Tagged: murdoch

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.

Why don’t we just kill newspapers?

Newspapers, you know the things don’t you? The scraps of folded and printed paper that we all pretend to read but never actually buy? From a vanity perspective, they’re great. Lovely page design, lots of colour (in the UK, at least) and a really good package of information to digest on the way to work or at lunchtime.

That said, isn’t it time to just move on? Every time I read stuff about print being ‘dead’ I let out a big sigh. It’s the same as saying that the British waterways aren’t the primary method of cargo transport anymore, and then lamenting that the import/export trade has gone belly up as a result. The method of distribution has changed, but the journalism (fundamentally) hasn’t. We can talk about crowdsourcing, about data and about the impact of social media. But journalism doesn’t stand up unless it adheres to the age-old principles. If that’s the case, what does it matter that print is ‘dead’?

Consider this, that if tomorrow someone were to go into the Dragon’s Den and pitch the following idea;

“Well basically, it’s sort of a collection of all the news that you find on the internet, only it’s on paper. A news-paper, if you will. My idea is to collate the best of news website content into print, have it printed up at an expensive price, then sling the finished product in fleets of distribution vans that scatter around the country, dropping stacks of it outside shops. Those shops will then sell those bits of paper for a price ranging between 30p and £1. Once the consumer is finished with the product, they can throw it away, and won’t be able to read it again. And the day after we’ll do it all over again”.

Peter Jones responds: “That sounds interesting and a bit mad. How much is it all going to cost?”

The nervous wannabe entrepreneur gives the reply: “Well, it’s not actually profit making at all. In fact it would consistently force news organisations to lose money. Bit of an unnecessary expense I suppose, but look at how lovely things look down on paper!”

A bit churlish maybe, but you can see the point I’m trying to get at. With apparently no correlation between internet use and newspaper profitability, why don’t newspapers simply cut their losses and start afresh? Let’s crunch some interesting numbers.

2009′s New York Times financial report has some interesting figures. Production costs to print and distribute the physical newspaper were $644 million a year. So by killing the print run the NYT are automatically left with over half a billion dollars in their pocket. So what to do with that? Maybe invest in some kind of e-reader supplied to all of it’s 800,000+ subscribers? A kindle now costs a paltry $189, so sending one out to all the print subscribers would cost in the region of $151 million. All that extra money that can be invested back into how to make this giant of old journalism sustainable. That could be by investing in companies that are profit-making but not necessarily journalistic or otherwise.

What I’m proposing is not without its downsides. We can all agree that ebooks will never replicate the feel of a newspaper, nor can you wrap your fish and chips in them. Furthermore, by cutting production of the printed produced those who don’t have access to or understanding of the internet and digital media (low income families and the elderly) would be restricted in their ability to get information. The idea of cutting people out of the loop in order to save a business whose primary aim is to do the opposite is quite difficult to come to terms with.

Yet at odds with those negative aspects are concepts of saving money, a strong ecological argument that going fully digital is better for the environment, as well as a certain amount of planning for the future.

The other day I saw a small boy playing on a laptop in a cafe with his parents. From where I was sitting I could see what was happening on the screen. He was playing a few online games while chatting on an IM and ocassionally watching a few YouTube clips. The fact that it all seemed so intuitive to him means that when he grows up he wouldn’t even think of a newspaper being his primary news source, he’d leapfrog it and go straight online.

Without sounding morbid, when my parents’ generation dies out, we’ll be left with groups of people for whom a newspaper is just as unnatural a concept as the internet was to my grandparents. So why not start preparing now? Cut the losses, and usher in something new.

Election 2010

Blogging at the speed of light

“Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules”

In many ways, Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a clairvoyant. And while his stories about ironic aliens and jaded space explorers didn’t quite come true (yet), the aforementioned quote has become a truism today.

Currently, I’m working on The Times’ Election 2010 Blog , in a week where we’ve already had two major manifestos announced, with one more to come, as well as the first leaders debate this Thursday. To say it’s frantic stuff would be an understatement.

While the machine of page design and leader stories doesn’t kick in until early evening, us live bloggers are constantly sourcing, researching and publishing stories. The election blog has provided a combination of serious political reflection as well as a more whimsical look at politics on the web. The speed and creativity with which people have parodied both Labour and Tory manifestos has been impressive, provided a few laughs in the office and a few “why didn’t I think of that?” moments.

In contrast to my previous post about the dangers of skim reading on the web, I’ve had to become an online vulture, picking at carrions of content, and then regurgitating it all into a readable, regularly updated blog. My vision is now exclusively a mish-mash of twitter feed, google reader, Sky News and BBC 24. If i’m not reading it, you can be damn sure I’m listening to or watching it. It’s also encouraged imagination, with the ability to add video and audio as well as amusing photos. When the Lib Dems have their announcement tomorrow I hope to put up a word cloud, highlighting the most frequent words used in each party’s manifesto.

My main point is that I think live blogging has made office-restricted journalism both relevant and exciting again. While hacks complain everywhere about being more and more tied to their desks, this idea of pulling in information as it happens can enliven the experience somewhat. While no substitute for talking to people and “proper” journalism, it still relies on crucial journalistic traits; fact checking, succinctness and an ability to build a narrative from a range of sources.

That the platform is online does not change the process. If anything, mistakes and discrepancies can be picked up better than ever by the mine of knowledge and pedancy that’s to be found on the web. Speed and quality need to be prioritised in equal measure, neither at the expense of the other.

Let’s hope that people can take the opportunity to engage more readily with politics over the course of this election. We’ve made it so easy to find out what’s going on, there’s little excuse not to.

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Murdoch’s paywalls

Like every other media-orientated blog out there, I’ve decided to have my two pennies worth regarding Rupert Murdoch’s decision to set up paywalls for The Times and The Sunday Times.

As I’m sure you’ll all know by know, Murdoch plans to charge a rate of £1 a day or £2 a week for the new websites.

I’m not so concerned with this move by Murdoch. It’s clear he doesn’t understand new media, and this is an unsophisticated approach to what is a complex and eternally perplexing issue; how to make the internet pay.



What I am concerned by is the reaction of the Guardian. Jeff Jarvis, New York journalism lecturer and it seems, all round media saint, wrote a piece yesterday condemning Murdoch as a dinosaur, on his last legs.

Jarvis and his fellow web gurus at the Guardian may think they understand the web. But if they are so well versed, they would be providing solutions to the current crisis, not simply smirking at competitors experiments to make their websites’ pay. Asked about what they’ve done towards solving the riddle of online revenue, Emily Bell and co. always point to their iPhone app as an example that readers are prepared to pay for content.

As of mid-February the Guardian app has sold over 100,000 copies, at £2.39 a sale. But the idea that this points to some kind of masterstroke by the Guardian is both ludicrous and laughable. Consider the amount of money that was poured into the development of the app. Couple that with the fact that theoretically, owners of the app don’t need to pay for Guardian content ever again, and it’s definitely not a viable revenue stream.

Alan Rusbridger and his cohorts constantly emphasise that they are “excited about the future of journalism”. The Guardian’s ethos of exchanging free comment and content is harmonious with the idea of the web. This is all well and good, but how does that sit with journalists who actually, shock horror, want to be paid for what they do?

Guardian executives are on the last plane out of Saigon. Having worked their way up through traditional media, they now sit on high haranguing any poor soul who raises his hand and says “I’d like to be paid for that”.

Such an attitude makes me feel very uneasy. A newspaper that at one point, was losing £100,000 a day needs solutions, and fast. Murdoch may be misguided, naive even. But he is the first explorer to set foot on a new island. He has at least implemented a strategy towards making the internet pay. Until other mainstream media outlets do the same, they are in no position to criticise.