I’ve been pining over a blog post trying to define “social news” and “social journalists.” I want to understand if these terms already exist, what meanings they have and how they fit into our greater news community. I also hope to differentiate social journalists from entertainment news, citizen journalism and gossip.

I predict I will define as people who publish or broadcast with the intent to inform their social communities. In doing that I want to get a better understanding of social news values. In what I’m calling traditional news (CNN, New York Times, Time Magazine) there are a set of news values we learn about in journalism introductory courses such as timeliness, proximity, impact. What are the values of high importance to social journalists? I am beginning that exploration which included a post on Quora and will require much more reading.