Unit Structures: News Organizations and Social Networks

News Organizations and Social Networks
Posted 10/02/2007 12:53:00 PM |

The other day, I took a phone call from Steve Outing of Editor and Publisher, who wanted to talk about how news organizations should approach Facebook. The resulting interview was published yesterday, and it's a good read. As an avid news consumer (both print and digital), I'm of the firm belief that news organizations should spend time and effort trying to integrate their content into our lives. Facebook, and other social networks, afford news organizations this opportunity, and I'm looking forward to seeing how organizations use this to their advantage.

News is social - it always has been - so the idea of leveraging social networks for content-sharing is a no-brainer. To this extent, I'm still waiting to see news organizations develop meaningful apps. The Political Compass app developed by the Washington Post is insulting, to say the least. A world class paper predicting political beliefs based on a cheeky ten-question survey? If that's the kind of content news organizations think their emerging markets want, perhaps that explains the downturn in the industry. Give us good reporting, editors we can trust, and a true fair and balanced point of view - and give it to us in our RSS readers, on our mobile devices, and in our social networks. It's about good content on our terms.

Not all agree. Jonathan Kaplan-Moss, lead developer at the Lawrence Journal-World, says: "In a nutshell, our attitude towards Facebook is 'this too shall pass.' We see no reason to buy into Facebook's walled-garden approach; our time is better spent serving OUR audience instead of trying to feed on Facebook's detritus like a Ramora." Style points for Jonathan.

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At October 04, 2007 11:26 AM, Cathy Dwyer said...: News organizations have to pay attention to "social media," even if it is currently designed as a "walled garden."

First of all, those walls are coming down. Google is crawling Facebook, and some people are using apps to let them manage multiple profiles on SNS. That points to a trend towards an open platform for social media.

Secondly, digg.com beats the NY Times in web traffic! That shows the social component of news cannot be ignored.