Let’s say you want to share an interesting news story with your friends. You might use a variety of different tools — Digg, Twitter or Facebook to name a few — but the end result is usually the same. You share a link, and that link leads to one destination — the article.

But what if the news story is sparking a big reaction from readers? People are tweeting and blogging and posting interesting responses online. You might want to not only share the article, but also the conversation about the article.

Storify lets you do that.

Related: A handy tool for journalists: Stabilize your shaky smartphone videos with Google’s photo app

Check out this story module I created on Storify about a celery recall at a food processing plant in San Antonio:

Under one link, you can embed news articles, tweets and Facebook posts, YouTube videos, photos, blog posts … you name it. You can package this content, share it, and embed it on blogs, like I did in this post.

Storify is the creation of developer Xavier Damman and journalist Burt Herman, a former foreign correspondent for the Associated Press. Herman said they wanted to create a tool that helps people make sense out of the chaos of online content:

The idea comes from thinking about the future of journalism and the fact that everyone now is creating so much content. We’re flooded with Tweets, YouTube videos, Flickr photos and everything else. Everyone can be a “reporter” when an event happens. But not everyone is a “journalist” — making sense of an issue and giving the context. So we built a system to help people do this, take the best of social media and make it into a story — to “storify” it. The word itself is actually in the dictionary, and also comes from my AP days when editors would send messages to bureaus asking them to “storify” something.

So what makes Storify different from simply posting links to YouTube videos or Flickr photos in a normal blog post? In Storify, the tweets, photos and other elements retain their interactivity. For example, you can retweet specific tweets from within the story. Storify is also pretty simple to use. You find photos, stories and other elements, click and drag them into a storyline, and publish it.

Blogs and news organizations are coming up with intriguing ways to use Storify. The news site TBD used Storify to create a chronology of events surrounding a death outside a nightclub.

Related: About John Tedesco, reporter in San Antonio, Texas

The significance of Storify didn’t really click for me initially. Then I made the celery-recall story, shared it on Twitter and Facebook, and it dawned on me how it can improve the way people share information.

Normally I tweet a link to a website or article I like, some people retweet that, I might respond to those folks on Twitter, and that’s it. Now, if I want to, I can link to a story and the reaction to the story in one fell swoop. You can package an interesting destination of news, reactions to the news, videos, follow-up stories … all kinds of stuff.

Storify is for people who think a news story isn’t the end of a conversation, but the beginning of one.

The post When a news story is just the beginning of the conversation, try Storify appeared first on John Tedesco.

In this great post at Mashable, Leah Betancourt profiled five journalists, including yours truly, and asked why we use social media:

There’s a lot of hype behind measuring social media ROI. But what about the payoff on an individual basis? Those who invest time into social media on a daily basis need to see a return on that time to make it worthwhile. Journalists who regularly use social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook on the job with success make it part of their daily routine, and focus on communicating quality content that’s worthwhile to recipients.

Read more: About John Tedesco

There’s good advice for everyone in this post — not just journalists. “Though this post focuses on journalists, many of their tips can be more broadly applied to anyone working with social media tools.”

The post How journalists use social media appeared first on John Tedesco.

The link takes you to RadioReference.com, and it lets you listen to scanner traffic in jurisdictions all over the country — including police departments near Fort Hood. Very cool resource for breaking news.

The post How to listen to police scanners on the Web appeared first on John Tedesco.

One way to find interesting people on Twitter who share your interests is by using a URL shortening service. Most Web addresses are too long to fit into Twitter’s 140-character limit, so services like bit.ly have sprung up. When you shorten a URL through bit.ly, it creates a new link and tracks how often people click on it.

Plug a Web address into bit.ly, either through its home page or the bit.ly sidebar. Under “info,” you’ll see a “conversations” section, which shows you who else is tweeting about the Web page, and what they’re saying about it. Start clicking on the different Twitter accounts. Since the Web page struck a chord with them, chances are good you’ll find someone interesting to follow.

Related: How to contact an investigative reporter

Here’s an example: I read on Romenesko about a new survey showing the public mistrusts the media, but believes in its watchdog role. If you read this blog, you’ll know I found that relevant. So I tweeted it:

But I wasn’t the only one. Here’s the rest of the conversation on Twitter that was tracked by bit.ly:

I found some cool people this way and ended up following a bunch of them today.

The post How bit.ly can help you find interesting people on Twitter appeared first on John Tedesco.

Now the GAO, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, is going all social media on us by setting up accounts on Twitter and YouTube.

Related: A new Web site for Freedom of Information

This is a nice touch by a federal agency that for years has offered e-mail updates to subscribers, who can be notified about topics that interest them. I also noticed today that the GAO’s home page has an RSS feed.

The main resource I use is the GAO’s search page, which offers a rich source of material. You can do keyword searches on GAO reports going back to 1980.

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