What is the CBC’s Social Networking Strategy? Part II
The previous post on the CBC’s social networking strategy elicited a strong reaction from both staff and the public. So it’s worthwhile looking at the issue further.
Currently (at least to my knowledge) the CBC does not have a set of guidelines for social networking. Yet the number of CBC staff on these networks, and the number of followers these individual accounts have, has created is a massive opportunity for the CBC to dialogue directly with the audience. But it also poses risks.
Here’s an example. Jacques Poitras, a provincial affairs reporter for CBC News in Fredericton, has a Twitter account. “I use it in my role as the lead political reporter in New Brunswick to send headlines, live updates and story links to a growing list of followers,” he wrote in the comments yesterday. Poitras started that account on his own initiative. Now he’s got 343 followers.
Jacques Poitras is hardly alone. The CBC has hundreds of staffers with Twitter accounts, from Jian Ghomeshi, to Zulekha Nathoo, a TV reporter in Calgary, to an intern at the fifth estate, Amber Kanwar. Together these accounts probably have hundreds of thousands of followers. If I were a manager at the CBC, which I’m not, that would make me a little nervous. What are all these people saying?
The debate is very similar to the ruckus that erupted over the CBC blog guidelines, which resulted in the staff-written CBC Blogging Manifesto. That manifesto some good advice that equally applies to Twitter, “Use common sense and don’t do anything stupid. Blog to make the CBC better, not to kill it,” one sentence reads. Another says “For better or for worse, you are representing the CBC when you blog [tweet] about it.”
These accounts are usually personal initiatives, but they are also inexorably linked to the CBC. Many of them use the CBC acronym in the user names. Poitras’ user name is “PoitrasCBC”. Now if Jacques Poitras’ tweets were offensive or stupid, which they are not, then the CBC would have a problem. And this gets to the point that Jill Atkinson was making on Wednesday, when she said “I get bothered by… a lack of discipline with the content.”
The point is, if you’re identifying yourself as being affiliated with the CBC on your social networking accounts, act accordingly, you’re representing the corporation.
Now that sermon is out of the way, let’s look at the opportunity here.
Poitras wrote yesterday that he finds his Twitter account “ideal because it gets news out quickly, extends our brand to a new audience, and takes very little time to maintain and update.”
Poitras is one of dozens of innovative reporters that realize the potential of social networking sites like Twitter. It “gets news out quickly.” If a reporter is on the scene for a story, sees something newsworthy, and tweets about from a Blackberry, I bet they would beat the wires 9 times out 10. That’s an immense opportunity for a news organization and a great way to provide immediate breaking news updates for the audience.
Multiply that opportunity by the number of reporters that use Twitter and you get a sense of what a news gathering organization could do with a platform like Twitter.
But in order to really seize the opportunity, it needs to be organized. First you need to know which reporters are Twittering, and Twittering professionally – as opposed to personally, then you need to gather their updates on a web site and categorize them so the information is digestible for the audience.
If you do that then you’ve essentially created a breaking news feed, that’s organized, is faster than the news cycle, and provides promotional opportunities.
Let me give you an example. Just a few minutes ago Poitras wrote on his Twitter account “Breaking: Enviro Minister TJ Burke resigning from cabinet. 4 wks ago he described being shuffled to enviro as an “elevation.”
That story is not yet on Google News, nor is it on CBCnews.ca. So not only did Poitras beat the news cycle with his tweet, but he also promoted his newscast. It makes me want to tune in to find out what’s going on with the environment minister in New Brunswick. Additionally if CBCnews.ca had a page that aggregated all the tweets from reporters in the field, CBC News would have that story on their site already. So not only would Poitras be first with the story, but so would the CBC.
That’s the opportunity of using social networking sites like Twitter. But in order to take advantage of the opportunity it’s got to be organized and follow a set of guidelines.
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In terms of Twitter, maybe we should be looking at something like the Best Buy Twelp Force initiative – both as a way to engage with the community and as a way to disseminate news, for example.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/21/best-buy-goes-all-twitter-crazy-with-twelpforce/
I think that there was a reaction to the post partially due to the suggestion that getting on-board with social networks is done because ‘it’s a cool thing to do’. Everyone I know of is just trying to find ways to better build and connect to the community that watches or listens or reads. It’s tough to follow directives when there aren’t any as of yet – but I’d agree that there should be a discussion.
[...] living with HIV. 1. The AIDS Council takes a comprehensive approach to serving the community. What is the CBC’s Social Networking Strategy? Part II – insidethecbc.com 07/23/2009 The previous post on the CBC’s social networking strategy [...]
“…you’ve essentially created a breaking news feed…”
Argh. So much wrong with this. I’m not even going to touch the whole editorial side of it, being but a nerd, but from a business and technical side, what you describe is at best a toy and at worst a massive mistake.
The post at http://www.marco.org/72580346 describes a lot of the issues that would apply to any critical implementation that depends on Twitter. Summarized, it’s their ball and they can go home with it at any time. If you build a breaking news feed on it, you’re being irresponsible, because breaking news should be a critical application for the CBC, and you’ve just introduced a dependency on infrastructure that you don’t control.
There are open source twitter-like implementations. You could build one in-house and use that to feed our app if you really wanted, but that wouldn’t have Twitter’s current share, which brings me to a second point.
From the CBC perspective – how much of our audience would this reach? Twitter is not as ubiquitous as a lot of people seem to think it is, in fact the more you drill down the worse it looks. Teens don’t use it, old people don’t use it, less than half of the coveted 25-34 Internet user demo have even heard of it. Twitter’s own usage stats show that most users stop posting within a month (though they may still be reading feeds). Is formalizing the current elective use of Twitter by journos really the most efficient use of scarce resources?
Kev, good points. It doesn’t have to be Twitter. The example illustrates the potential, whether it’s Twitter or not. I agree that you would have less dependencies if you build an application like this yourself, but the counter argument is then you’re doing what the CBC has done again and again, instead of being nimble and using existing web platforms, we try and build our own, reinventing the wheel, taking forever and sometimes never even getting it built.
as for your second point, the idea is not to speak to the Twitter audience, as large or small as it may be, it’s to use Twitter (or something like it) as a delivery mechanism from the reporters to the audience on TV or on the Web or wherever the CBC decides to put the updates with it.
Twitter is just one more tool for the Internet. To say CBC should develop its own twitter like app is wrong. The whole reason news outlets have been keen to use Twitter is to connect to the already huge user base. It’s like saying, “This Internet thing seems to be catching on. Maybe we should start another Internet of our own so we control it and try to get people to use ours.”
Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, TXT Message and many others are just tools that are already popular. Media outlets are trying to use them to connect to the user base. That’s why we are on the Itunes store and why we produce material in ipod format that folks can download. It’s just another format like web pages. It just happens that Twiitter is easily linked into your existing website. You post on Twitter and as a media outlet, usually direct people to your website for the long version of the story.
Here is how I use Twitter as an overnight videographer in Toronto. First I follow just about every major media outlet in the city as well as TTC, police, Go Train and other staff members at other outlets. When I wake up in the evening and get ready to start my midnight shift I check in on Twitter via my BBerry to see what everyone else is promoting and working on. This gives me an excellent outlook on the day’s news. I also get text messages regarding breaking news from any outlet that offers them. I get dispatches from Toronto Fire emailed to me also. I’ll use every possible tool I can to get to the stories I need to know about.
I also post on Twitter as I shoot various stories throughout the night. I’m careful never to Tweet about exclusive stories that would help the competition. I only Tweet after I know the competitors are already on scene. I have my Twitter account linked into my Facebook account. When I Tweet it changes my status automatically on Facebook. I have just about 75 followers on Twitter and a bunch of friends and relatives who follow me on Facebook. I post for two reasons. One is to keep in touch with family and friends and the other is to make my tiny little world seem slightly more meaningful. I blog too, only to keep my brain nimble and working.
The only tricky issue with Twitter is similar to Facebook. It could be a problem if you have a reporter giving out his or her Twitter ID on TV tonight at six, getting hundreds of followers, then posting on Saturday about how he got lucky at the bar or so drunk he fell down. Anyone who would do this probably deserves everything they get. It’s a problem that already existed before the Internet. Reporter at well known TV station gets recognized everywhere they go and then gets arrested for DUI or spousal abuse. These things have been happening for years. We all need to maintain appearances and act in a manner that doesn’t leave our employers in a bad light.
Tony Smyth
http://www.tonysmyth.com
Twitter: @latenightcam
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/latenightcam
Blogger: http://torontocam.blogspot.com/
As the linked article points out, the trouble with building on top of platforms like Twitter is that you have no way of guaranteeing any level of service, and they’re under no obligation to provide you with anything.
If you’re talking not about using it as a user-facing application, but as a news-gathering tool, that’s almost worse, because you don’t even have the advantage of connecting with the audience, such as it is, and you now have your journalists dependent on a software tool over which you have no control and which has a storied and mascoted history of crapping out. At with least the current stuff they’re forced to use, we can kick the occasional server for them. What are you going to do if Twitter’s down and you built your breaking news system on it? In case you’re wondering, the answer is “wait for it to come back”, coz there’s nobody you can call.
There’s also the fact that it’s bad for the ecology of the web and for your business to build against closed platforms.
Take Facebook Connect as an example. On the face of it it’s facebook being more open and competitive, which is good. Say you have a design for a better facebook iPhone app – now you can build it with FBC and stick it on the App Store, charge a buck, and make a million. Unfortunately, without an SLA, facebook can degrade the service for your users, or even change the API so that your application no longer works at all. (Let’s hope you weren’t planning to pay your mortgage with your Apple payout.) Even if it stays up and they don’t change anything, since they decide what’s exposed via the API you can’t do as much with your users’ data as facebook can, so they will always have a competitive advantage.
This is a slippery slope that we’ve been down before with Microsoft, and it’d be a real shame to make the same mistakes again. The CBC’s lack of velocity is really a separate issue, but if it is a problem (and I agree that it is), it would be better to face it head-on and become more nimble than continue looking for half-assed workarounds.
Also, I realize that you’re saying the Twitter part isn’t important, but if you take it out of the equation, what you’ve just proposed is that we have journos text 140-character versions of their stories in to the website before/instead of filing full versions. That’s not news, that’s poorly-formatted opinion. I’m all for having a window into the journalistic process, but we have editors and fact-checkers for a reason. It takes a newsroom to break a story.
Kev, your missing what I’m saying. I’m not saying we file stories in 140 characters or less. I’m saying we use this as an alert system. In case you don’t know this is what an alert looks like:
BC-LT–APNewsAlert,0018
EL PARAISO, Honduras (AP) — Ousted Honduran president steps
across border in symbolic return home despite threat of arrest.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
APTV 07-24-09 1653EDT
The text of that alert is 124 characters. It’s used to do just that, alert staff – and sometimes, depending on the size of the story, the public – of a breaking story.
We already have a newsgathering system that works very well. It’s ludicrous to think I would be advocating to replace that with Twitter. This is complement not a replacement.
We don’t build anything on top of twitter or facebook. We don’t build a breaking news system on twitter. You guys are complicating this way too much. They are all just tools. Software tools like email, web, txt message. Our news delivery system, whether it is for breaking news or in depth reports, as far as the Net is concerned is always cbc.ca. These other things are just add-ons or other ways to reach an audience, drive more people to the web site, and increase or ratings.
We control cbc.ca and the servers it runs on. Don’t spend too much time debating how twitter can fit in to our news operation, while our competitors get on with news gathering. This is one of the issues at CBC. We have meetings and committees while the guy who is number one in the ratings is already moving on to something else.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with CBC using twitter as another means to send a message. They already use tv, radio, and a website, why not twitter?
I love the fact that I get breaking story headlines in my tweet streams.
If CBC chooses not to use this as another means of communication, it would just be silly. I have no idea why you wouldn’t.
Those people suggesting to build your own platform are confused. This is nothing complicated. I agree fully with Tony and Paul about the simplicity of Twitter and how this whole discussion is absurd. lol
Cheers! Thanks for the read.
Jodie
Thanks for the shout-out. Since you’re using me to illustrate some of your arguments, let me clarify some things so no one is misled.
While all Twitter accounts are personal accounts, I set mine up with permission from my managers, following encouragement from our New Brunswick web editor. I didn’t have much use for Twitter personally (I can tell people what I ate for breakfast on Facebook) but I do see it as a great journalistic tool. I deliberately called my account poitrasCBC because I use it only for CBC work, and that ID makes it clear that anything on there should be thought of as part of my CBC work. Better that than a personal account where I tweet some of my stories, thus confusing news consumers about whether what I’m tweeting is my own or the company’s.
As well, we are a small regional station, and I’m basically the lead political reporter across platforms. (I primarily do radio, but also TV and a blog.) It’s not like there’s an overwhelming flood of tweets coming from all directions, which I think is what you see as something to make managers nervous.
A bit more detail on what I tweet: when the Legislature is sitting, or when I’m covering some other kind of major news story, I tweet as much as I can by BlackBerry, creating a stream of updates. That’s probably 75 per cent of what I do. I also tweet links to my CBC blog posts, and to some other stories of mine when they land on the web.
I occasionally will tweet links to major NB political stories in other media, when I feel they can’t be ignored. I sometimes tweet very short observations or analyses of major political stories that, for whatever reason, I’m not covering. And now and then, I’ll tweet links to interesting pieces about journalism and social media.
You cite the minister’s resignation as a case that raises some questions. You weren’t able to see that there was plenty of the kind of coordination you call for. The web editor and I had both been tipped the resignation was coming, and he had a story ready to go as soon as we could get confirmation. I got confirmation that satisfied me enough to tweet it, and the web story was posted to cbc.ca/nb very shortly thereafter. Not sure why it didn’t show up where you went looking, but the interval was very short.
You describe a scenario in which “not only would Poitras be first with the story, but so would the CBC.” But if both my followers and I see my feeds as part of my CBC reporting, then CBC was first with the story. Or, to put it another way, why not break a story in a tweet if that’s the fastest way to get it out?
Getting back to your other possible misapprehension, the size of our newsroom. We’re a small regional station. There’s a provincial story meeting by conference call every morning. Everyone knows what everyone is doing. That creates a cross-platform coordination that works quite well.
The one aspect that I’ll grant is uncoordinated is that no one vets my tweets before they go out, but the delay that would create would take away one of Twitter’s biggest advantages. I’ve done plenty of radio rants and TV hits without a script, too.
Plus, I’ve been a reporter for almost two decades now. I strongly believe in the CBC’s high standards, but when it comes to social media, I think the individual journalists can be trusted to some extent to police themselves. And social media is loose and free: I fear that if CBC tries to impose order on it, we’ll lose something of what can make it work in our favour.
Thanks for a great discussion.
As one of Jacques’s “followers”, I’d like to echo the positive comments made about his use of Twitter.
I usually find out the breaking news seemingly in “real-time” from Jacques. He’s really embraced the so-called concept of “live blogging” (or micro-blogging). It’s something that has been going on in technology journalism circles for a couple of years, and recently has become mainstream (maybe when Oprah joined Twitter… haha).
In my view, Jacques is a model for journalists to follow (pun intended). Through him and the CBC NB News tweets, I often see the NB political news as soon as it’s fit to print. Consequently, I’ve become more engaged with the CBC NB News site and Twitter in general.
Thanks everyone,
Shawn
So how’s the ol’ Twitter strategy working out for ye today?
Funny. I was hoping you were going to bring that up. Good thing the entire news operation isn’t using that as backbone.
Kevin, you’ll like this: Twitter updates breathless world
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=1863750
I’m mostly digging this actually:
http://notnews.today.com/2009/08/06/twitter-crashes-for-ninety-minutes-nerds-traumatised/
‘News agencies around the world condemned the attack, which hit at the root of their online news-gathering processes and left them having to resort to following the Wikipedia “Recent Changes” feed. “Apparently BUSH IS GAY LOLOLOL [citation needed],” said the CNN front page headline. “Who knew?”’