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.

While it's become easier for journalists to find information, discover sources through the web, and use tools like Storify to curate content, the process still relies on having the bodies to scour for this information. And that's the challenge. In the newspaper industry, there were more than 13,000 newsroom jobs lost between 2006 and 2010, according to Pew's State of the News Media report. At the same time, the amount of information available has grown at an astronomical rate. These two things are at odds.

Choire Sicha had a revelation Wednesday as he watched journalists live-tweet Rupert Murdoch's testimony: "Who gamed a substantial number of professional news-gatherers into providing free content for Twitter?"

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.

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.

The migration of audiences toward digital news advanced to a new level in 2011 and early 2012, the era of mobile and multidigital devices.  More than three-quarters of U.S. adults own laptop or desktop computers, a number that has been stable for some years.1 Now, in addition, 44% of adults own a smartphone, and the number of tablet owners grew by about 50% since the summer of 2011, to 18% of Americans over age 18.

Perhaps no topic in technology attracted more attention in 2011 than the rise of social media and its potential impact on news. "If searching for news was the most important development of the last decade, sharing news may be among the most important of the next," we wrote in a May 2011 report analyzing online news behavior called Navigating News Online.

Imagine being able to get live news updates from one of the top cable news network on your PC, iPhone or iPad in beautiful HD quality. That day is coming soon, as earlier this week, CNN demoed its new TV Everywhere video offerings to an audience at SXSW. During the conference, CNN Digital General Manager KC Estenson showed off high-quality video and multiplatform capabilities that will enable viewers to watch customized video streams wherever they are and on whichever devices they choose. The only catch? To do so you have to be a pay TV subscriber with CNN as part of your video package.

"The Future of News" is a groundbreaking 10-part series for public television where the best minds in traditional and new media meet to discuss the role of a free press in an ever-changing digital democracy. Watch video clips from the series and get links to discussion topics.

Six minute video from the Center for Future Civic Media's "Future of News and Civic Media" conference showcased some of the work done as a part of the Knight News Challenge, focusing on creative ways to provide people with the news and information needed to manage their communities effectively.

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.

In 2011, the digital revolution entered a new era. The age of mobile, in which people are connected to the web wherever they are, arrived in earnest. More than four in ten American adults now own a smartphone. One in five owns a tablet. New cars are manufactured with internet built in. With more mobility comes deeper immersion into social networking. For news, the new era brings mixed blessings. New research released in this report finds that mobile devices are adding to people's news consumption, strengthening the lure of traditional news brands and providing a boost to long-form journalism. Eight in ten who get news on smartphones or tablets, for instance, get news on conventional computers as well. People are taking advantage, in other words, of having easier access to news throughout the day - in their pocket, on their desks and in their laps. At the same time, a more fundamental challenge that we identified in this report last year has intensified - the extent to which technology intermediaries now control the future of news.

According to this consensus, the future points toward a network-driven system of journalism in which news organizations will play a decreasingly important role. News won't be collected and delivered in the traditional sense. It will be assembled, shared, and to an increasing degree, even gathered, by a sophisticated readership, one that is so active that the word "readership" will no longer apply. Let's call it a user-ship or, better, a community. This is an interconnected world in which boundaries between storyteller and audience dissolve into a conversation between equal parties, the implication being that the conversation between reporter and reader was a hierarchical relationship, as opposed to, say, a simple division of labor.

Storify's brand-new iPad app unveiled this morning should extend the curation tool to new, more-casual users and increase the live-blogging of conferences and events.

Here, then, in an easily-accessible Poynter-esque list, is what these folks - and you - can learn from the social media debate:

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…

Newsdesk Live is not another bloggy account of today's top stories like Yahoo News' The Upshot or The New York Times' The Lede. Newsdesk Live includes the day's story budget and conversational updates on what Guardian journalists are seeking and learning. The blog invites readers to contribute by posting comments, emailing or tweeting.

Anthony said AP puts thought and effort into creating "the conditions for accuracy" that can guide the actions of journalists when news hits. It's an approach that emphasizes constant communication and reinforcement of verification as a core part of what AP does. "A lot of people look at accuracy as only a decision that's made in the moment: do we go with this or do we not go with this," he said. "Obviously that's a fundamental part of it, but I think that being accurate also involves creating the conditions for accuracy in advance, even if it's only a few minutes."

Onward State, the student news site that incorrectly reported Joe Paterno's death Saturday night, has been cited as an example of the future of student media: a lean, social-media savvy news outlet dedicated to scooping the tradition-bound student newspaper.