Social Media Watchblog

Journalist Martin Fehrensen started the Social Media Watchblog (SMWB) after his journalism training in 2012 showed him how important it was for newsrooms to understand the latest social media developments.

SMWB is published bi-weekly (Tuesdays and Thursdays), covering topics at the intersection of social media with politics, journalism, and society. It covers current news and publishes deep-dive analyses. It aims to make social media developments quickly and easily understandable for individuals and companies.

From 2012 to 2017, more than 400 issues of the newsletter were created voluntarily by a collective of authors. Since 2018, the newsletter has been self-sustaining, with over 4,500 subscribers. Large German newsrooms, from publicly financed ZDF, WDR, NDR, and DW to private sector media conglomerate Gruner & Jahr to the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, and even the German presidential office, have team subscriptions to SMWB.

Since its beginnings in 2012, more than 8,000 people have subscribed to the service. There is also a free version with two out of eight monthly updates. Subscribers, however, have additional access to monthly Zoom lectures and an exclusive Slack group offering links to further reading and networking opportunities with other social media professionals.

SMWB also provides training and lectures on newsletter adaptation, independent journalism, social media strategies, and the creator economy. In 2019, the newsletter received the #NETZWENDE-Award for innovative journalism, and in 2020, it was nominated for the Grimme Online Award.