Gameiac Maniac

 

• How do journalists participate without sacrificing objectivity or credibility?
• What about legal and ethical issues?
• What happens if the audience doesn’t participate?

News as a conversation:

• Many journalists preferred news as a lecture
• Editors have to develop cheerleader and outreach skills
• Online commentary is a bete noire — participants are rarely as constructive or respectful as journalists would like
• Beyond interactivity, the power of transparency makes online comments worth the investment

Making conversation provides journalists with a lot more sources

• Conversing through comments:

              1. Most online news stories contain a comments link

              2. Audience always chooses what kind of journalism it wants

              3. Rarely do controversial conversations end up in court since prior restraint

                   has been ruled unconstitutional

              4. “Today, there is vastly more interaction between the social Web and the

                   news Web than ever before.”  

• Conversing through social networking:

              1. A new way to connect with people and communicate information, but the

                   standards and values of journalism do not change

              2. Benefits to news as a conversation:

                   * Provides transparency on the reporting process

                   * Enables an immediate feedback loop

                   * Spreads awareness of news coverage through word-of-mouth

                      marketing

              3. Common for people to discover news on social media sites — news

                   organizations must go where the audience is and participate how

                   the audience participates

              4. Social media tips for journalists:

                   * Familiarity with the tools is important

                   * Be mindful that you represent more than just yourself

                   * Presume your tweets, etc., will go further than you intend for them to go

                   * Ask your boss to follow you on Twitter — it’s a good accountability

                      measure

Why the news conversation is important:

• Knowledgable users can provide tips, links, additional insight or even clarify a post
• Five different types of user generators based on participants’ motivation:

             1. Those motivated by money (smallest)

             2. Those motivated by ego

             3. Those motivated by issues

             4. Accidental bystanders (largest) 

             5. “Plain old crazy” users every Web site seems to have

• If someone posts something questionable, the online community will “smoke it out pretty fast”

Build and manage a community online:

• Make news participatory — power of the Web comes from its interactivity

              1. The link, which connects one piece of information to another, is the

                   primary building block of the digital age

              2. Secondary building block is the comment, or contribution, from audience

              3. The 1-10-100 rule for participatory online communities states:

                   * One percent of the user community actually create content

                   * 10 percent of the user community will “synthesize” the content by posting

                      a comment, e-mailing a link to a friend, etc.

                   * 100 percent of the user community benefit from the actions of the first

                       two groups

              4. How mainstream organizations make news more participatory:

                   * Message boards;

                   * Most commented, e-mailed, viewed;

                   * Display blog links to an article;

                   * Social bookmarking and sharing tools on stories;

                   * Social networks on sites

              5. Making news participatory creates brand loyalty

• Journalists must get involved and build online communities:

             1. Evangelize the brand, both print and online

             2. Solicit content and community participation

             3. Moderate comments, blogs, user submissions

             4. Solve user problems with Web tools

             5. Staff booths at weekend events

             6. Run contests to drive participation and traffic

             7. Inform community establishments about advertising opportunities

             8. Tap the power of the crowd during breaking news events

             9. Acknowledge who sent tips and how

           10. Set up and moderating a message board forum if breaking news is

                  significant  

• Develop sources through social networks:

             1. Generic, large-scale social networks like Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn

             2. Niche social networks like CafeMom or Gather

             3. Building a niche social network for your sources with a free tool like Ning or

                 Google Groups 

             4. When journalists join existing social networks they should immediately let

                  people know who they are and that they are on specific social networks

• Collaborate with your community:

              1. The audience increasingly provides the “what” while journalists provide

                   the “why” and the “how”

              2. Regular citizens using mobile phones to report breaking news while

                   journalists provide the context and connect them together

              3. A form of pro-am journalism

              4. War is over between mainstream media and bloggers

              5. Networked journalism: reporters and bloggers complement each other’s

                  skills to expand the reach of the news

              6. The more resources shrink, the more essential collaboration becomes

Keep conversations accurate and ethical:

• Set guidelines for participants
• Monitor offensive postings

              1. Some editors turn off the comments, others keep a closer eye on them   

              2. Anonymity often blamed for destructive comments and trolls

              3. Many editors now believe requiring actual identities would stifle valuable

                  input

              4. Enlist community for help: flag comment as inappropriate; police the

                  comment streams 

• Know your legal responsibilities — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 1996

             1. Online publishers held to distributor standards — allows Web publishers

                  to open their sites to interactivity without worrying about verifying

                  every statement published by users

              2. Original creator of content can still be held liable for defamatory

                   statements

              3. You have no obligation to remove material from your site if you’ve been

                   notified by another user that it’s defamatory or problematic

              4. Just because you can leave defamatory material published by someone

                  else on your site doesn’t mean you should 

• Correct errors:

              1. Accuracy is a hallmark of the best journalism

              2. Nobody’s perfect, so mistakes will be made

              3. Journalists lose credibility when they fail to prevent and correct errors

              4. It’s in the best interest of news organizations to standardize a workflow for

                  error correction and to create the expectation for all journalists to be

                  accountable for their mistakes

Social media is journalism:

• Connects journalists and reporters to people and information
• Doesn’t replace other forms of connecting with people — adds to them       

“The world is always talking, and journalists can get a lot out of listening.” 

This entry was posted on Monday, March 7th, 2011 at 9:27 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.