Curation, aggregation and communities in journalism

SIPA UK 17th Annual Congress13 July 2011

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About me

• Editor of TheMediaBriefing.com• Digital journalist since 2008• Specialist in media industry news / analysis• Twitterholic – follow me at @psmith and

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TheMediaBriefing.com

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What is curation?

“Do what you do best and link to the rest”- Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine.com“In the rearchitecture of news, what needs to happen is that people are driven to the best coverage, not the 87th version of the same coverage”

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A matter of resources and quality

• You can’t cover everything – and why should you?• Weekly B2B mags, newspapers try to cover

everything they physically can• Compete with national newspapers (why?)• Led by external news agenda, not internal analysis

• Moving from “what happened?” to “why did it happen?”

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A weak link?

“Why link? You’re just sending traffic elsewhere!” – A news publisher, (1997-2007)*

“If I link more, Google will like me and I’ll get traffic” – A publisher, (2007-2011)

“Linking is our product”- ? (2011-)

*entirely made up statements

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Transparency

• Links build trust and create better journalism:

– Tell your readers where the facts are from– Link to original sources (e.g. press releases)– Be clear when you didn’t break the story– Use your own archive to add context

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Ben Goldacre, BadScience.net

“But more than anything, because linking sources is such an easy thing to do, and the motivations for avoiding links are so dubious, I’ve detected myself using a new rule of thumb: if you don’t link to primary sources, I just don’t trust you.”

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Link to quality – the expert filter

TheMediaBriefing.com’s and our newsletters, every weekday, links to articles from across the web, not just our original pieces.

We choose news sources we think people will like to see.

We encourage media to suggest feeds and articles we can index

We follow trends by tagging each issue, person, company etc…

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Using newsletter intros to tell readers why something matters and why it’s worth their time:

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Guardian.co.uk/technology

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Reading through hundreds of posts and links every day to them so you don’t have to. Aggregation as time-saving device.

Emediavitals.com as expert filtering tool

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Huffingtonpost.co.uk’s live, social aggregation

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But there are rules…

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@SimonDumenco, AdAge.com:

“HuffPo's aggregation… consisted of basically a short but thorough paraphrasing/rewriting of the Ad Age post -- using the same set-up… and the bulk of the data presented in the original Ad Age piece.

“HuffPo closed out its post with ‘See more stats from Ad Age here’ -- a disingenuous link, because HuffPo had already cherrypicked all the essential content. HuffPo clearly wanted readers to stay on its site instead of clicking through to AdAge.com.

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The Journal Register example

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More at http://jxpaton.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/wan_ifra/

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The Google newsroom

Via Benoît Raphaël, Owni.fr

Online-savvy curators at the centre, working with external sources to create a good experience for their readers

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Google newsroom: Curation and journalism

Reporters (Journalists + bloggers): they don’t “cover” news, they don’t replicate press agencies wires, they bring original stories.

They go on the real or virtual ground... live tweeting, articles, videos, data, in-depth investigation… They can also manage a community of bloggers/users with whom they can co-produce the news.

Curators (journalists + amateurs) : they “cover” the news by sorting, verifying and editing live everything good existing on the web and in the media. They make link journalism, they make the news more accessible.

(Just one idea….)@psmith

Moving beyond the article

Is 400 words of text always the best format?• Text, video, audio, forums, graphs, data, your own archive• Is the article still the building block of journalism?• Are readers being served by re-written press releases?• Liveblogs growing in importance (but not a moneyspinner)

(n.b. there’s nothing wrong with the written word!)

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Real-time conversationYou need to know what readers are saying, so you can:-- REACT with relevant content-- ENGAGE them in conversation-- BE the centre for debate-- Talk about your PRODUCTS in an organic way

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Tweeting matters!

• Take your official account seriously• TWEET OFTEN! 10/15 a day minimum• Encourage reporters to engage and promote

their own stories• Have a policy – even a simple one– e.g. Humour is fine within limits– Standard structure for tweeting links– Spelling/factual errors not tolerated– Be careful mixing personal and professional

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“But our readers don’t tweet”

“Those who believe that Twitter is mainly about “broadcast” for mainstream organisations are not just wrong, they are wilfully ignoring the successes and failures of many others… Some people will work very hard to exclude the experiences of others that challenge their own preconceptions of their working environment.

I’ve called this “special pleading” in the past. Every single market we serve at RBI has given me reasons why social media won’t work in their market… Every single piece of special pleading has been proved to be false.”

- Adam Tinworth, RBI, Onemanandhisblog.com

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Setting goals

• Replenishment or growth?• Newsletter signups, unique users?• Improved quality of conversation?

• Social media/community goals shouldn’t be separate from your main business objectives

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Focus on valuable products

Two full-day conferences, two full-length research reports, within seven months of launch.

One editorial member of staff.

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Join us

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See the full list of links and slides at psmithjournalist.com now

Flickr credits:

• Books pic from heathermariekosur

• Typewriter from 500CPM

• Crowd shot from laubarnes

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