Social media is changing the news business says Kris Ruby, a social media strategist.

News organizations have long lead times and deadlines. Social media changes all of this, and news breaks much faster.

“People want to see more live, real-time coverage today”, said Ruby.

Today, using social media individual can break news in real time on Twitter or Facebook before news organizations can.

Ruby also said consumers wants the news coming to them, as opposed to searching for news.

According to Ruby news organizations need to beef up their social media assets and make sure their editorial staff is well versed in social media. They will need to create new positions entirely related to the digital web/social media.

She said news organizations have to come up with guidelines for social media use such as when to break on social media sites versus print.