What a difference a year makes. This time last summer I had just finished reading hundreds of news stories produced by journalism students and I don’t recall a single one being sourced from Facebook.

This year, dozens of stories have referenced the seemingly ubiquitous social-networking website on which online ‘friends’exchange gossip, information and falsehoods – as well as pictures of dubious taste.

Most teachers probably think students of all subjects spend far too much time on such sites, but anyone training to be journalist actually has a pretty good reason for going there. Because, by finding stories via Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter and the like, journalism students are only doing the same as an increasing number of working journalists.