Sky News is encouraging its journalists to use more of the new tools of social media. It is installing Tweetdeck on its journalists’ computers – a simple enough step we encourage everyone to take. Culturally, this marks a shift at the company as well. Last year it had appointed one person, Ruth Barnett, to be its “Twitter correspondent” (@ruthbarnett). Now everyone at Sky is a Twitter correspondent, and Barnett is becoming a political reporter – who, of course, tweets.
Reports journalism.co.uk:
“Twitter has also been influential in recent changes to Sky News Online’s breaking news strategy. The Sky News account detects when new stories are published online and broadcasts them via Twitter; while the recently launched @skynewsbreak account offers exclusivity for a social media audience, tweeting breaking news stories before they appear on the website.
“The system will eventually be reversed with @skynewsbreak feeding a breaking news strap across the broadcaster’s website…”
The Sky News site is also hoping to integrate Facebook Connect this year, as well as use more liveblogging tools.
