Andy Carvin launches social-media reporting team for First Look

Former National Public Radio [and Benton Foundation] staffer Andy Carvin says he has been hard at work hiring social-media “anchors” for an innovative global reporting team at First Look.

The venture is called Reported.ly, and it will be doing an expanded version of what Carvin did for NPR during the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and subsequent news events: the half dozen staff he has hired will be embedded in a variety of social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Reddit and using them to report in real-time on breaking news stories and other important events. As Carvin put it: “So many media organizations just use social media as a way to promote their content. Not many people are thinking of these places as living and breathing spaces where they can discuss the news directly with the people who are there. We want to try to serve those readers where they are, and do native journalism on those platforms.”