-searched stories. First, here are the top stories on Twitter in 2013. It's a blend of news, like terrorist attacks and music shows, and evergreen silliness with Ryan Gosling and Kim Kardashian. "

"No matter how old they are, people surveyed for a new study by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute were "more than twice as likely to express high levels of trust about what they learn directly from a news organization (43 percent say they trust it mostly or completely) as they are to trust what they discovered through social media.""

"No wonder media experts gravitate to Twitter. It's arguably where news breaks and it's a wonderful real-time tool for reporting. Here are a few more ideas for getting the most out of your tweets - part of a series of graphics with tips for storytellers."