Facebook continues to ramp up its efforts to court journalists with a new hire dedicated to the job: Mashable’s Vadim Lavrusik just announced (on Facebook, of course) that he’ll be joining the social network as “Journalist Program Manager.”
“I will be leading the charge to build programs that help journalists utilize Facebook in their reporting while advocating on their behalf to improve social journalism on the platform,” he explains. “While some have proclaimed and lamented the death of journalism, I’ve been more fascinated with how it’s evolving, especially the emergence of social journalism. And though the platform or format may change, storytelling is thriving. After all, journalism isn’t dying. It’s being reborn.”
Earlier this month, Facebook launched a page dedicated to sharing best practices with journalists. It also rolled out a series of meetups across the country to encourage journalists to put Facebook to work. One week after the announcement, more than 1,000 journalists have expressed interest in attending a Facebook meetup.
To date, most journalists prefer to use Twitter for publishing and newsgathering. “A lot of journalists don’t have a professional presence on Facebook yet,” Lavrusik told CNN.com. “They think it’s another thing they have to add to their workloads…. It can actually make your job easier.”
Lavrusik will attend Facebook’s first journalism meetup on April 27th in Palo Alto, California.
