Social Media Week has officially kicked off and this morning in New York, Brian Stelter and David Carr, of the New York Times sat down to discuss how they use social media in their reporting.

You may remember the two from the documentary Page One, in which David Carr plays the digital adaptor and Stelter, the digital native as the Times struggles to make paywalls and the online world work for them. They make a good team on the media pages of the Times and on-stage. Between their sense of humor and of gravitas about how to practice journalism in the digital age, they offer a unique perspective.

You can watch the panel discussion here, but there were two major themes.

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There’s more to the Internet than LOLcats and dating sites. Sometimes surfing the Internet feels like swimming in an ocean of viral videos and vitriol. I’d like to say news sites are a tropical island in the middle, but too often they promote or fuel the storms. That’s why, Upworthy, seems refreshing and, well, worthy of sharing.

It’s premise? Find the things worth sharing and make those viral. The site, which David Carr of the New York Times profiled this week (Two Guys Made a Web Site, and This Is What They Got), makes no bones that it has an agenda — so while you may not lean as left as the founders appear to — the idea of making things worth knowing as shareable and visual as an Oatmeal comic, animated GIF or LOL cat is nice.

From Carr’s piece, because he explains it better than I can:

“Upworthy, a news aggregation site that began publishing on March 26, is serious news built for a spreadable age, with super clicky headlines and a visually oriented user interface. Eli Pariser, the former executive director of MoveOn.org, and Peter Koechley, a former managing editor of The Onion who also worked at MoveOn, noticed that much of the media that gets shared online is built on cute animals and dumb humans that are good for a laugh, but not much else.”

Or from UpWorthy’s site a, what else, graphical representation of what they’re trying to do:

By applying the same sorts of visual pow, social media acrobatics and SEO-friendly tactics news sites, and every site worth its salt online, tries to employ, the site attempts to make things that matter easy and fun to share. That gives you venn diagrams like the one above and headlines that beg to be clicked through, such as What Does Congress Spend Half Of Its Time On? (an infographic look at the fundraising necessary to run for office these days); Yes, Facebook Will Be On The Final Exam (another infographic, but about a new study on how time on Facebook doesn’t necessarily cause less study time); and Smoking Does WHAT To Your Breasts? 5 More Reasons Not To Smoke (a video describing reasons beyond the whole lung cancer thing not to light up).

It will be interesting to see how the site grows and what other innovative ways they find to promote causes or need-to-know information. Already it’s gaining followers, and judging from its Facebook wall, plenty of likes/shares. As a journalist trying to produce serious work (but with a soft spot for animal memes), I appreciate the attempt to raise the profile of stories, videos and graphics that make me think, not just laugh.

A recent survey from the Reynolds Journalism Institute found that iPad users were more likely to consume news compared to those without iPads. Not only were iPad users across age groups more likely to go to news organizations for information—they also spent more time reading the news compared to people who do not own iPads. Eighty-four percent of iPad users like to keep up with the news on their devices, compared to 63 percent of all mobile device owners.

These numbers may not be all that surprising, but the study also found that two-thirds of those in the 18 to 34 age group spent 5 hours a week consuming content from news organizations. This rose to 7.3 hours a week for those with an iPad in this age group. Interestingly, media consumers over 55 spent less time consuming news on their devices—probably because two-thirds of them have subscriptions to news in print form. This contrasts with the younger age group, where only a quarter of them have print subscriptions. Read more

(L to R) David Carr of The New York Times, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, WaPoLabs Chief Strategist and Editor-at-Large Rob Malda, and Flipboard Editorial Director Josh Quittner.

In an event hosted by New York University’s Center for Publishing and the School of Continuing and Professional Studies last night, social media experts discussed the shift to social content and what that means for the media industry. Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, Rob Malda, chief strategist and editor-at-large of the WaPo Labs, and Josh Quittner, editorial director of Flipboard, opined under the moderation of the New York Times’ David Carr. The mood was decidedly optimistic—as Quittner said at one point, “I think we’re all techno-optimists on this panel.”

The Social Epiphany
The conversation started on the shift to social. “I don’t really surf anymore,” said Carr, “most of my content… comes from somewhere and it’s like this vast, human enabled RSS that is pushing things towards me.” According to Smith, there was a dramatic change between 2010 and 2011 in terms of BuzzFeed’s traffic. Within a year, their biggest referrer went from Google to Facebook. As people change their media habits from seeking content to more passively getting content in the form of their Facebook or Twitter feeds, will they be able to stay well-informed? Read more

In case you missed the news, being a reporter is the fifth worst job of 2012, according to a CareerCast.com survey.

That’s right. Being a taxi driver, a maid, a dishwasher, or a janitor all ranked higher than being a newspaper reporter. (Here’s the full list, as published on The Wall Street Journal website.)

Now, over on The New York Times‘ Media Decoder blog, David Carr is fighting back. Well, sort of. He’s at least giving reporters a chance to voice their opinion.  Read more