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Social Media Journalist: “The problem with most news organisations is a lack of editorial understanding of social media” Kevin Anderson, Guardian blogs editor

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Journalism.co.uk talks to reporters across the globe working at the collision of journalism and social media about how they see it changing their industry. This week, Kevin Anderson, Guardian.co.uk.

image of Kevin Anderson

1) Who are you and what do you do?
Kevin Anderson, blogs editor at Guardian.co.uk.

My title is misnomer seeing as desk editors handle most of the commissioning.

My role is two-fold. I spot newsworthy items bubbling up in social media – blogs, social news sites, Twitter, etc – and report on that or pass it along to the appropriate site editor.

I also seed and develop strategies to promote Guardian content in those social networks. My current focus is what I call real-time innovation. I use emerging tools for editorial purposes and feed back lessons we learn into our editorial development process.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
People ask me how I stay on top of it all, and I say that my network is my filter. I have Twhirl and IM on constantly, sitting in the background. New media professionals and contacts around the world pass me things I need to read or stories I need to follow up on through Skype, Twitter, IM and Del.icio.us.

Popurls.com is a great one-stop site for buzz, especially for the US elections, which I’m following right now. NetNewsWire, Flock and Ecto are my blogging tools of choice.

The Flock browser is good in a number of ways. Its Flickr uploader is great – better than Flickr’s until recently. It also allows you to add sites to multiple Del.icio.us accounts.

You can go from reading your RSS feeds to blogging instantly in Flock, as it pulls NetNewsWire functionality into the browser too.

For publishing, a combination of Ecto and any good blogging platform creates the best multimedia journalism tool that I’ve ever used.

I recently got a Nokia N82. With its stellar camera and integrated Flickr uploader it has a lot of promise , but it’s hampered by poor data plans in the UK.

The mobile carriers are focusing on USB-based data plans to link computers to the mobile web, which maybe a good start, but there are still too few good data plans for phones.

I end up relying on WiFi, which on the N82 is much better than on previous phones.

3) Of the thousands of social media tools available could you single one out as having the most potential for news either as a publishing or newsgathering tool?
I think in terms of editorial objectives and then find an applicable tool. In 12 years of doing online journalism, I’ve had to learn hundreds of desktop tools, content management systems and now a dizzying range of social media tools.

You have to be aware of them to work effectively. Knowing about the tools allows me to do something on deadline without worrying whether it can be developed on time.

However, the problem with most news organisations isn’t a lack of tools or technology but a cultural lack of editorial understanding of social media, internet media and internet culture.

Most news organisations continue to try to force their existing editorial strategies into the social media space instead of considering editorial strategies that are appropriate for the space.

Online video isn’t television on the internet, just as blogs are not about publishing a newspaper with comments.

I can use Twitter both as a newsgathering and promotional tool, or I can just use it to broadcast headlines at people.

Social media can increase loyalty from visitors to a site and increase the time they spend on the site, but it’s not about the tools but the way that journalists use them.

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
I hate to sound like a broken record because others have said this before, but I really think Facebook is overrated for the majority of our audiences.

Traditional journalists who had never seen, much less used a social network before, hyped it because it was a revelation to them.

However, for those who had used social networks before, it was YASN – yet another social network – only shinier, with 20 per cent more Web 2.0 goodness.

I believe in freeing content and making it available where the audiences are, so it makes sense for content to be easily available to Facebook users and for news organisations to have a presence there.

News organisations can learn things from the success of Facebook, but they should also study the life cycle of social networks and learn not only from their successes but also from their failures.

Allowing like-minded readers or viewers to connect and interact using your content as a focus is a good social media strategy.

Hosting and taking an active role in the conversations around your content is also a good social media strategy.

Building a site or service that externalises community and keeps the ‘unwashed masses’ at a safe distance from journalists creates nasty overheads. It also means managing communities and brings nothing to your journalism and very little to your site visitors.

Why would Facebook users decide to move to InsertNewspaperHere-book?

Media Guardian: Gramophone classical music magazine embraces the web

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Historic publication Gramophone magazine is to publish all its content to the web, creating a searchable archive of issues right back to its first edition, published in 1923. A download and mail order service will follow, making the site a valuable online resource for fans of classical music.

Guardian: Mirror Group websites join ABCe

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Mirror Group Newspapers will this week begin reporting traffic to its websites by making public the results of monthly ABCe.

Traffic for the People, Sunday and Daily Mirror will, for the first time, be judged against that of the other leading newspaper brands when the figures are released on Thursday- all accept for the Independent, which still refuses to make its traffic figures public.

According to the Guardian, Trinity Mirror has admitted to having some reservations about the ABCe methodology but is still playing ball.

It expects to record a high percentage of its traffic from a domestic audience – unlike the leading UK newspaper websites of The Guardian and The Mail, which draw the majority of their traffic from overseas.

Hitwise: The Independent gains online market share in the UK

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The website of The Independent newspaper – one not know for its popularity, sophistication or embracing of the internet – has doubled its share of the UK online market over the last year, according to Hitwise.

“The market share of the UK Independent, which has traditionally lagged behind most of its rivals online, has more doubled over the last twelve months,” wrote Robin Goad, research director, Hitwise UK.

“It was the seventh most visited website in our News and Media (Print section) in March putting it behind the Daily Mail, Times, Sun, Telegraph, Guardian and FT, but ahead of the Mirror and Express”

Hitwise measures the relative success of a website by the share of UK-based internet users it attracts over a given period.

Guardian: Telegraph strike threat on hold

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The Telegaph’s NUJ chapel have postponed the threat of staff strike action as they wait for news of their employers plans on flexible working.

According to the Guardian, staff at the paper are again smarting from a round of quick-fire dismissals – a chapel meeting yesterday was reported as being ‘furious’ as staff railed against the treatment of colleagues.

Yet journalists decided not to do anything ahead of an NUJ meeting with Telegraph Media Group reps next week.

Guardian: BBC News head tipped as director of audio and music

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Helen Boaden, BBC’s director of news, and the corporation’s head of sport, Max Mosey, are amongst the front-runners in the race to replace current head of music and audio, Jenny Abramsky, who is to leave her job.

According to the Guardian, sources inside the BBC are tipping former Radio 4 controller Boaden for the job – should she want it.

Abramsky announced last week that she was leaving the corporation after nearly 40 years to chair the board of the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

British Press Awards – the winners

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Guardian.co.uk was named website of the year at last night’s British Press Awards, as the paper picked up three awards.

Guardian journalist Sean Smith was named digital reporter of the year and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad foreign reporter of the year.

The Financial Times also scooped three awards winning the newspaper of the year title and prizes for two of its journalists.

The Sun walked away with most prizes on the night with four: scoop of the year and reporter of the year for Tom Newton Dunn; and its ‘Help for Heroes campaign’ named campaign of the year and winning the Cudlipp award.

Press Gazette has the full list of award winners.

Rusbridger attacks Chinese ‘censorship’ as Tibetan riots quelled

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Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has written to the Chinese ambassador in the UK attacking China’s censoring of foreign news websites – including Guardian.co.uk – in the wake of the Tibetan riots.

Mr Rusbridger asked for the ambassador’s assistance in unblocking his website back online and ensuring that access to it remained free of interference.

“As you will be aware, the blackout has coincided with media coverage of the recent unrest in Tibet, forcing the conclusion that this is an act of deliberate and wholly unacceptable censorship,” wrote Mr Rusbridger.

“We are dismayed that Beijing should curtail international press freedom, particularly in Olympic year.”

The move comes in the wake of a violent crackdown on protests in Tibet by Chinese authorities that have also attempted to block the media from reporting what was going on.

Tibetan exiles say at least 80 protesters died in the clashes as reporters were being forced to leave.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China reported that as many as two-dozen reporters have been turned away from or forced to leave Tibetan areas and government censorship of the internet and television broadcasts was also hampering journalists’ work.

“Reporting interference is not in the interest of the Chinese government which is trying to show a more open, transparent and accountable image to the world,” said FCCC President Melinda Liu, in a piece carried on the FCCC website.

“Such interference is not in keeping with reporting regulations adopted during the Olympics period – and is especially not in keeping with the international community’s expectations of an Olympic host nation,” added Liu.

Writing for the Telegraph.co.uk Richard Spencer claimed to have been ordered to leave the Tibetan town he was staying in by local police (Spencer also points to some bloggers who are managing to get information onto the net about the crackdown)

The Honk Kong Journalists Association (hat tip Roy Greenslade) is also reporting that journalists from at least six Hong Kong media organisations have been placed under escort and ordered out of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

Gap year blogger ends Guardian blog after ‘hate mail hell’

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(Update – vote in our online poll: was the Guardian right to close Gogarty’s blog? Brief Log-in required.)

‘Hate mail hell of gap-year blogger’ – a headline from the Observer relating to Max Gogarty, whose first blog post on Guardian.co.uk about his gap year plans received a less than warm reception from readers.

The forthright criticisms left on Gogarty’s post were aimed less at the young writer’s style and more at his links with travel section contributor Paul Gogarty – Max’s dad – and as a result Guardian policy.

Since comments on the original post were closed, the paper’s travel editor Andy Pietrasik, digital editor Emily Bell and Observer columnist Rafael Behr have all reacted to the backlash – each trying to add a measure of calm to the situation.

The ‘hate mail hell’ to which the Observer piece refers lasted for around five days, but I can’t help but think the publisher might have expected this. Surely the accusations of nepotism made could have been foreseen, as could criticism of what value such a blog contributes to the section?

Furthermore, much of the criticism centres around the blog vs professional blog debate, arguing that the writing offered did not match up with the professional content elsewhere on the site.

As such I feel for Max – I don’t know how I would react to such a torrent of online abuse, especially as most of this abuse should be levelled at the publisher and not the blogger in question.

This was an editorial error by the site – neither reader nor writer are satisfied with the outcome – yet the paper’s commentators don’t own up to this, condemning this as a case of ‘online mob justice’.Yes, some of the comments are an attempt to outdo the last with their mercilessness, but the fact that over 500 were left on this blog should set alarm bells ringing.

Do the comments lose their credibility because they are largely angry (and yes, sometimes borderline abusive)? If so, why allow so many through the moderation process in the first place?

These are your readers – telling you exactly what they think – best to listen to them and not label them a mob.

Media Guardian: Internet radio attracting weekly audience of 8 million

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New survey from RAJAR suggests move into the mainstream for internet radio with a weekly audience of 8.1 million internet radio listeners in the UK.

A further 2 million people download podcasts weekly, the survey says.