  The present work proposes the use of social media as a tool for better
understanding the relationship between a journalists' social network and the
content they produce. Specifically, we ask: what is the relationship between
the ideological leaning of a journalist's social network on Twitter and the
news content he or she produces? Using a novel dataset linking over 500,000
news articles produced by 1,000 journalists at 25 different news outlets, we
show a modest correlation between the ideologies of who a journalist follows on
Twitter and the content he or she produces. This research can provide the basis
for greater self-reflection among media members about how they source their
stories and how their own practice may be colored by their online networks. For
researchers, the findings furnish a novel and important step in better
understanding the construction of media stories and the mechanics of how
ideology can play a role in shaping public information.
