No question that you're spot on in the need for media leaders to use social media so as to understand it. Your use of social media is not only allowing you to learn but also setting you up as a role model for people working at ALM.

You also need to have a presence in SM to establish that level of trust as you describe it in order to build relationships with customers. Tough to build relationships through publishing, press releases and websites alone.

An additional point is that traditional media and publishers need to build relationships with bloggers and content producers not employed by their company. You need these folks both to spread word of your stories as well as to pull their reporting into your publications in a curation fashion.