The changing face of news

Andy Carvin: "I get uncomfortable when people refer my twitter feed as a newswire. It’s not a newswire. It’s a newsroom. It’s where I’m trying to separate fact from fiction, interacting with people. That’s a newsroom."

Flickr photo of Tunisian protests by marcovdz

July 6th 2005 - I found myself stuck beneath the armpits of revelling Londoners as thousands celebrated the announcement that London was to host the 2012 Olympic Games. It was one of the great moments for my home city and one I'll never forget. Sadly, the following day was to prove even more memorable as four coordinated bomb attacks brought London to a standstill.

At that time I was working for GMTV as an interactive producer. I took a camera down to Trafalgar Square on the day we won the Olympic bid and we ran a picture gallery on the GMTV website, alongside an appeal for viewer photos from Trafalgar Square and their messages of congratulations. We also had a poll asking whether Brits were happy that London won the bid - believe it or not, it was not universally supported.

The following morning I was in the GMTV gallery when news of a problem on the underground hit the wires. At first it was being reported as a probable electrical fault. Within minutes we had a line to the Met Police and Transport For London as news of a second Circle Line problem and another on the Picadilly Line filtered through. Scrambling to get reporters in place and phonos with spokespeople, we broke the news to the nation that London had become a target for a series of co-ordinated attacks.

Just seven years ago, as two of the biggest stories in London's recent history broke in the space of two days, the public relied entirely on news publishers to get their information. Could you imagine if those two stories broke in London now? How would you learn about it first?

It's more than possible that the answer to this is through social media. At 1.30pm on July 6th, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr and more would have been full of pictures of Brits draped around the Union Jack, videos of M People blasting out "Search for the Hero", messages to friends and family declaring "I was there", jokes, pithy commentary, informed opinion and celebrity endorsements. The nation would find out about the story simply by virtue of the fact that their ears were open. It would be difficult to avoid the conversation.

On July 7th, this would have been even more pronounced. The Twittersphere would have been full of chatter the minute the first explosion was heard (though unlike South Korea, there is no internet access on London's Tube). People would have been jumping on Facebook to let their friends know that they were okay - I had to call all my family members individually - and to share pictures and videos taken on their smartphones.

So does this mean that the importance of traditional media is dwindling? Simply put, no. While traditional news organisations are to an extent losing control over the message, they are more important than ever. 

The problem with social media (and the citizen journalism output that goes hand in hand with it) is that it is entirely unregulated. The job of a journalist is to report verified facts. So the job of contemporary news telling, at least in part, is to become a social curator. While a news publisher may no longer be the first voice in the news conversation, they need to be the first trusted voice. It's a semantic difference, but one that could spell success or defeat for news organisations.

News should no longer be thought of as a product. It is now an always-on and collaborative process. News publishers need to listen as much as they speak. And then they need to filter the pertinent from the noise. They should enable the news consumer to find what's important to them quickly, easily and always accurately.

Reddit's coverage of the Toronto shooting a month ago makes for interesting reading and a possible glimpse of the news output of the future.What is unique about Reddit's style of storytelling versus traditional journalism it that it is an uneditorialised aggregation of updates available from those involved in the incident.

Fact checking is available to the reader right from consumption, thanks to the inclusion of links to the sources themselves. And while it may be somewhat difficult to read at first glance, it actually includes context that no other news publisher had when it was published. It included hard-hitting tweets from people attending the party about the potential for violence before the shooting even occurs. It also used messages posted by those involved to talk about the shooting being part of a possible gang war, including links to individual tweets from people threatening more violence. There were tweets and YouTube videos posted by members of a gang that one of the victims was apparently associated with.

Thanks to the curation of updates from those intimately involved in the story, there is more depth and context to this narrative than any other mainstream new publisher was able to produce. Ultimately, that makes for a more human story and that's extremely powerful.

Journalists need to stop seeing themselves as gatekeepers of information and start to look at journalism as a collaborative effort involving all kinds of different sources. Those who learn how to make use of all these tools will end up producing better journalism. They'll end up producing stories with greater depth and context. They'll end up telling stories that resonate more deeply with their readers on a base human level. And news publishers who have these journalists on board, will end up winning in the war of the changing worlds.

Aussie Court Rules that Facebook is Advertising

But are you really?

The world of social media is an ever evolving one and as brands work out how to best use new technologies to create word of mouth around their products, the goal posts are endlessly being moved. Never more so than in Australia, where this week a landmark court case has made companies sit up and take notice of what is being said on their Facebook pages in ways that they never have before.

The Australian Advertising Standards Board this week ruled that Facebook is an advertising medium, and as such, that company pages must comply with pertinent codes and laws. So far so good. However, one ramification of this ruling is that a company would not only be responsible for their own page posts, but also for any public posts that appear within their page environment. What this means is that any consumer posting sexist, racist or factually inaccurate information on branded Facebook pages are no longer a nuisance, they are a legal risk.

Brands have long argued that Facebook isn't an advertising medium, but rather a networking tool that facilitates interaction between the customer (or consumer) and the brand. However, the Australian Courts disagree and so now brands will have to ensure that the only content that appears on their page is content that they would be happy to distribute on other advertising platforms. A quick look through much of the user generated commentary on branded pages and it will become clear how far this is from the current position.

So what will this mean for brands? Well, brands will have to resource their pages accordingly to ensure that every incoming piece of user information that makes it onto the page is read and verified for legal compliance. They will have to react quickly to anything that is inaccurate or that falls foul of advertising standards. Whether this means deleting or simply putting the record straight is yet to be seen. And how quickly the law will expect this retraction to occur is up for debate.

The question is whether or not brands will bother to do this. I think there's general acceptance that using social media to produce positive digital word of mouth is beneficial to a brand. However, if this positive word of mouth now has the potential to put the brand at risk of legal issues, some may consider it too risky or high maintenance and revert to more traditional media through which to generate social buzz. Alternatively, we may simply see a move to restrict the consumer voice through these social channels, which would negate the whole concept of social marketing.

What is for sure is that brands can no longer afford to take a hands-off approach to what consumers are saying on their pages. If you build it, they will talk. And not listening to that talk is no longer an option.

It's important to note that this ruling has been made in Australia and does not apply to New Zealand... yet.