The BBC editors site has a post on the update to the BBC’s social media guidelines for journalists and for ‘official’ social media streams for correspondents.

The reasoning for that distinction was interesting:

We label the Twitter accounts of some presenters and correspondents as “official” – and are also today publishing some specific guidance for them [64KB PDF]. This activity is regarded as BBC News output and tweets should normally be consistent with this, reflecting and focusing on areas relevant to the role or specialism, and avoiding personal interests or unrelated issues. A senior editor keeps an eye on tweets from these accounts after they’re sent out.

Given some of my recent posts about tweeting as a journalist during the riots, this stuck out. I agree with the idea of consistency; if you are a BBC person then always tweet like you are the BBC. I think that is a point worth taking further. If you are a journalist, always tweet like a journalist.

Another point that caught my eye was

Finally, we remind people that programme or genre content – like @BBCBreaking andBBC News on Facebook - should normally be checked by a second person before it goes out. The guidance also urges people to think carefully about the practicalities and editorial purpose of this activity. It shouldn’t be started “because it’s what everyone does these days”.

The statement actually suggest that it should only be started if you have the resources to see it through. In principle, sound advice. In practice it could be a charter to simply not do it.

Credit where credit is due

The guidelines are pretty much concerned with output – what BBC people put out on social networks. But it’s the area of attribution that generates the most comment (when people are not bemoaning the character limit). The BBC came in for a bit of stick during the riots for crediting platforms not people for pictures from social networking sites. Pictures where from Twitter and not the person who put them there.

It seems that some people think that the ‘undue prominence’ argument is a suitable lever to get the BBC to change their approach. I think that’s a red herring. In this context they are sources first and commercial entities second. Taking that approach would suggest that no commercial company could be mentioned during the news. Perhaps the best you could argue is that there is an ‘undue reliance’ on social media instead of putting journalists on the street.

But I digress. FishFingers flags the issue asking:

if a comment is sent to the BBC and it is read on air or posted as part of “live” coverage, why are we told that it came from Twitter? Why does the communication medium have to even be mentioned? Why not simply say that the person sent a message?

It’s a good point but I think you do need to say where it came from as well as who said/posted it. Credit where credit is due but as journalists we should where possible, always cite our sources – makes it a bit more transparent doesn’t it?

I’m trying to whean myself of too much weekend posting – work life balance and all that. But I thought it was worth giving a bit more visibility to a comment on my recent post about The Plymouth Heralds new social networking site.

The Herald’s web editor Neil Shaw responded to a number of the points in my post. Picking up on the disparity of the number of users he makes the very valid point about marketing which he says “has been very restricted (non-existent) so far.” I think that’s a good point but I still wonder about ‘transferring users’ from Facebook. That would be my concern for any social network endeavor (including Johnston Press’ recent efforts).

That doesn’t take away from the Heralds success on Facebook, in number of followers at least, something that I take my hat off to. It would be great to hear a little more about the kind of things they have done to make Facebook work.

Anyway, back to the rest of the comment. I think Neil does a great job of explaining their position and the thinking behind it. I hope they get the support to do it.

The motivation behind our use of Facebook, iHerald, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter and YouTube has always been to interact with our users, rather than dump print content online and hope that appeals to the audience. We now get thousands of page views every day on thisisplymouth directly from these sites, and users on these sites discuss us and our news every day.

Hitting the 5,000 limit on Facebook was the trigger, but the real drive is to create a platform where our users can interact with us and each other AND share their content with us. Gathering User Generated Content is a key part of our goal here.

As for the Facebook group, its limitations have always disuaded us from putting in too much effort. The only advantage it has over the profile, so far as I can see, is that we can contact the group members in bulk – rather than only sending emails 20 at a time.

Facebook has allowed us to take our content direct to a new audience who are genuinely interested in us and Plymouth news, and it has allowed those users to contact us with information (just today we were tipped off about a large number of job cuts in the city, while yesterday we were sent tributes to a young mum who died in the city over Facebook). But while it has raised the profile and altered the image of our brand among a key audience (damn, must have been spending too much time with the marketing team) it can’t really provided the interaction we want, or the UGC.

Facebook has been great for us, we enjoy it and we will continue to use it, but iHerald is different.

As to duplication of effort, using Twitter apps we take an RSS straight from our site, through Twitter, on to Facebook so effort is minimal and iHerald is mostly about monitoring – but as the number of users increases we are building a team of editors to moderate the content.

Thanks for the comment Neil

Two interesting Slideshare slideshows to share.

First, the MEN’s Sarah Hartley has shared her round up of what the UK regional press is doing on the web

| View | Upload your own

And Read/Write web give us their take on the next big social trends online

| View | Upload your own

Via Steve Garfield

Isn’t Twitter great? As well as the very entertaining toon theme Friday that Paul B got started last week (kudos Paul) I picked up this page of advice to company/PR type people on “what they should be monitoring” from the masterful Mark Comerford.

In some respects this strikes me as one of those issues like quality -  If you have to have a policy or committee for quality then you have no quality. Likewise, if you arent doing some of the things on this list already, well, you’re not very good at PR are you.

Then again, perhaps that’s harsh.  Somethings often need repeating and the value re-emphasizing. After all who has time for this stuff in real life?

Maybe this is just as useful as a check list for journos to check through? And interesting list though.

On a related note. Am I being rude by posting a link that popped up in a twitter conversation. It feels kind of like e-eavesdropping.

Corey Bergman at Lost Remote highlighted a Wall Street Journal piece about large portal sites looking to niche sites for talent.

“Big Internet companies such as MSN and Yahoo have small teams whose job it is to ‘discover’ these smaller sites before their competition does. They scan the Web, attend industry conferences and hobnob with start-ups to get names of talented but obscure content providers.”

I know that some regional sites are doing this with bloggers but we are missing a trick if all we end up doing is reporting a success story of a local blogger signing a deal with AOL.

Get out there and find those sites before they do.

I tell my students to try and avoid pun headlines on the web. Physician heal thyself as they say.

I thought I would give a higher profile to a comment on my post about Jay Rosen left by Oliver Luft from Journalism.co.uk. He was at the Journalism Leaders forum and used his nifty stereo recordergramme device to get Rosen word for word.

A couple of audio snippets from Jay Rosen at the event:

On his next Assignment project

And talking about why UK papers are two years behind the US, bit of clarification on his point.

Worth a listen.

Also worth lifting out is a comment by Jay himself. He points to a few examples of the kind of wrk he is doing. This includes details of a new project “beat blogging with a social network”.

He’s also keen to point out that

When I said “two years behind,” I was not thinking of the people who on both sides of the pond are engaged in the new media discussion. People like Adrian, Robin Hamman, Kevin Anderson, Richard Sambrook, to name a few, are not “behind” anyone. This discussion in the UK and the discussion in North America are the same discussion. The Telegraph, The Guardian the BBC are doing as well as any US news organization. But you know that.

I was thinking more about the broad middle of the news profession and where they are in understanding the challenge of the Web and changing balance of power.

Changing balance of power is absolutely right.

After listening to a panel discussion on local journalism Jay Rosen says that the UK is two years behind the US when it comes to collaborative journalism.

It got me thinking about why.

Jay was one of the panel at the 7th Journalism Leaders Forum held at the Department of Journalism. The topic for discussion was Local Turf Wars, a look at how different media where tackling the hyperlocal problem and where the people formally known as the audience fitted in to making this happen. (you can see a webcast of the discussion here)

Jay kicked off the discussion with some insight on his collaborative journalism project Assignment Zero. For Jay it was as much an exercise in working out how elements of complex stories can be distributed to groups of experts to make better content as it was the end result. It was a proof of concept.

BBC angle

Emma Hemmingway, academic, broadcaster and author of Into the Newsroom gave us a peak inside the BBC’s efforts to get hyperlocal broadcasting off the blocks with a pilot study for LocalTV in the Midlands.

The BBC are presenting it as a success but the evidence suggested otherwise. In working out how to ‘use’ the audience , the BBC had divided them in to

• Can’s - Those with the kit and the know how
• Could’s – Those with the know how and no kit
• Cant’s. – Those with no know how and no kit

Over nine months producers battled with content and in apparent frustration with some of the communities ability to live up to BBC standards many producers ended up shooting and editing content themselves. It seems that in dividing up the audience there was one category they all fell in to – Not BBC!

Another panelist Neil Benson, Editorial Director for regionals for Trinity Mirror, thought this was the typical BBC “imposing their own standards and pomposity” on the project. Along with Darren Thwaites of the award-winning Evening Gazette in Teesside, he talked about some of their hyperlocal adventures.

He also took the opportunity to announce a new project called ‘Make the news’. Although he was light on detail (commercial reasons, darling) he says he was heavily influenced by Jay Rosen’s assignment zero.

According to Neil, journalists needed to start thinking like radio producers.

It was a point that wasn’t expanded on but one that I really liked.

Thinking like a producer

Coming from a broadcast background I’m comfortable with the idea of a producer. They are the ones driving the project, managing the team and pulling everything together to tell the story. Even though they have a firm hand on the editorial tiller, they rely on experienced researchers, expert advisers and experienced technical crew to bring the programme together.

I think Jay’s idea of collaboration is a lot like that. He said that the biggest challenge for journalists is controlling the division of labour. Working out who is best to handle that element of the story whilst keeping an editorial line.

That team effort is recognized in the credits that role at the end of a programme. The producer, director and Executive producer get to go last in the list- in UK TV that denotes that they are the most important – but everyones contribution is noted.

That’s in sharp contrast to the way things are done in newspapers.

Credit your sources?

One question from the floor wondered how we can get the specialist correspondent with 30 years experience to engage with citizen journalists to help tell stories. I responded that perhaps that was a case of the journalist recognizing that some of those ‘citizens’ where actually more experienced and knowledgeable than they where.

That wasn’t a criticism. What I meant was perhaps they needed to see their relationship with some of the audience differently and recognize a level of ‘professional equity’. They need to say, ‘we are both great at what we do. Working together we can produce something fantastic’(one of the driving aims of Rosen’s Assignment Zero) and then credit that relationship to reflect the level of collaboration.

But it was clear from the discussion and the insight Emma offered in the BBC approach that we still have a very obvious them and us mentality in journalism. If you are not a journalist, working in our organization, in the way we work, you are the audience. It doesn’t matter that you may be a nobel prize winning scientist, or a ‘person on the street’. Whenever we talk to you, you are all the same.

For me that’s the fundamental reason we are still lagging behind.

Some may see that as an positive, egalitarian approach. But if we want to take full advantage of the opportunities to connect with people that digital affords then we need to move beyond thinking of audience and contacts and seeing those we use to tell our stories, experts or not, on a more equal footing. That doesn’t mean trying to turn them in to journalist or relinquishing that term to all to use.

It simply means that we need to be more transparent, open and honest about the increasingly important role they play. But I’m not holding my breath for the day a list credits appears alongside a print story.

And if you don’t think you we have a way to go on that front, you ask any newspaper journalist if they are prepared to share their byline with any of the people they ‘crowsourced’ or the citizen journalists they used.

Get on board with your audience.

Jay Rosen ended the evening with an analogy.

To him the industry standing on the edge of digital ocean trying to work out how to get to the other side. We know that a lot of the ‘people formally known as the audience’ have already set sail.

But there is a chance that if we get on board and share with the those digital communities about to set sail, we may just get to the other side in one piece.

The problem is that journalists are still only willing to share the boat if they can be the captain. Everyone else has to be satisfied with being crew.

If we get over that then maybe we can make up some of that two years of lost time.

A great video from CommonCraft that explains  social networking (via Robin Hamman)

This video is focused on Del.icio.us, but you could also try social bookmarking sites like Magnolia or Furl.