Tag Archives: Mark Zuckerberg

The truth about funding investigative journalism 2.0

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.)

Readwriteweb: How we use Twitter for journalism

The good people at Readwriteweb explain how they use Twitter for journalism.

Pretty much the same as us at Journalism.co.uk – they say it falls into four distinct categories:

The discovery of breaking stories
People they follow tipping them off

Interviews
“When we got to interview Mark Zuckerberg at SXSW this year, we solicited interview questions via Twitter.”

Quality assurance
Readers picking up on their factual errors.

Promotion
Tipping off the people that follow them

Criticism from blogosphere for journalist’s interview with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg

Business journalist Sarah Lacy’s interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at the SXSW conference is being torn to shreds by bloggers, because of Lacy’s anecdotal style and rambling questions.

Lacy’s response: an angry message to Twitter (flagged up by CNET) shown below.

Sarah Lacy posts an angry message to Twitter

Lacy’s interview is now being touted as teaching material for journalism professor Jeff Jarvis’ classes. On his blog, Jarvis says Lacy’s biggest mistakes were not knowing or listening to her audience and her treatment of Zuckerberg – who apparently had to interrupt her ramble to suggest she asked a question at one point.

A post on Adam Tinworth’s blog details the lessons that should be learnt from this interview, namely: ‘engage, know your occasion, do your research and don’t confuse yourself with the story’.

Well said – these are basic interview skills, but Tinworth’s post highlights how these rules should be applied in a new media environment. He points out that despite working in a social media area, Lacy has ‘no direct means of replying that isn’t mediated by others’.

Lacy’s credentials as a business reporter covering technology for BusinessWeek and author on the subject of Silicon Valley and Web 2.0 should have stood her in good stead for this interview.

But it seems her reputation was not sufficient to endear her to or engage with her audience or the blogosphere – after all the interview wasn’t supposed to be about her…

UPDATE – Lacy gives her reaction to the interview in a video response (from Omar Galagga)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wyrny8PP-M]

New media rank amongst London’s ‘most influential’

Tomorrow the Evening Standard will release its list of the 1,000 most influential people in London – complete with a brand new section devoted to media.

Roy Greenslade has had a sneak preview of the media movers and shakers, and writes that plenty of new media names make the list.

Political blogger Iain Dale, Annelies van den Belt, managing director of ITV Broadband and former Telegraph Media Group director of new media, and Simon Waldman, digital director at The Guardian, all make the 50-strong media list.

Nikesh Arora, Google’s European vice president, founder of the Carphone Warehouse Charles Dunstone and Mark Zuckerberg (not strictly a Londoner, but hey…) , founder of Facebook, make it into the top five.