It’s the age-old new media question – exactly how long can the newspaper survive?
It’s also the topic of a debate planned tonight as part of a series of weekly Twitter debates run by @CommsChat.
The online session will kick off at 8:00pm, but pre-chat Tweets already suggest that “not long” will be the main response, with some proposing a ‘RIP date’ as early as 2020.
The @CommsChat team say they hope the online debates will encourage and speed up media integration.
The advent of social media has also seen all the comms disciplines gently bleed into one another – this community, by sharing our collective experience and opinions, can be at the forefront of this evolution.
To join in with the debate use hashtag #CommsChat.
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.
Football magazine When Saturday Comes looks at how Twitter use by football journalists is changing football reporting, as it encourages debate around news and makes journalists more accountable to fans:
Before social media created a two-way conversation on the internet, a journalist would only have had their editor and probably the manager of the club they reported on to answer to. They could print stories knowing they would not be asked to justify them to the ordinary football fan. But it’s different now for those who have chosen to set up Twitter accounts. They are pulled up on any factual errors in their stories, asked to reveal their sources and generally badgered by their followers (…) it’s a great way of taking the temperature of a club’s fans. You get to understand how they feel about certain players and managers, and what they believe are their biggest issues and concerns. Official site https://22bet-in.org/ in India: Play and bet for real money and for free.
Of course, journalists should probably know this kind of thing but you can sometimes get caught up in the bubble of press conferences and talking to colleagues, and not realise what the real problems are.
The Independent has installed a new commenting system on its website in the shape of Disqus – the same as we use on Journalism.co.uk no less.
The system allows users to login to leave a comment using a Disqus profile, but also, and more importantly, with their Twitter username and password, Facebook login or OpenId identification.
With the Twitter and Facebook logins there’s also the option to share your article comment via these sites.
We’re encouraging people to use credentials linked to their personal profiles not just because openness and accountability are great, fundamental things which underpin good journalism as well as good commenting (and why should the two be different?), but also because by introducing accountability into the equation, we’re hoping the tone and standard of the comments will go up (…) It’s about first of all letting people authenticate their commenting using systems with which they’re already familiar (in Facebook’s case, that’s 400 million people worldwide and counting), and secondly, it’s about restoring your trust in our comments section, so that some of the really great submissions we get on there rise to the top, the bad sink to the bottom, and the ugly – the spam and abuse that are an inevitable adjunct of any commenting system – don’t appear at all.
The BBC is planning to link its catch-up TV service with Twitter and Facebook. The new version of the iPlayer will allow viewers to comment and chat about what they are watching without leaving the service. Similar services have been tested for one-off events by other broadcasters using the Facebook Connect tool and by sites such as Livestream, but this is a notable step by the BBC towards internet-connected television.
John Rentoul, or @JohnRentoul, chief political commentator for the Independent on Sunday, sums up how he uses Twitter and the impact he believes it has had on political reporting in the UK (managing to avoid the hyperbole of many other love notes to Twitter from journalists):
Most of the time, however, Twitter is like a news service. It is different from social networks in that links are not necessarily mutual. People can choose to follow each other, but the Korean research found that four-fifths of links were one-way. This means that hub Twitterers with a lot of followers act as diffusers of news. When I started on this newspaper as a political reporter in 1995, the main source of UK “breaking news” was the Press Association wire – short bulletins of news, as it happened. Now Twitter fills that gap, as journalists and citizen-reporters let each other know when someone has left their microphone on, or has ruled out standing for the Labour leadership. When Adam Boulton started to lose his temper with Alastair Campbell on live television during the post-election negotiations, people tweeted to tell others to put Sky News on – to catch the best bits. William Hague announced that the talks with the Liberal Democrats were back on on Twitter. It is a way for politicians to speak to – or beyond – the conventional media. But it also offers journalists other ways of reporting.
When Newsweek reporter Andrew Romano was dispatched by the magazine to profile ultraconservative Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann it was not, as he would have liked, with a pen, paper and pretend fedora. Instead they suggested he do it live on Twitter as he followed her around. She doesn’t seem to have taken to the idea. Romano’s article about the experience makes for a good read.
I hadn’t spent enough time with her to decide if she was unserious, or crazy, or whatever. Instead, I was simply doing what Twitter demanded: being pithy and provocative. Straightforward narration would go unnoticed. Quotes from Bachmann’s old friends would seem un-newsy. Nuance would cost too many characters. So I became a color commentator, casting off the reporter’s traditional cloak of detachment and publicly weighing in on the proceedings at regular intervals. And because observation and publication were now compressed into a single act, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to phrase my tweets that I otherwise would’ve spent absorbing a scene or speaking to locals. I don’t remember much about the crowd in Monticello, the businessmen in Blaine, or Bachmann’s larger themes. I do remember what I wound up tweeting, and that’s about it.
To spread the word even further about our forthcoming digital journalism event news:rewired – the nouveau niche, we are offering you the chance to win a Livescribe Pulse smartpen worth £150.
Imagine a pen that can record audio as you write and link that recording to the exact notes you taken down, before transforming your written notes into notes on your computer screen to be saved and searched.
Using a camera, microphone and speaker, the Livescribe Pulse smartpen does just that. As a journalist, this means its easy to find audio clips from interviews and speeches quickly by simply tapping the relevant notes in your pad or by searching your handwritten notes on a computer. Furthermore, you can share your notes through pencasts: online interactive Flash videos of handwritten notes and audio.
Come to #newsrw digital #journalism event 25:06:10. Follow @newsrewired & RT for chance to #win smartpen http://is.gd/c7f2a
In the run up to the first news:rewired event earlier this year Guardian community moderator Todd Nash won an HD Flip Camera after taking part in our retweet competition.
The competition will close on Friday 4 June 2010 at 1pm (GMT) and the winner will be selected at random and announced shortly after. The terms and conditions of the competition are listed below.
Not convinced? Watch the pen in action:
news:rewired – the nouveau niche is a one-day event hosted by Journalism.co.uk aimed at specialist journalists looking for digital ideas, tips, and inspiration from the industry’s best. It’s hosted in partnership with the BBC College of Journalism and MSN UK and sponsored by Kyte.
We’ll be offering practical sessions on crowdsourcing, data visualisations, community management; emerging news technology; and paid-for content. Keynotes include MSN UK executive producer Peter Bale, and Marc Reeves, editor of TheBusinessDesk.com West Midlands and former regional newspaper editor.
Tickets cost £80 (+VAT) until 11 June when they return to the full price of £100 (+VAT). They can be booked here – our last event sold out so please buy your tickets early to avoid disappointment.
If you’re interested in sponsoring the event or have any other queries, you can contact the Journalism.co.uk team. Contact us on laura [at] journalism.co.uk for more details.
Competition entry terms and conditions
1. Competition entry is subject to the acceptance of these conditions.
2. How to enter: the competition requires entrants to both follow the @newsrewired twitter feed and retweet the following phrase ‘Come to #newsrw digital #journalism event 25:06:10. Follow @newsrewired & RT for chance to #win smartpen http://is.gd/c7f2a’. The retweet must keep the entirety of the phrase intact to be valid for entry.
3. Competition will run from 11am (GMT) Friday 14 May 2010 until 1pm (GMT) Friday 4 June.
4. Any entries received after 1pm (GMT) on Friday 4 June 2010 will be void.
5. The winner will be selected at random from all correct entries received.
6. The judges’ decision will be final.
7. Although every effort will be made to ensure the prize is with the winner before 25 June this cannot be guaranteed and Mousetrap Media Ltd accepts no responsibility for late prize delivery.
8. Mousetrap Media Ltd reserves the right to discontinue the competition at any stage without reason.
9. The prize is both non-refundable and non-returnable. Mousetrap media Ltd accepts no responsibility for any harm, expense, liability or injury that may be sustained relating to or arising from participation in this competition or acceptance or use of the prize.
10. Employees of Mousetrap Media Ltd, those involved directly with the news:rewired event and their immediate families are not eligible to win.
11. The winner in accepting the prize authorises Mousetrap Media to publicise, in any media, his or her name, job title and Twitter handle unless prohibited by law.
12. You can retweet as many times as you like, but it will only count as one entry.
Comedian Catherine Deveny has lost her columnist slot for Australian newspaper, the Age, after she sent provocative tweets during the Australian television industry awards (the Logies).
The Age’s technology editor Gordon Farrer comments:
Defending her tweets and taking aim at the fallout, Deveny, who was sacked as a columnist for The Age over her Logies comments, likened Twitter to “passing notes in class, but suddenly these notes are being projected into the sky and taken out of context. “Twitter is online graffiti, not a news source.”
Wrong.
Posts to Twitter are not private messages. They aren’t limited to a select group of your choosing, as notes passed in class might be (…)
Nice round-up of how social media is reshaping journalism in the newsroom of the American-Statesman – with two important takeaway points from social media editor Robert Quigley:
“In this new world, listening to the public is as important as telling the story.”
“As more of the online crowd has taken to social media, fewer are producing original content – specifically, blogs. Meanwhile, some of the content that’s still being produced, including by professional journalists, is gaining wider circulation via Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. This is a good thing for those of us in the news business.”
Quigley details how important social media sites were in reporting a local plane crash. But his final point is particularly interesting – how can news organisations utilise social media to make the most of original content in particular? (See also Adam Tinworth’s post ‘Is journalism developing its own echo chamber?‘
To spread the word even further about our forthcoming digital journalism event news:rewired – the nouveau niche, we are offering you the chance to win a Livescribe Pulse smartpen worth £150.