Tagged: journalism

Sky News’ Social Media Policy – It’s not archaic, it’s just a new approach

By now you’re all likely to be aware of Sky News making significant changes to their employees’ social media usage via an email to staff last Tuesday.

In this week’s Media Mouthwash podcast I called the policy “anti-web”, but I’ve deliberately left it this long before writing something about it because I think it’s a much more nuanced issue than some dissenting voices have made out.

Don’t tweet when it’s someone else’s story

This is probably the most galling aspect of the policy. If an employee isn’t particularly social media-savvy, then there’s no harm in another journalist using Twitter and other networks to promote and share their content in a way that means it’ll get maximum exposure.

If I was the only person sharing my own work around Twitter, then it’d get very limited traction, and there’s no harm in staff helping get extra eyeballs onto a colleague’s piece.

Always pass breaking news lines to the news desk before posting them on social media networks

There is fundementally nothing wrong with this. If we’re acknowledging that Twitter is a medium like any other, and one that should sit alongside videos, blogs and audio reports amongst Sky News’ output, then it makes sense that it should be properly integrated with the news desk.

Communication with the desk is essential in order to make the news operation an efficient one. I don’t have a lot of experience with them, but I can’t imagine the vast majority of news editors being too happy with a journalist breaking a story on Twitter and then strolling over and telling the desk about it a few minutes later.

Breaking news without context on Twitter holds little or no value for the journalist or his/her audience in itself. The value comes from using Twitter as the start of a narrative.

When I was covering the bomb blasts and shootings in Oslo, I started by using Storify to collect information and photos about events in the city centre. Then when people became aware of the shootings, I moved to turning my Twitter feed into one dedicated to covering new developments.

My follower count didn’t rise because I was constantly breaking new information on Twitter, but because I was able to organise it more efficiently into an understandable narrative than others covering it at the time. I didn’t retweet everything I saw, I thought carefully about how people following me would be able to easily understand what was happening.

Breaking news in itself holds little value – were my parents really any the worse for getting the full picture of the London riots on Newsnight rather than watching it unfold in real time on Twitter?

Passing lines to the news desk before tweeting makes good sense in a large organisation because the news desk is the hub that controls their coverage. They can distribute information to correspondents, multimedia specialists and graphics teams.

The ego of a single journalist itching to grab a bit of social media limelight should be able to bow to the collective nature of a news operation in order to strengthen its overall coverage. As Martin Belam notes, “being first really mattered when your rivals had a 24 hour print cycle before they could catch up”.

If anything, this shows that Sky would like to step away from the “never wrong for long” tag that indicates they’re happy to be wrong as long as they correct themselves quickly.

The BBC are rarely quicker than Sky when it comes to breaking news, but hold far more trust because they seem to pride context and verification much more. Is it a bad thing that Sky want to move toward this model more? I don’t think so.

Do not retweet information posted by other journalists or people on Twitter.

This is slightly more problematic, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying that it’s removing the social from social media. As a Sky News employee, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to cover Oslo or the riots in the way that I did if I’d adhered to this rule.

However, if you look at the social media usage of many journalists, they primarily use it as a promotional, rather than as a news gathering tool. Sky News’ new social media policy does not stop journalists from seeking out sources on Twitter, or finding photos that can be later added to strengthen news coverage. There are lots of journalists with big followings on Twitter, but only a fraction of them seem to use social media to actually dig things out and add another aspect to traditional sources.

If anything, the whole debate seems to be a microcosm of the divide that often seeks to engulf any rational discussion about online journalism. That is, if you don’t agree entirely with the popular view of mainstream media persistently “not getting it”, then you’re old news, you’re irrelevant, or Victorian.

I think it’s important to understand that there are many shades of grey – what works for Sky News wouldn’t work for Tech Crunch and vice versa. This policy is neither surprising nor as draconian as some commentators have implied – what’s more interesting will be observing if it becomes indicative of Sky News’ shift to a markedly different kind of news provider.

How I covered the #Oslo bomb blast

A lot is written about the value and prominence that live coverage will occupy in the future of journalism. The Guardian frequently live blog breaking news, and there’s an endless amount of story leads, commentary and analysis to be found on Twitter. 

But how would you go about covering something like say, the Oslo bomb blast and shootings in Utoya? News organisations have plentiful resources, staff and contacts, but that doesn’t mean that the individual can’t drive his or her own coverage.

The first I knew of the blast was from journalist Dave Wyllie, when he tweeted this. Dave often covers live events and breaking stories on Twitter, and is a good source to both follow a story as it develops and also learn from. At the time I was sitting in a coffee shop, about 20 minutes walk from my house. I wasn’t in any position to help tell the story so I directed people to Dave as a good person to follow.

Ambling home around half an hour later, I started putting together a Storify of relevant information on the explosion in Oslo. At the time of writing, that Storify has had 8,400 views and I was picked up as a source by the Daily Beast, by Mashable and Muckrack.

Part of this was identifiing how I could add value to what was already out there. Many were already covering the situation well on Twitter (the aforementioned Dave Wyllie) so there was little point in rehashing or repeating what they’d already said.

Instead my attention turned to other channels – to YouTube, Flickr, Twitpic. Eyewitnesses were already starting to upload content to these networks, and by searching using filters to identify the most recently uploaded photos or videos I could start to see new information coming in. I duly tweeted these and then added them into my Storify.

My next step was to start to gain some kind of handle on what the Scandinavian media was saying. Never before have I been as convinced about the power of being multilingual – as I asked around on Twitter 5 or 6 people all volunteered to help me translate video clips and audio files that I’d found around the web. That allowed me to not only post new content, but add commentary and explanations alongside it for an English-speaking audience.

Later in the day, and the coverage had switched to that of the shootings in Utoya. Again, how could I add value to an audience that was fast catching up on the story through mainstream media outlets?

The answer came in the form of pairing with several more translators. Lars Doucet – a Norwegian living in Texas, began helping me with several press conferences by both the police and the prime minister. I either retweeted his tweets or bundled the information he’d given me into my own explanation of what was going on.

By this time the story had slowed ever so slightly, so I began putting together a private Twitter list that I called my “Norway Wire”. It contained 10 to 15 people who’d been invaluable in covering the goings on in Norway, many of whom were on the ground as events played out in front of them. I started using the list as a personalised news wire, checking for information and retweeting what they were saying to my followers.

Live coverage like this isn’t ‘easy’, per se. It takes some practice, and you have to be very careful about verifying information and checking facts. But then if you didn’t consider those two qualities to be of absolute importance, what are you doing in journalism? The only difference is that the instantaneous nature of the news can make it tempting to publish to get ahead of the pack, and it’s one that should never be succumbed to.

I was quite overwhelmed with the response that I got, which was more of a personal experiment than any desire to position myself as the go to person for the story. I had huge amounts of feedback from people on the coverage, from both those I already knew and those who had picked up the story and begun to follow me. Many were complimentary. Others less so.

We often talk about citizen journalists being able to beat reporters to the scene of a story by simply being in the right place at the right time. But less is said about citizens collecting and making sense of all the information at a faster pace than mainstream news organisations. In honesty, people like Dave and I shouldn’t have been able to become amongst key sources for the story. He was in Scotland, I was sitting in my living room, and we both had access to a computer.

The biggest learning point for me is that again, concepts and techniques that my generation may take for granted are still being viewed with caution by many established hacks, and I think that bodes well for the future.

Thoughts on #jconf and why it has to happen now

I’ve been going to conferences regularly for the past three years, but one thing stands out as something they all have in common.

I’m always the youngest there.

My gut feeling is that those who are inevitably going to shaping the future of journalism aren’t actually being included in a great deal of the conversation about this transitionary period.

To put it bluntly – I don’t want to hear what an old Fleet Street hack thinks. I don’t care about his anecdotes of brushing shoulders with revered editors, or drinking too much at lunch before tottering over to the newspaper office. That world doesn’t exist anymore, yet it’s often the type of talk that’s given to young journalists new to the game. It’s outdated and it romanticises the world of journalism.

If you take a look at what young journalists are doing, you see a lot of innovation. Things like Plastik Magazine, Wannabe Hacks, Elephant and more. This type of innovation deserves to be discussed in a larger, networked set up in the form of a conference.

Conferences, despite their many positive aspects, have a tendency to be a giant echo chamber. They also assemble a group of hallowed speakers to dole out gems of information to the uneducated attendees. This isn’t how a conference in a collaborative world of journalism should work.

Dave Winer defines a ‘users conference’ like this:

“It’s not about the vendors, it’s for the users. They own the conference and they are the conference. The vendors can come, but on the users’ terms”

That’s why we started #jconf. It’s going to be a practical event that emphasises the importance of learning new skills or creating something tangible. Because like it or not, the twentysomethings of today will be the people making decisions that affect the future of media. So far there’s nothing to cater for them.

‘The future of journalism’ has become a tired concept – one that encourages speculation, grandstanding and rehashing of concepts that should now be second nature. Social media exists. Crowdsourcing exists. We don’t need any more conferences that favour vague and recurring themes over clarity and practicality.

Instead what we hope #jconf becomes is an event where each attendee actually has something to take home and use in whatever they’re doing – whether that’s student media, their first job or an MA project.

The Wannabe Hacks are collecting suggestions for topics and areas to be covered at the conference. If you want to contribute to the early ideas being discussed for #jconf please comment over there – it means we can start to build an event whose agenda is shaped by the people who want it most.

Enhanced by Zemanta