Anthony De Rosa

If you were to stop independent journalist Tim Pool on the street, you may think he’s just a bike messenger, with his skull cap, hoodie and shoulder strap bag. What you may miss is that Pool has transformed himself into a mobile journalist. He broadcast live videos in the midst of the Occupy movement using just an iPhone, a solar powered backpack and even a drone to an audience of thousands.

In an attempt to shoehorn the social media genie back into the bottle, Sky News has told its reporters they cannot retweet non-Sky sources and must not stray from the topic area or beat that they cover when posting tweets on their Twitter accounts. Not only does this make for a staid and boring feed, but it also puts Sky News reporters at a significant competitive disadvantage to places like Reuters, where we have reporters verifying and tweeting out sources of news from all over the web and from many different news outlets.

Their own boss @RupertMudoch doesn’t even follow these new rules, he frequently references news organizations outside of his own, as @RossNeumann points out. The idea here at Reuters when it comes to social media is to be the beacon for all news, which makes us the go-to source, no matter what the source may be, after being put through our own filters of verification. I’ve written before about how important it is for my own company, Reuters, to be careful if they try to tread in these same waters.

There are occasions where we may share a bit of news or simply cite what other folks on Twitter are saying as a retweet, which in Twitter parlance is an act of quoting someone. It doesn’t imply an endorsement or even an acknowledgement that it is a statement of fact. It is an act of stating, “look here at what this person is saying.”

Sky should take care and make sure that their journalists are not spreading lies and misinformation. This is the first rule of journalism — but that is not what these policies are about and don’t help to enforce. Sky News Digital News Editor Neal Mann, who goes by @fieldproducer on Twitter, is someone I consider a far-off friend, someone I was lucky enough to meet recently and have known over Twitter for some time. We also share many other friends who met Neal through Twitter because he’s become such a trusted and reliable source of news in many different areas and topics. So many people appreciate Neal that they’ve even created a hashtag to protest the new rules that Sky has put into place: #savefieldproducer.

These new rules will hamstring Neal and make it difficult, if not impossible, for him to continue to do what he did to garner so much appreciation from people like me. I suspect Sky will come to their senses and realize the error of their ways. If not, they’re going to lose one of their best ambassadors in Neal, and I would suspect many people working at Sky may wonder if they’re working for an organization that is writing policies that will drive them into obsolescence.

For another good take on this, check out Mathew Ingram’s post for Gigaom, and Cory Bergman for BreakingNews.com

Elana Zak did a nice job putting together a Storify of the reaction to this news on social media.

Update 2/8: BBC tells their journalists not to break news on Twitter, but now claims, that’s not entirely accurate. I Storify’d what BBC had to say about their new policy here.

Tumblr, the microblogging platform that has been experiencing explosive growth which I detailed recently, has hired Chris Mohney to become their editor-in-chief, along with Jessica Bennett, who will act as executive editor.

What exactly will they do? I spoke to Jessica to find out.

What do you envision the content you’re going to create to sound like? Will it be entirely on the staff blog or will there be some other platform?

What will the content sound like… I think it’ll sound a lot like the stories I write now. Probably less women’s issues, and certainly no Jerry Sandusky, but it will be real journalism — stories that are both about Tumblr’s users, what those users are creating, the social trends and cultural observations that are growing out of that creation, and the broader ideas and themes that surround it all. So: think trend stories — the democratization of creation. Think on the ground: who are the teen tumblr users in a remote town in Ukraine, and how did they find the platform? Think big picture: how is social media changing the way we interact and engage? Think data: what can Tumblr users tell us about the current presidential race? How do men and women interact differently online? Is it possible to find love on Tumblr? The mandate is broad, and the format will go beyond the written word. It’s really an opportunity to think outside the box, to experiment with what works — and to have some fun while we’re doing it.

Will you be given the opportunity to address issues in the Tumblr community, or is this more about broad general news outside of inter-tumblr community happenings?

Our goal is to surface genuinely interesting stories, to an audience of Tumblr users and the world at large. It’s definitely possible we’ll address what users are talking about. And we totally, totally encourage community input — how will we find the best stories if not taking tips and ideas from our users?

Will you be taking what’s being done already with tag pages and evolving them or is that outside the scope of this?

Tag pages — We’ll be looking at all the ways we highlight and tell the stories of creators on the site, initially beginning with the Staff blog and then looking for other places to tell their stories. Tag pages and evolving them are definitely on the agenda.

Why does Tumblr need these two roles, that you and Chris will assume? What will it bring to someone who comes to Tumblr?

I think the fact that they’re bringing us on shows a real commitment to creativity, to ideas, to the curiosity and intelligence of the tumblr community, and to really showcase the ways this platform is being used to innovate. It’s storytelling in it’s most basic form. Tumblr has 42 million users. If this were a physical place, wouldn’t journalists be covering it? It’s a window into this world that is growing by the minute — and into the stories, ideas and creativity that’s shaping it.

Will you both have full control over what you produce and final edit?

That’s the plan! To do our journalistic thang.

BuzzFeed has been getting a lot of attention lately, for their high profile hire of well respected political reporter Ben Smith, from Politico and for a recent influx of $15.5 million in new investment. I headed to BuzzFeed headquarters downtown here in Soho to find out what they’re planning to do with the money and how they’re going to differentiate themselves from sites like the Huffington Post.

Interview with founder and CEO Jonah Peretti and politics editor-in-chief Ben Smith

Interview with political reporter and video researching wunderkind Andrew Kaczynski