6 Responses

1. Joe Murphy

   January 18th, 2009 at 4:21 am

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   Link bait no doubt — any journalist who hasn’t tried (twitter|facebook|rss|whatevs) is unlikely to be convinced to do so by a blog post telling them they’re not a journalist if they don’t… but, hey, if you change one person just one person’s mind, then you sir have done your job.

   My new year conviction? Write shorter, clearer sentences.

2. Dan Owen

   January 24th, 2009 at 9:48 am

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   Not sure about the link bait but intertesting just what attitudes people have with the likes of Twitter now.

   Even just a couple of years ago if we were to say to someone ‘you are going to build a network of people, these people will supply you with information and when you need clarification on a matter they may be able to help you’ this would have been considered a contacts book.

   we are working in exactly the same relms as we always have done, just across different platforms, utilising different technologies.

   where you may have had a closed book in the past with hundreds of phone numbers now you have potentially thousands of people from your region constantly feeding through snippets of potential news.

   yes the bulk of this is inane bollox but there will be some gems in there too.

   and the ability to strike up a relationship online is just as important too. this must be seen as a two way interaction not just an exploiting journalist on the take.

   i would also argue that any reporter worth their salt should also have numerous pipes set up on yahoo.

   Dan

3. debjam

   January 27th, 2009 at 8:53 pm

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   Nice post Andy – For me, your key point: “If you don’t engage, you aren’t punishing your employer, you are limiting yourself.”

   Too often reporters think being asked to get involved in the web is being asked to do extra work.

   But the question is how we encourage/convince people these are tools that can potentially help them source more and better stories…

   Suggestions anyone?? @danowen is starting off one of our staffers on twitter and another on pipes. The plan is to then show others the stories/contacts the ‘experiments’ have reaped – no doubt they will be many, if we get the coaching right!

4. Journalism students turn to social media « Reportr.net

   February 12th, 2009 at 2:22 am

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   [...] about Twitter. Andy Dickinson who teaches at the University of Central Lancashire summed it up in one of his New Year resolutions: I’m convinced that if you are journalist who isn’t curious about the web then you may [...]

5. Panic {RE}_Programming » Blog Archive » Budding Journalists Use Twitter, Blogs to Open Doors

   February 14th, 2009 at 1:04 am

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   [...] about Twitter. Andy Dickinson who teaches at the University of Central Lancashire summed it up in one of his New Year resolutions: I’m convinced that if you are journalist who isn’t curious about the web then you may [...]

6. Pressure to post: Are gurus expecting too much from journalists? « Please Stand By

   June 21st, 2009 at 4:47 pm

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   [...] But thinking about it, I couldn’t say it’s ‘rocked my world’ or anything like that. If anything, quite the opposite.I find it hard to make the time to do much blogging at work, purely because finding enough minutes in the day to sit down and write can oftentimes be difficult to justify. As a result, much of the updating I do to the Webeditor’s blog is to point people to other parts of the site, update them on changes or innovations we’re introducing or to crowdsource for features etc.And at home, I find it hard to blog when I’ve had a full day in the office. Switching off after spending 10, 11 hours in front of a computer screen … it’s not that easy to do. There’s regular bouts of blogger’s block, for want of a better term, as the sporadic nature of updates here will testify.For the record, at the moment I’m contributing to seven blogs – three of my own (including this one) plus another three over at DailyRecord.co.uk (including – for a few weeks anyway, our annual Big Brother coverage), plus an MMA/puro blog for the Mirror.Last year, I was also regularly contributing to the tremendous Dr Who review blog Behind the Sofa. But a lack of internet access earlier in the year, and just general burnout with work and the move, saw me with much regret having to call time on my involvement there.So it may be that I’m overextended myself anyway, but my posting’s not exactly regular to any of those.But in this new converged, cross-platform digital age there’s an increasing pressure on journalists, content producers, writers and digital media operatives to be across Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Audioboo, podcasts, Qik et al. To be engaging with readers and other media types alike.The otherwise usually sensible Andy Dickinson wrote earlier this year: [...]