Earlier this year I was at a journalism conference in Perugia and on one of the panels was a chap from the Huffington Post. He described how during the 2008 Presidential campaign they’d had a massive scoop when one of their contributors caught a candidate gaffe on video, it was uploaded and within hours it was leading most international news sites and the talk of the day on Twitter, Facebook and more.

Our panel discussed the implications of this on the media, and I said we’re living in a golden age of social media stupidity. Why? Because at the moment you can find copious amounts of information on people, their activities, and much more – but you can also find it very quickly.

I was reminded of this by Alison Gow’s excellent post on How to (Not) kill Journalism and how the web represents such an opportunity, particularly being able to crowdsource direct with your followers.

Sadly, I was also reminded of it by the university where I did my degree as X Factor reject Frankie Cocozza came to perform at the student night club.

Lots of excited youngsters queued to see Mr Cocozza and one young lady decided to ask for her ass to be signed by the man himself. She found herself on the Daily Mail and quickly saw tweets and Facebook messages about the offending incident, and a Facebook photo album, which was completely public, became a hunting ground for people to leave downright abusive comments about some of the people having their photo taken with Cocozza (Interestingly, the photo Daniel Bentley tweeted, which drew nearly 400 comments about a certain girl, has now been removed.

The comments were, as Dave Lee has previously pointed out in his post about YouTube comments, rude, abusive and wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else (see terms and conditions etc). So why do we unleash and let forth a torrent of “what we really think” online?

To me it is all about education. There’s not many who can say they’ve grown up with social media, for my generation (growing up around the turn of the century) it was MSN, AOL, ICQ and chatrooms when we were teens – oh and email. But these tended to be 1-2-1 chats, usually not able for use afterwards unless someone saved the chat and printed it out.

For the generation after it was MySpace, Faceparty and Bebo. But these weren’t discussed in school, there was no how to, we were being trained in Excel, Word and Access. The curriculum was Microsoft and how to “do things” on computers.

Journalists are nearly always early adopters, we worked out how to do things with mobile phones earlier than most, same with the internet and computers. We might not be the best, but we know how to make technology do what we want it to do in very creative ways. And it is the same with social media, around 2009 there was always the complaint that the only person you’ll find on Twitter is a journalist.

But as the population have mainly taught themselves how to use social media, and used it as something akin to a hobby, they perhaps don’t think too carefully about the real-life implications.

The amount of personal information available on Facebook is stunning, and yet these people might be X-Directory because they don’t want their home phone number being found. A quick search can reveal nearly the exact location you live in, who all your family are, your phone number, numerous photos of you (which are often dated and located), and very quickly a back story can be found on who you are.

Twitter acts as an archive of what you say. They aren’t deleted after a certain time, there are thousands of tweets stretching back, with their conversations available so context can be placed.

Journalists have been quick to the party, the number of “and he said on Twitter” stories has been growing. Especially as more and more people with authority or celeb status take to the service to use it as a communication channel. If it happens on Twitter, it will be on the mainstream media websites within hours and in the papers the next morning, and the magazines within a couple of days. The media amplifies the Facebook and Twitter spats, announcements and stupidity to whole new levels.

Before if you did something stupid, your friends knew it and would (most of the time) never let you forget. Now if you’re filmed naked and running into a window on holiday you are that bloke off the YouTube clip, forever and on your CV.

So, why is this so great for journalists? Because it is real. It’s moments we just wouldn’t get to see otherwise, it’s the angry opinions of someone unleashed directly and it’s an insight into what people really think and do. It’s lifting the lid off life itself, and that’s what shifts page views and sells papers.

Until the right education on social media privacy is given at an early age to the masses, this boom time will continue. I guess it will be anything you tweet may be given as evidence, and as we’ve seen with the Facebook riot inciters – it rightly can be.

Image credit to charlessc

During a panel entitled ‘Netizens of the world unite’, Peter Ludlow – an academic who has written extensively about social media and the likes of Second Life – said the media needed to take a more grown up approach to reporting on Facebook and Twitter.

The panel discussion presented the case where large corporations, such as Google, were quashing the upload of controversial material to websites such as Youtube. An Italian journalist had recorded extracts of a radio station in the North of the country which was aligned to a right-wing movement. He had posted these on Youtube but found he was being done for violation of their terms – and was nearly banned completely from the network. Was it right for Google to restrict his expression and ability to post controversial material?

Good points were made about how these big private companies were setting conditions where users gave everything away to them – copyright, identity, privacy and there was little users could do about it.

One Italian journalist gave the example of how if he has a complaint about his milkman he can go to Trading Standards or the Environmental health and something can be done about it. But with social networks, who regulates? And do we want anyone to regulate?

Ludlow also talked about the need for education on how to use social media and the internet better. But who would do this? Would it be delivered alongside sex education in schools? There were questions about whether the government should step in and ‘break up’ large social networks and create open source alternatives. Ludlow made an excellent point, that if you create an open source version no one would go there as the reason you’re on Facebook is because all your friends are there.

You also have to think, with the challenges facing governments and the cuts in public spending – can they justify getting involved in social networks which a) all their citizens are not on and b) they just might not have the resources to effectively police.

Overall the discussion made me think about our media use of Facebook. We use it to promote our brands, to rip pictures of people and generally to use it as a way of finding stories. But is there a place for a consumer watchdog role for the media? We’ve seen with mobile phone companies, utilities etc we monitor price changes closely and report on people who get ripped off – challenging the likes of EDF and Virgin Media to explain their policies and prices. But how much do we challenge Facebook and will this change once the shine wears off?

Had some media law refresher training this morning. It was tough going back three years and trying to remember specific cases but the best bit of the session were the debates about the challenges now faced by journalism when it comes to online and the law.

The web is moving quickly and with certain acts dating back to to the last century, you won’t find mention of Facebook in the legal statements. First things first, if you’re unsure about media law go and grab a copy of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists. You won’t regret it.

The three main things we discussed were dealing with breaking news online, and in particular breaking crime news, the use of content from social media sites (particularly images) and commenting on stories by users.

Breaking news online and the dangers

A crime has happened. The Police are on the hunt for two men who have raided the local betting shop. They are armed. You have the basic details and after confirming you’ve got it online. The headline screams out ‘Armed raid at betting shop’ and you’ve got an image of the smashed in door of the betting shop. No arrests have been made. Do you turn the comments on the story? You’ll likely just end up with a load of hearsay that will become obsolete once the Police make arrests but you might also get some extra details, you might stumble upon an eyewitness.

A few hours later and the Police force issued stills of the men they are looking for from the CCTV and give more accurate descriptions. You run these images in full with a big appeal for information from the Police. You create this as a separate article and through your keyword tagging the articles become ‘related’ in your content management system.

You leave the old article in the content management system and overnight the Police name the two men they are looking for and release mugshot images of them. You create a new article and run these images, again this story joins your ‘related stories’ list.

The arrests are made and you’ve still got all the information up on your site. Three articles, all with varying levels of detail and images. Possibly some video of the CCTV and a load of comments from readers. Charges are made and eventually, the trial will start and all this content will be in your archive and might start showing up in the related stories column.

Solution? Have one article and keep that updated. Avoid creating new articles if possible. Keep an eye on pictures/video and remove when no longer relevant. Avoid any compromising photos, just use straight up headshots. Ensure your CMS provides a ‘last updated’ date and timestamp somewhere on the article.

Use of content from social media sites

Facebook and Twitter. A goldmine of information and content, but a legal minefield? There’s not many tests cases out there in terms of using content from social media sites. We had an example of taking a photo from a social networking site of a 17-year-old girl who had died, but the photo showed her drinking alcohol.

Now the dead can’t sue for defamation but the mother would probably not be best pleased to see a smiling photo of her now-dead daughter with a glass of champagne in her hand. Plus, who owns the copyright to the photo?

Solution? We decided we’d run the photo, but probably crop out the alcohol aspect. Or try to find a more suitable photo. In terms of copyright, it’s a tricky one and does seem standard journalist practice now to rip photos from websites despite the copyright resting either with the social network or the user who uploaded the photo.

Commenting on stories

The elephant in the room. Do you post-moderate or pre-moderate? Do you have someone monitoring comments all-hours? Do you let people comment on every story? Do you close comments after a set period of time? Or is it just a free-for-all and it’s the Internet damnit and we can’t control it. Do you let journalists engage in the comments and the debate, or do you tell them to steer clear?

Solution? We couldn’t reach one. But we were sure that media websites benefit massively from having comments on stories – but for court stories the comments should be turned off. We felt more needed to be done to educate people commenting on the idea of ‘fair comment’ and how what they said needed to be based on facts, an honest opinion, without malic and in the public interest. We felt it was important for journalists to be able to respond to comments and engage with the debate as journalism is becoming a two-way process.

Image credit to Eric E Johnson

It was a very interesting morning. The above is just a taster but any of your experiences relating to media law and online journalism would be welcomed in the comments below.

There’s been a lot of talk about funding journalism and how the web can play a part in this, but the web above all for journalists offers an opportunity to create readers+.

Journalists have always had contacts, those people who we can go to for comment and stories. They might be professional people, police officers, nurses or the local cleaner at the comprehensive who overhears gossip when he’s having a ciggie round the back of the head’s office.

Now, though, through social media and the web we’ve got a pool of intelligent, connected and helpful people at our finger-tips. Here’s how to leverage it:

Searching Twitter for key topics reveals what your area knows

If you’re using Twitter, learn how to search for key topics and phrases. For example, we’ve recently had an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the South Wales Valleys. Searching for ‘legionnaires’ will bring up any mention of it on Twitter and you can see who tweeted it. This means you can keep on top of what other news sources are saying about the outbreak and also watch out for anyone tweeting ‘Shit! My gran’s got legionnaires’!’ or ‘Yay! Work closed tomorrow because of legionnaires!’. Bam. A tweet like that and you might have a way in.

Don’t forget the private word…

Using Twitter’s private message function. Using the legionnaires’ example above, if you reply publicly to that tweet you might not get much of a response. If you follow that person, they might follow you back, then you’ll have a chance to private message them on Twitter. This is an easy way to exchange phone numbers/email address’. Also, check if the person has a blog or website addressed listed on their profile as this might give you a way to get in touch.

Asking for help and case studies

Asking for help via social networks. You’ve been landed with a 800-word feature on a topic you don’t know that much about, you need some experts but you also want some real people. A newspaper full of X spokesperson and stuffy academic Y is not much fun. We like reading what Mr Jones from the local action group has to say. Pop a quick post out on Twitter and Facebook saying you’re looking for help ‘finding women over 30 who drink more than 2 glasses of red wine a week’ – or something like that. I’ve been toying with the idea of setting up a ‘We’re looking for…’ page on WalesOnline where we list every type of person/expert etc we’re trying to speak to and the reporter dealing with the story. Make sure you get whoever deals with the main media twitter/facebook accounts to syndicate your requests.

Making yourself available

Get your email address on stories (both offline and online). People like email. It’s often more convenient than a phone call, and let’s face it calling a journalist can be a scary thing to do – especially if you catch them on deadline and you’re trying to get a notice out about a village fete.

Contacts should be searchable

Setup a Google Doc with all your contacts. I have a google doc contacts book (as well as a downloaded backup and hard copy print out done every couple of months). Create columns for forename, surname, what they do, what they are good for, the area they relate to, email address, mobile, phone, address, website and twitter account. This then becomes an incredibly powerful database of contacts you can search at a moments notice – without needing to remember the name of the chair of that residents action group you once met at a planning committee. You can search by name, what they do or what area they cover. Once you’ve got a contacts list, it’s worth sending out a quarterly email to those contacts to let them know what stories you’ve been working on and what you will be working on (i.e. what you could use a hand with).

Share the contact love

You can also setup shared contacts lists via Google Docs, so for example in our newsroom we have a shared Cardiff councillors contacts list. This allows all reporters access, is searchable by different fields and can be updated if a reported gets a new or better contact line for councillors.

Facebook will yield super-fans

Finding specialists and super-fans on Facebook. Facebook has groups. These are setup to allow people with similar interests to come together and celebrate the brilliance of, for example, William Shatner. This is searchable via the groups tag in Facebook, and if you look carefully it’ll show you the groups creator. You can then click on this person, view a basic profile and most importantly send them a message. You don’t even need to be a friend to send them a message. It could be your way in to getting in touch with a relevant and useful person.

Bloggers can be local and niche experts

Make a list of bloggers and subscribe to what they do (use an RSS reader to do this, there’s plenty of good ones out there like Google Reader. RSS allows you to read blog posts without having to visit lots of different websites all the time!). Monitor local bloggers, both location-orientated ones and topic-specific ones. If a new restaurant is opening in town, the local food blogger might know about it and be able to offer an extra few lines of comment.

More than meets the eye to online photos

Make use of photos. Flickr is a powerful tool for keeping an eye (literally, a visual eye) on your area. Monitor it for new photos and get your own flickr page. When you’re out and about on stories, take photos (don’t be afraid of using your mobile phone for this) of interesting things and post them to the Flickr account. Connect with local photographers. Subscribe to a feed of your local groups photos (search Flickr for your area) and you’ll be able to see, in your RSS reader, all the local photos being taken. You’ll be amazed at the stories which can come from an interesting Flickr photo. Plus, if picture desk are being pissy, you might be able to ask a Flickr photographer to use one of their photos for a story.

Why have readers+?

Readers+ will help you out. They comment on stories, they re-tweet and share your stories. They might even blog about something you’ve written about and carry on the debate. They will stick up for you. They begin to have a personal attachment to your work and style. They are not government officials, PR people or other people paid to speak to you. They are real people. It also increases their attachment to your media brand and who knows, they might buy the paper and visit the website more as a result.

Image credit to mararie

How have you used social media to find out things? Any other tips on using the web to help with your reporting? Let me know in the comments below

Preston Tweetup in action

I thought I’d take the question above as a starting point. A Tweetup is a new concept and it’s something that is really starting to catch-on in some places.

I organised and hosted Preston’s first Tweetup just over a week ago and it was a roaring success. We had nearly 40 people in the room, many of them with wireless enabled laptops and mobiles, all contributing to a discussion on one topic.

The idea for a Tweetup is that instead of having a networking event or discussion where the conversation is completely physical you also have a virtual conversation going on. Bear with me, it does make sense. The structure of the event is an opening preamble and then a topic is discussed by the people in the room – often splitting off into separate groups. This makes it easier to manage.

For example, at the Preston Tweetup we were discussing the Preston Guild in 2012 and how the web can be used in it.

The discussions were flowing around the tables but also on twitter, take a look at the #prestontweetup hashtag feed and you can see all the good stuff that was coming out of people chatting about the topic. Yes, some of it went off on tangents – but that happens with any discussions.

The best thing about the Tweetup was that as an organiser I was getting instant feedback. If there was a problem with something I could pick up on it straight away by watching the tweets. I could also easily collect information after the event and condense it.

This backchannel conversation was incredibly useful and exciting. It also allowed some great interaction between the groups, so that people might take a question asked by one group and explore it and the then fling some more questions back out into the twitter stream for other groups to consider. There was a fantastic collaborative environment at the event.

So, I would really suggest giving a Tweetup a try. You don’t need 40 people there, maybe just 5, but get going with it and see what happens. And if you’re in the education or conference/networking sectors, you need to be on this. Doing it. Making it happen.

personal branding

This month’s topic over on Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists is an interesting one and one that I voted for in our very democratic way of deciding December’s topic. What have you done to build your brand online?

See where you are online

The first thing I did was go and see what is out there about me on the internet. A quick Google of my name ‘ed walker’ made me realise first of all: a) I have a really common name b) There’s a ‘Sir Edward Walker’ – not me. Having a common name is the first hurdle in building a brand online, because if you’re called Japhael Jiminez – chances are you’re pretty unique.

Start a blog

Starting a blog is a must. This should be the core of your brand online. This is where you live and breath online. If possible try and buy your own domain and a bit of hosting, as having your name as a yourname.com/.co.uk/.net will help massively when it comes to boosting yourself up those all important Google rankings. After starting your blog and making it look pretty, get posting. Post about stuff that matters to you, it’ll probably matter to other people. Your blog should be your living CV, blog about stuff you’re working on, your success’ and even some of your failures. Make sure you’ve got an ace ‘About’ page, so that if people want to know more about you they can find out.

Link to people

You’re not going to build this brand alone. When posting on your blog, link out and link far and wide. If you link to people, they will probably come and look at your blog and see who you are. They might even link back if they like your stuff!

Have a good presence on LinkedIn

Forget Facebook, Bebo, MySpace etc, LinkedIn is the professional networking site and it can be used by potential employers to find you and see who you are and what you do. Ensure your profile is fully filled out, keep it updated reguarly and you’ll be surprised how much traffic it can bring to your blog and also how highly LinkedIn profiles rank in Google and other search engines.

Claim your blog on Technorati

Technorati is the bloggers website. It’s important to claim your blog as this will tell you who is linking to you and give you an authority ranking. As more people link to you, your authority grows.

Listen to those who know

I suggest people like Chris Brogan and Adam Singer, who aren’t journalists, but have built up highly successful blogs and follows online. They have built a brand around themselves online, and as a result have benefitted financially but also in building up a big and useful network of contacts.

Network offline and transfer online

Face to face is still and always will be the most powerful communication tool in the world. Make use of it, at a networking event? At a party? Social media is reasonably in right now and while it may not be the best conversation starter it’s a great conversation finisher. Make sure you leave people you’ve been speaking to with your blog address, or if you’re a guest speaker make sure it’s on your slides.

Twitter and other social media

Make sure you’re using social media such as Twitter to join in the conversation, find and follow relevant people. Give people a reason to follow you by posting regularly and by posting interesting links to Twitter. Don’t tell us what you had for breakfast, that’s what Facebook status updates are for. Make sure all your social media presences link to your blog and that your blog links to all your social media presences. Think of your blog as the continent with lots of little islands around it.

Join relevant networks (like TNTJ!) and get networked

If there’s a network for your industry, join it and meet people. You’ll be surprised how interested they’ll be in what you do and what you may be blogging about.

Image in this post is used under creative commons from flickr user See-Ming Lee

He’s right, everything needs to be accessible and the old barriers within business’ need to disappear or it will be the business’ themselves who disappear. The very nature of the web is to share, I’m writing this blog post now and I’m sharing something with you. Someone tags this in delicious and shares it with their network, someone else emails it to a friend. It’s easy to share online.

That’s why it’s important that organisations, even the smaller ones like I work for, get their house in order and get everyone sharing. The flow of information around an organisation is almost as important as the flow of information from the organisation. I work for an organisation, a Students’ Union, who are a very sharing and caring kind of organisation, but there has to be a putting aside of old issues and a realisation that if the organisation is to move forward then information, best practice and most importantly ideas are not discussed behind closed doors but are passed around to be added to, taken away and made better.

While people hide behind job titles, department names and bottom lines then nothing will move forward. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, if you’re not sharing with your colleagues ideas then things won’t happen. For public organisations there are definitely loads of ideas floating around about how to make things better, how to improve what’s already there – I’ve had many of them while developing the Union’s new website – but they never go anywhere other than into a pad to be thought about next year. What if that pad was online? You scribble a note, and everyone can see it an contribute. The staff intranet shouldn’t be a boring list of when the next fire inspection is, it should be a buzzing community of everyone having their say about the next big idea.

And if there’s not enough people to fulfil all the ideas, as inevitably with public organisations there aren’t, then share them with others. You’re not in competition, you’re all working towards a common goal. As Chris Brogan says:

Sharing is a new business tool. And it’s not really obvious. You have to think about the ways you can share, the ways you can’t. You have to weigh whether you’re giving away the best part, or if there’s plenty to go around (so often, the answer is B).

So there we go, how is this sharing going to happen? If the people at the top see the possibilities that social media can have the opportunities for innovation that are bubbling underneath them.

• Why everything about the North of England is best in Britain

Completely agree. Although London is where I grew up, I feel more at home ‘up north’. Plus it’s a hell of a lot cheaper. Stupid Conservative think-thank.

• LinkedIn warns social networkers about the dangers of ‘frolleagues’

Good point made, but are they just trying to protect their brand and make sure they don’t get overrun by a load of crap ads and marketing materials like MySpace did? I hope LinkedIn stays the way it is, as it’s a useful tool.

• 50 common mistakes non-geeks make with computers and the web

Great stuff, made me chuckle. I still use hotmail, damn.

• OK! defies drops in women’s weekly market

Good news for the missus’ magazine (Star), 13% year-on-year increase. Even better news for Richard Desmond.

So, to kick things off I’m looking at Action Aid. As their website header proudly states they’ve been fighting poverty for 35 years – but how is the web playing a role in fighting poverty?

The key to any successful campaign is PEOPLE, people and MORE people. People feel, have rights and have time/effort/energy. Many hands make light work and all that. Well, on the frontpage of Action Aid’s site – perhaps not as prominently as it could be – is ‘MyActionAid‘. This is hosted on a separate URL so can be promoted offline. This is a social network for activists.

Social networks and media should be great for charity. They allow the creation of social networks around specific topics, and for Action Aid they’ve taken this to a higher level by hosting and creating their own network. I can’t get access to it, as I’m not a member, but this rather funky (E4 style video clip) shows me the power of it:

Good stuff and great use of video, plus it helps if you’ve got a relative celebrity to do your voiceovers (yeah that bloke off the E4 ads who puts loads of sarcasm into everything). However it’s only had 266 views on Youtube.

The homepage of MyActionAid could be a bit better, they highlight upcoming events but it could do with showcasing more of the fundraising events that are upcoming. Overall though, a cracking social network for activists.

The campaigns section is titled ‘What you can do‘ – good stuff, if I saw the section ‘Campaigns’ I’d be bored stiff. This is engaging and a call to arms, it says ‘We are ActionAid, come join us’. Not ‘We are ActionAid, we campaign on this’. Again, it’s about engagement and people. I managed to end up clicking a big circle called ‘Take action now’ but when I did I was a bit disappointed to find a news story about a Labour minister giving his heart. The form to actually take action about this was below the scroll line, so I might not have bothered to look. If there’s a form, put it high up or at least have a big link to it.

There’s good use of a blog for the campaign on targeting poverty, charity blogs can sometimes be a bit weak but the brilliant PR stunt of applying to demolish St Paul’s cathedral in protest at mining projects in India makes for great material for a blog, especially as it gives the charity a chance to expand and add detail.

So to sum up:

• Great social network for activists, but frontpage could have more of a buzz about it and feature more of what the activists are doing to campaign, raise money etc
• Good use of blogging to support campaigns, helped by some creative PR
• Hiding away forms that encourage engagement below scroll lines is not good
• Good use of video to promote the social network, was good to watch and helped by star voiceover

Brogan posted about how to make the most of your LinkedIn profile and he’s spot on. LinkedIn is far more valuable than facebook. I see facebook as something social, something for keeping in touch but LinkedIn is a professional network. One of the things I picked up from some training last month that the future will involve those who are good and want to be leaders in business, or anything else for that matter, people who are able to build and manage a network.

Networks are even easier to build now thanks to online and social media tools. Make use of them and keep building a network, I know I will be as a I progress through my career. You never know when these people are going to come in useful.