Reuters has published new social media guidelines in its Handbook of Journalism. As well as reminding journalists to keep the personal separate from the professional, it advises:

Can I break news via Twitter?

As with blogging within Reuters News, you should make sure that if you have hard news content that it is broken first via the wire. Don’t scoop the wire. NB this does not apply if you are retweeting; (re-publishing) someone else’s scoop.

Corrections

If a correction is required, a new tweet that begins “CORRECTION:…” should be published.

Full post at this link…

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A proper bit of digging, by the people at online-only news site Business Insider (read about its background here), has led to Nicholas Carlson’s revelations about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and as the site says, “startling new information”, about the company’s early days.

But as BI’s Silicon Valley Insider team revealed, this type of work doesn’t make for a sustainable online publication business model. In a flurry of tweets Business Insider editor-in-chief and CEO Henry Blodget explains why (you can view them in a gallery at this link).

It’s important. It’s great. But it is also fantastically expensive and time-consuming.

But the truth is, if we tried to do 3 a day, with our staff, we would DROP DEAD. We’d also go bust. Neither being a happy outcome.

(Hat-tip: The Editorialiste.)

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Journalism.co.uk is taking part in #BeMyGuest – a month-long initiative to encourage bloggers to swap posts.

Set up by PRs Adam Vincenzini and Emily Cagle, the criteria for participating are simple. You must:

1. Write at least one post for someone else’s blog;
2. Feature at least one guest post on their own blog.

But to create some new collaborations, the pair are asking would-be guest bloggers to swap details via Twitter:

All you have to do is use Twitter to tweet out your blog details and the hashtag: #BeMyGuest to let people know you’d like to take part.

Your tweet might look like this:

“I write a blog about #media called The Media Blog (insert your Blog link) and I’d like to take part in #BeMyGuest (http://bit.ly/bemyguest1)”

As such, a quick Twitter search for the hashtag shows the bloggers putting themselves up for a guest slot. If you fancy doing a swap, add @journalismnews to your tweet and we’ll see how we get on.

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A new Canadian documentary film, due out this spring, uses social media to tell an alternative story about Vancouver’s Winter Olympics. It follows four individuals who “rallied” their community through social networking tools, to help empower the homeless and poor – who don’t necessarily fit into grand Olympic plans. The idea was to use mobile and online media to “provide a voice for those left behind”. (Hat-tip: Jon Slattery)

It draws on video blogging, photo-sharing and social networking to bring a “marginalised” community to the fore, “embracing leading-edge communication technologies, to empower, inspire, and break down the digital divide,” its producers say. The synopsis:

February 12, 2010.  Sixty thousand people have gathered in Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium to revel in the spectacle that is the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympic Games. It marks the beginning of a two week party that will focus a global spotlight on this city of half a million and, organizers hope, finally put to rest seven years of  surrounding controversy. A few days earlier, a year long campaign which saw police issue hundred dollar jaywalking and spitting tickets to homeless people, had culminated in a successful sweep of the city’s impoverished Downtown Eastside to relocate undesirables to outlying communities.

When the story finally makes it to the mainstream news channels, it’s thanks to the diligence and combined power of a few concerned citizens, their video-streaming cellphones and the Internet. With Glowing Hearts will give audiences the chance to see the world through the eyes of four such citizens, as they rally their community around powerful new Social Media tools to show its true heart to the world. Based on the premise that the access to information is a human right, the film and accompanying website, will take audiences on a year long journey into the creation of an independent Olympic media center designed to guarantee that access  in a community whose voice is frequently ignored.

Here’s the site.

Here’s the trailer:

With Glowing Hearts from Andrew Lavigne on Vimeo.

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MPs, Westminster hacks and activists might be addicted to expressing themselves in 140 characters or less, but don’t expect this year’s general election to be decided on which party has the best social media strategy.

Then again, politicians and the media shouldn’t dismiss voters’ digital engagement, according to a panel at a Frontline Club debate on the importance on social media for the upcoming election.

You can watch a video of the whole thing here…

Twitter certainly has the  potential to land politicians in mini-media storms; the panellists agreed: if David Wright MP had merely told a reporter verbally that Conservatives are “scum” it’s unlikely to have got much coverage, such is the continued novelty of Twitter to many news editors.

Paul Staines, better known as mischievous Westminster blogger Guido Fawkes, argued that no matter how well connected parties are, with Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems towing similar centerist policy lines there was little to differentiate them for the ordinary voter: “If they are all marching in the centre ground, there’s not much to market, is there?”

And as for reporters, they’re “not going to get a scoop from Tweetdeck”, he warned. “There are about 500 of us (in the Westminster village) listening to each other aren’t there?”

Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy said social media buzz doesn’t determine what C4 leads its 7pm bulletin with – but Twitter got the network’s reporters in touch with someone in the audience at Nick Griffin’s notorious Question Time performance.

But all this is missing the point, according to Chris Condron, Press Association’s head of digital strategy:

If you ask any journalist what they think about a phenomenon like Twitter (…) they tend to think about what it means for journalists, but where its potential really lies is for audiences.

The “disintermediation” of news – where readers can go straight to the source of news, such as an MP’s Twitter stream – was a challenge for the media, but Condron is confident that “the reporters’ gathering and filtering of raw news was still essential.”

More events coming up at the Frontline Club:

This post also appears at the Frontline Club’s Forum blog.

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The Today programme has a brief interview with Janic Tremblay, journalist for Radio Canada, one of five journalists from French-speaking radio stations involved in a five-day experiment this week using social media sites and networks as their only source of news.

Tremblay explains the set-up of the project (which has been criticised by some media commentators), what they have learned so far and, in particular, the opportunities and challenges provided by using Twitter.

Listen to the short clip at this link.

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The Media Society, which is backed by Camelot, and City University have joined forces to arrange a panel discussion on the role of new media in the forthcoming UK general election.

How will 2010’s election differ from past events? What impact will social media have on the coverage and outcome? What will the tole of new media mean for TV, radio and press coverage?

BBC political editor Nick Robinson and City University London professor Ivor Gaber will take part in a panel discussion alongside Matthew McGregor from Blue State Digital, the agency behind Barack Obama’s social media and web campaigns.

Full details of the event, which will be held on 2 March at City University London, are available at this link. The event is free to attend, but delegates must register beforehand to reserve a place.

Coverage during and after the event will be available on Twitter and other channels under the hashtag #vote2.0.

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Last week Twitter announced it was rolling out its new feature, Local Trends: a means of tracking topics trending in your local ’state or city’.

The big events that come up around the world will always become a global conversation, but what about the big events that only happen in your world that only matter to those around you? Or the slight differences in the way Californians perceive an event, like Obama’s election victory, versus those São Paulo, Brazil?

Local Trends will allow you to learn more about the nuances in our world and discover even more relevant topics that might matter to you. We’ll be improving this feature over time to provide more locations, languages, and data through our API.

Locations added so far:

Countries: Brazil; Canada; Ireland; Mexico; United Kingdom; United States

Cities: Atlanta; Baltimore; Boston; Chicago; Dallas-Ft. Worth; Houston; London; Los Angeles; New York City; Philadelphia; San Antonio; San Francisco; Seattle; São Paulo; Washington, D.C.

As yet, non-London residents only see nationally trending topics in the UK, but Twitter says it is working to add more locations.

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