Sky News – which famously became one of the first media organisations to appoint a “Twitter correspondent” last year – is now issuing all its web reporters with tools for scanning social media for stories.
Every journalist in the online newsroom has had Tweetdeck – which provides a more sophisticated interface for using Twitter, Facebook and other sites than do their own homepages – installed on their computer.
Meanwhile Ruth Barnett, the aforementioned Twitter correspondent, tweeted earlier this week that she has now moved to Sky’s central London studio to “focus on politics ahead of what could be a very social media election”.
“The whole aim of having a social media correspondent was to make the role itself extinct,” Julian March, executive producer of Sky News Online, told me in an interview last month. “It is now expected of all the guys in my team to be fully conversant with social media. For me, it’s a fundamental part of our newsgathering day.”
Mr March said we should expect Sky News to incorporate Facebook Connect, the social network’s federated identity service, soon too.
Other news organisations, such as the Economist, Reuters, CNN and the FT itself, are making increasing use of Twitter, both to disseminate news and to research stories.
Tweetdeck – made by a London-based company – is the tool of choice at Reuters too, says Mark Jones, the agency’s global community editor. “If part of the new role of journalists is to trigger conversations,” he told me last year, “journalists need to understand the dynamics of how conversations work on social media.”
Keeping abreast of new technology is important if newswires are to maintain their edge, Mr Jones added. Last month, MSNBC acquired the @BreakingNews Twitter username – and its 1.5m followers – from its teenage founder.
“Stories break in Twitter faster than they break on the wires, practically,” says Mr March. “It’s almost as if Twitter flattens out a hierarchy. But this is more of a news gathering tool, that might inform our opinion on a story.”
Indeed, responsibility for breaking news through @skynewsbreak still rests with a designated news editor, rather than allowing any reporter to post headlines.
“If everyone was doing it, it would be chaos,” Mr March says. “Whatever medium we are talking about – whether TV, websites, Twitter, YouTube or Facebook – the basic rules of journalism always apply.”
