journalism
How should TV newsrooms break stories on Twitter?
Sky News and BBC are both in industry headlines this week for changes to their social media policies that ensure reporters and editors alert the newsroom before breaking news on Twitter. The BBC explains: “When they have some breaking news, an exclusive or any kind of urgent update on a story, they must get written copy into our newsroom system as quickly as possible…”
WSB-TV showcases anchor retirement on social media
When WSB-TV’s Monica Pearson announced her retirement on Monday after 37 years on the air, it was big news for Atlanta. After all, she worked through seven presidencies and six Georgia governors, and the state’s population doubled during her tenure. WSB not only splashed the news on air, but on social media — “Monica” even became the #2 trending topic on Twitter nationwide.
Univision launches news app for iPhone
Univision, the leading media company serving Hispanic America, launched a new iPhone app for news called Noticias Univision, which can be downloaded here. Univision Network has a huge reach, serving 97% of US Hispanic households. The app’s main purpose for now will be to deliver their 24/7 news coverage, and later this month users will be able to “report breaking news by uploading photos and videos,” and share their favorite Noticias Univision content with friends and family on Facebook and Twitter, according to their release.
Sunday’s NBC debate to feature real-time Facebook comments
This Sunday morning, Republican candidates will gather in New Hampshire for a live debate co-sponsored by NBC’s Meet the Press and Facebook. In advance of the debate, Facebook conducted a poll of a selected sample of residents in New Hampshire and Iowa — via a simple poll in the right column of Facebook.com — asking them to select the issue most important to them. And NBC has been collecting debate questions via Facebook, as well.
TV news showcases social media for Iowa Caucus
If the debates have been any indication so far, election coverage this 2012 will be more social than ever. The news channels kicked into social media overdrive for the Iowa Caucus tonight. Here’s a brief summary, and please feel free to let us know of other social TV examples from the night:
ABC News debuts political site with social stock market
ABC News has rolled out OTUSPolitics.com (as in “Of the United States”) this morning, a dedicated politics site to cover the 2012 Presidential Campaign. At the top of the site is a ticker called a “Political Stock Market” — powered in part with data from the social TV startup Bluefin Labs — which shows how the candidates are “trending.” Explains ABC:
New BreakingNews.com asks crowd to help curate stories
For the last several months, the social news startup BreakingNews — where I work — has been growing our editorial team to filter and verify breaking news from the growing avalanche of real-time information. Most news organizations ask viewers to send them eyewitness photos and video, but we’re trying a different approach: since many eyewitnesses are already sharing their firsthand accounts via social media, our goal is to discover, verify and point to them as quickly as possible.
Today we launched a new BreakingNews.com that encourages the crowd to help us do just that. Using the same tools as our editors, users can search and submit eyewitness reports.
NBC stations partner with Instagram for viewer photos
Several NBC owned-and-operated stations have teamed up with Instagr.am to solicit viewer photos to use on-air and online. While the station sites have their own photo upload capability, the new partnership taps a thriving community of 15 million mobile phone photographers on Instagram.
For example, NBC stations in NY, DC, Miami and Connecticut are inviting viewers to use the app to snap their favorite photos of holiday lights. If you’ve used Instagram, you’ll know you can’t “send” a photo to someone, but you can add a hashtag. In NBC’s case, stations asking users to include localized hashtags on the photo so staff can discover them. NBC says most of its stations have integrated Instagram into their production systems for a seamless way to port them on the air.
Yahoo’s IntoNow to power ABC News debate polling
First on Lost Remote: ABC News is hosting a GOP debate this Saturday, and the network’s new online partner is incorporating a social TV component into the live event. ABC News and Yahoo partnered in October, and Yahoo’s IntoNow recently launched an updated app that synchronizes content and interactivity with live TV. During the debate, viewers will be able to offer real-time feedback on the candidates via the IntoNow app.
Why news sites should add Facebook’s new ‘Subscribe’ button
Facebook exec Joanna Shields just revealed at a conference that the social network is poised to roll out a “Subscribe” button that will allow users to subscribe to other users’ updates. Think of it as a Twitter “follow” button for Facebook, embeddable on any site.
“We will soon launch the Subscribe plugin, an extension of the Subscribe button, that publishers and other developers can add to their websites to make it easy for people to connect to reporters and public figures in one click,” Facebook said in a statement to The Next Web.
Tracking journalists on the all-new Muck Rack
I’ve decided to take a rare step back and look at how a project I’m involved in is affecting the social TV equation, so full disclosure up front. Muck Rack has been defining what it means to be a journalists in the age of the social web. With the largest database of verified journalists, the community has flourished by offering a way to see what’s trending among our curated community, navigate within top outlets and find individual journalists Twitter accounts, and understand how journalists “social bylines” are equally as important as their bylines with their outlets. I hope you’ll enjoy the rare occasion where we turn the tables to share our own projects, in the case brand new tools to track thousands of journalists on Twitter and social media.
4 qualities of Facebook’s most-shared stories
Yahoo and CNN dominated the list of Facebook’s 40 most-shared articles of the year, which the social network released today. Yahoo accounted for 13, CNN had 10, NYTimes and Huffington Post had 7, Washington Post with 3 and WSJ had 1 on the list.
Should TV stations promote talent’s personal social accounts?
As local news organizations begin to define the “value” of social media, many newsroom executives wonder what these accounts are actually worth to the station. And if they’re truly valuable, then who is the rightful owner: the reporter who populates the account or the newsroom that promotes it?
Tech reporter Noah Kravitz and his former employer, PhoneDog are hung up in a lawsuit to answer that very question. Kravitz changed his account name from @phonedog_noah to @noahkravitz when he left PhoneDog to work for a competitor. PhoneDog currently has no access to the account or its 21,000 followers.
BreakingNews takes its first international leap into UK
This is one of those blog posts where I write about my own role at BreakingNews, so full disclosure up front. But since BreakingNews is now one of the largest (if not the largest) social teams in journalism, I hope you’ll find the occasional post about our exploits interesting: in this case, our first international expansion.
CNN launches a new, more social iReport
In August, CNN celebrated iReport’s 5th anniversary and announced a redesign of the site was in the works. The redesign is here with the goal to create the largest “social network for news,” according to Lila King, Participation Director at CNN who heads up iReport.
Both individual iReporters profile pages and group pages have gotten major updates, making them easier to navigate the different pieces of content (photos, videos, etc) that a user has contributed to an “assignment.”
Who really owns TV talent’s social media accounts?
I’ve been asked this question more times by TV execs in the last year than any other: who really owns a personality’s social media accounts? Beyond Facebook and Twitter themselves, it’s a big grey area, but now there’s a case in the courts that claims that a Twitter account is a company trade secret.
TV stations battle for Facebook reach in Milwaukee
Three TV stations in Milwaukee are not only battling it out in the November ratings, but also for Facebook likes. At last check, WISN has 28,605 likes, WTMJ has 43,660, but WITI comes out on top with a whopping 85,153, ranked #7 in our leaderboard of the most popular Facebook pages in local TV. Impressive for the nation’s 35th largest market.
BBC brings a human touch to its Twitter accounts
BBC News joins a growing list of news organizations that are shifting from automatically-updated Twitter feeds to human-powered tweets. “We want to be tweeting with value,” explains Chris Hamilton, BBC News’ social media editor. “Are we exposing our best content, and also tweeting intelligently?”
While @BBCBreaking has been human-powered for some time, the BBC is updating @BBCNews and (soon) @BBCWorld by hand instead of automatically tweeting out headlines as stories are posted, reports NiemanLab.
