The tributaries for truth are growing, but so is the amount of pollution that can drown it out. Master the tools before the tools master you.

Here are some excerpted items from the past week worth considering as media becomes more socialized, comrades:

45% of Employers Now Screen Social Media Profiles
This according to research firm Harris Interactive, who was commissioned by CareerBuilder.com and surveyed 2,667 HR professionals, finding that 45% of them use social networking sites to research job candidates, with an additional 11% planning to implement social media screening in the very near future.

According to the study, “thirty-five percent of employers reported they have found content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire the candidate.” The big lessons you can learn are quite obvious, but bear repeating. Provocative photos and info are a bad idea (53% of employers won’t hire you), shared content with booze and drugs is also highly dangerous (44% dismissed candidates for this reason), and bad-mouthing former employers is very risky behavior (35% reported this a the main reason they didn’t hire a candidate).

25 things journalists can do to future-proof their careers
20. Embrace crowdsourcing. I’m not a big believer in the so-called wisdom of the crowd, but there’s certainly a real value in asking for help and pooling knowledge. The crowd can help you put the meat on the bones of a story idea. The crowd won’t write your story, but they can help you research it. The Guardian has crowdsourced to great effect recently for the MP’s expenses scandal.

Social technology growth marches on in 2009, led by social network sites
Starting with the book “Groundswell” and continuing now for three years running, we’ve analyzed consumers’ participation in social technologies around the world with a tool called the “Social Technographics Profile.” The profile puts online people into overlapping groups based on their participation (at least once a month) in the behaviors shown in the ladder. We’ve kept the ladder categories consistent to allow us to make comparisons year-to-year, across ages and genders, and across geographies. This provides something that’s often sorely lacking in analysis of online social phenomena: perspective.

STATS: Social Media Resistance Is Fading Fast
According to a report published today by eMarketer, 59% of brand marketers currently use social media. But within 12 months, that number will swell to 82%. And in the long-run, only 13% indicate having no plans to enter the medium.