Social media is going to be mandatory at the BBC. Peter Horrocks new director of BBC Global News told the Guardian: “This isn’t just a kind of fad… I’m afraid you’re not doing your job if you can’t do those things. It’s not discretionary”
And he’s right of course. Social media tools are whimsical self congratulatory models no more – if indeed they ever were. They are the tools that most journalists should be using for their trade. Personally, I could not have survived my recent weeks of regional work experience without them. They meant I could turn up in Edinburgh, Bristol or somewhat less alien Highgate and Hampstead and still provide an insight into local issues – not to mention an entire social network of local contacts just an @ sign away.
image: Matt Hamm
At the Edinburgh Evening News they gave me a page three story on my first day, about renewable Christmas trees. In Bristol at the Evening Post Facebook came to my rescue with a comment thread of people discussing the best place to source a sledge after stocks had diminished due to extended West Country snow.
At the Ham and High twitterers came up tops again with probably my best spot – a fire was happening there and then in Highgate, and I got there in time to snap the fire engines as they extinguished the last of the flames.
And still such draconian implementation of social media worries me. Often the immediacy of the breaking news story on twitter is fantastic and as close to the horses mouth a modern journalist is likely to get, but the wonderful world of twitter also misses a hell of a lot.
I noticed this particularly while at the Bristol Evening Post. It was snowing heavily outside and it seemed the twitterverse could think of nothing else. Every post mentioning Bristol or from a person based in the Bristol area contained the white stuff, and very little else. The real stories that week came from in depth journalism on drinking statistics, court reporting and Freedom of Information act requests. The pages were peppered with snowmen and sledges sure, but the newsroom would have been doing the city a disservice if they had not had their traditional news values and reporting to fall back on
Horrocks continued: ‘If you don’t like it, if you think that level of change or that different way of working isn’t right for me, then go and do something else, because it’s going to happen. You’re not going to be able to stop it.’
It’s important to keep refreshing that blue bird, hoping for a scoop to fall into your lap, but reporters who are skeptical of the new social media deserve to have a voice too. If they provide innovative and relevant stories that haven’t already graced an RSS feed then more the better. Horrocks’ my way or the highway approach may be a fresh approach for the BBC but it will be a dangerous day if every social media skeptic leaves to ‘do something else.’ Newspapers and news organizations would likely lose a lot of older talent that no twitter search or facebook group will be able to replace.
Rag Doll 