Pinterest, the social media curating site that allows users to "'pin' (bookmark) things you like -- photos, recipes, crafts, design ideas, photography, art, etc., and silo those items into 'boards,'" as MediaShift described it, might just be the next big thing for journalism, as cliché as that sounds. After all, TechCrunch just reported on Tuesday, Feb. 7, that Pinterest gets 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors, having hit the 10-million mark faster than any other standalone site ever. And as Poynter pointed out, "it's time for journalists to pay attention to Pinterest."
For news media outlets, "Pinterest offers the chance to reach massive, sharing-oriented new audiences — but also requires a different, more visual kind of editorial thinking," according to the Nieman Journalism Lab. And now, both the Wall Street Journal and USA Today are trying out the site's reporting possibilities.
The Wall Street Journal has equipped nine reporters with iPhones and Instagram accounts to cover Fashion Week, with the journalists' tweets and images being compiled on the Journal's website and its Pinterest and Instagram accounts, reported the Nieman Lab. So far, the Wall Street Journal’s Fashion Week pinboard on Pinterest has about 1,700 followers.
USA Today used Pinterest to cover the Grammy Awards, reported Clases de Periodismo. The USA Today Grammys pinboard includes videos and photos and has about 400 followers.
Even Liz Heron, social media editor of The New York Times, said that lately she has been "thinking a lot" about how to use Pinterest, according to the BBC's College of Journalism blog. Heron's statement prompted the site journalism.co.uk to name Pinterest as the "tool of the week for journalists" for the week of Feb. 7.
