Tag Archives: laura kuenssberg

@ITVLauraK: My Twitter followers don’t belong to the BBC, ITV, or me

Former BBC News chief political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg began her new role as ITV business editor today. Kuenssberg built up quite a Twitter following during her time at the BBC, around 67,000 people, due in no small part to her coverage of last year’s general election saga.

In the wake of the announcement of her move to ITV there was, in her own words, “frenzied conversation” about what would happen to her Twitter account. It was, after all, a professional account, it had BBC in the name. So who did the followers belong to?

In the end, the agreement with the BBC was “entirely amicable”, according to Kuenssberg, and she transferred her account and followers to @ITVLauraK.

Today she writes on her new ITV blog about her take on the issue of professional Twitter accounts and ownership:

Given my belief that those who tweet have minds of their own, the clamour over what would happen to @BBCLauraK, the corporation’s first official journalist Twitter stream, took me rather by surprise. But, more importantly, what the fuss did demonstrate was how central online reporting has become to the work of journalists. No doubt, having started tweeting as an experiment two years ago during the party conference season, it became almost as important to me to break stories on Twitter as it did to get them on air on the BBC’s rolling news channel.

Read the full post at this link.

#followjourn: @ITVLauraK – Laura Kuenssberg/journalist

Who? Laura Kuenssberg

Where? Laura starts as ITV News business editor in September and already has a Twitter account set up.

Twitter? @ITVLauraK

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to sarah.booker at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

#VOJ10 – Twitter is just another outlet, says BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg

One careless tweet could sink the fleet.

Advice from BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg, who warned of the power of a single tweet to bring down politicians and political correspondents alike. Kuenssberg, who did her fair share of tweeting during the general election last month, is specific about what she tweets:

I still use it broadly for the same things [pre and post-election] and I’m quite strict about why I would tweet. I use it for simple breaking news and information (…) it’s the fastest way of getting it out there even with 24-hour television.

I also use it for the kind of colour you see as a journalist – not gossip, not rumour. These are often the things that get retweeted the most; things that as a journalist you see with your own eyes but might not get to broadcast.

As a lobby journalist you’ve got a ticket to a very small world. You are witness to a very closed world. Its part of my job to reach out to people and give them moments of colour that they otherwise wouldn’t see.

Having trialled using twitter during the party political conferences in 2009, Kuenssberg’s following on the social network grew from around 5,000 pre-election to 23,000 post-election. But it hasn’t changed how she works, she says – just added to it:

Twitter has just become another outlet. It’s highly compatible with my job because I’m normally out and about. It has given journalists more material – not a massive amount, because so far we haven’t had massive breaking stories from citizen journalists.

Social media as a “paper trail” – tracking down the backgrounds of PPCs and following what they’ve said pre-election on Twitter – was particularly useful however, said Kuennsberg.

Although it’s still a small group of people using Twitter, it has shown me that there’s a big interest in what we do. There’s a huge appetite for politics and I think we’re reaching some people who weren’t consuming political news in any way before.