Photo: Jaysanw on Flickr
The Journalism 2.0 Summit is a Social Media Week Vancouver event that brought together some of the leading journalists in BC for a chat on how social media is transforming their industry. The panel included:
- Moderator: Kirk LaPointe from the CBC
- Katie Mercer from The Province
- Brad Frenette from The Vancouver Sun
- Heron Hanuman from CTV
- Karen Pinchin from Open File Vancouver
- Lisa Christiansen from CBC Radio
The two-hour event featured an hour or so of panel discussions around various topics followed by a Q&A session. Here are some notes from the event.
Public involvement in journalism
Because of social media, regular citizens can now affect how fast news gets around and where journalists get their information.
- Instant feedback: As soon as the story is posted, you can expect comments right away. As soon as the story is tweeted, you can expected it to be re-tweeted. It’s that instant.
- There’s a lot more accountability now. Journalists need to respond faster than ever. Audiences expect answers right away.
- Instant feedback can be a problem, too: Shorter deadlines mean less focus on the longer, harder answers required for complex issues.
- Blogs are, in some way, a reaction to what people aren’t getting from the media.
Cultivation of social media community
- Even before social media, news organizations have historically somewhat relied on public tips.
- A move from one-to-many to many-to-many: With their questions and comments, audiences can now effectively influence journalists on what to cover.
- News agencies are now looking more to their community for story ideas and to cultivate the news, giving the audience a greater role.
- CTV decided to create a specific Twitter account just for breaking news. The company also encourages its journalists to use technology to engage people.
- Loss of control: Amateurs now have taken some control from enterprise journalists. Some journalists are terrified of this trend.
What’s working and what’s not working
- Enterprise journalism is still relevant. Audiences still find it compelling. Longer stories actually still get a lot of hits.
- Popularity of celebrity galleries an issue, according to Pinchin.
- Some of the other panelists argued though that these celebrity galleries bring in audiences who might then click on other content.
The advent of Twitter
- Journalists now have to become brand managers, and they need to manage their own brand. Some feel uncomfortable with this idea. Some feel that journalists’ focus should be on creating compelling stories, not branding themselves.
- Twitter has now become email. Journalists check it every day.
- Twitter is now the go-to place. Unlike email where journalists get a lot of spam and irrelevant press releases, Twitter allows journalists to curate information that they think matter. Following relevant accounts allows journalists to somewhat filter information.
- Political bias: Important to keep in mind that Twitter has a political bias. This is why there was a lot of surprise on Twitter when Stephen Harpen won a majority government this year — most conservative voters are not on Twitter.
- Also, Twitter might be inhibiting our ability to think deeply. How does this affect writing under tight deadlines?
- Most of the panelists agreed that Twitter is only one tool in a journalist’s toolbox.
- Christiansen pointed out that Twitter is a good tool to get to know people. This is probably one of Twitter’s best uses.
- Most of the panelists agree that Twitter acts like a newswire service now.
How important is it to be first?
- Being first isn’t as important as being accurate.
- Some stories are derived from Twitter but research has to be done to ensure facts are real.
Facebook and journalism
- Facebook’s Subscribe button is almost like a “professionalization” of profiles. The media are using Facebook but being wary of things on profile.
- An issue: On Facebook you can create an amazing person that doesn’t represent you at all.
- CTV is using Facebook as a platform to build relationships. One thing they’ve tried is asking fans to suggest weekend activities instead of pushing content to them.
Emerging business model
- Metadata (such as geo-location) is relevant to advertisers, and it could help news sites generate revenue. OpenFile Vancouver is an example.
- Journalists need to re-adjust their expectations and their definition of “success”. If you’re creating content that is considered super niche, you probably shouldn’t expect 5 million Canadians tuning in.
- Niche is here to stay as long as the niche is “smart”. These niche categories can still be profitable because of sponsorships.
- News agencies need to determine how they determine success. Business models will change, and what success looks like will also change.
Broadcasters and social media policies
- Some journalists put a disclaimer on their Twitter profile to explicitly indicate that their tweets are their own opinion.
- CTV guideline for its “talents”: Don’t say anything on Twitter that you’re not comfortable saying on air. CTV doesn’t mandate what to tweet, number of tweets per day, etc.
Journalists and information overload
- PR pros should do research before pitching.
- They should make sure they’ve done enough research. Target properly — don’t pitch stories that the journalist has never written about.
- A couple of panelists agree that traditional PR is dead.
The panelists also agree that Journalist 2.0 isn’t really here yet. The industry is making huge strides to get there, but there’s more that can be done.
I work for a PR agency now, so I found this event interesting. It was interesting to hear how journalists handle news tips provided via social media and how they find news now.
There were some audience comments after that the event lacked discussion around citizen journalism. This is a valid point, although I disagree that it was because of the PR and marketing pros in the audience. The panel was made up of professional journalists, and I think that explained the lack of discussions about citizen journalism. Obviously, there needed to be at least one citizen journalist in the panel to have that discussion.
I thought that the comments made about the PR industry was also a little shallow. If anyone’s going to claim that an entire industry is dead, more context really should be provided. I’m glad there were more discussions about this very issue on Twitter after the event, though.
Social media is clearly changing journalism, but the latter is evolving as well. If there’s one thing I learned from this event, it is that journalism isn’t dead – it’s just going through a really awkward makeover.
© 2011, KC Claveria. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please link back to kcclaveria.com
