Reuters Editors
Our editors & readers talk
from For the Record:
Social media: Some principles and guidelines
The rise of social media has brought journalists some powerful new storytelling and information-gathering tools. However, with these new opportunities have come some new risks.
At Reuters, we have just published some social media guidelines that lay out some basic principles and offer recommendations that should prove useful as journalists navigate what can sometimes seem a chaotic landscape.
In building the new guidelines, we've embraced some basic principles:
- We encourage the use of social media approaches in Reuters journalism.
- Accuracy, freedom from bias and independence are fundamental to our reputation. These values and the Trust Principles apply to journalism produced using social media just as they have to all other journalism produced by Reuters.
- A distinguishing feature of Reuters is the trust invested in its journalists to rise above personal biases in their work and to apply common sense in dealing with the challenges offered by social media.
This last point is particularly important to me.
I've written in the past about how we depend on our journalists to rise above their biases to cover stories in an independent way, whether they're in Gaza or Washington--or anywhere else.
As comments have shown--and will no doubt show again--there are those who will never believe this is possible. And there are those who would actually prefer to read, listen to or view only those information sources that confirm their own worldview.
Content, convergence and creativity
The following speech was given at the Association of Online Publishers conference in London on October 7. Chris Cramer is Reuters Global Editor, Multimedia.
In the spirit of a real debate I’d like to talk today about some trends in the so-called traditional media.
But I can see you sitting out there and thinking: “Here we have a traditional mainstream media guy.” And I’m happy to own up to 40 years or so working for mainstream companies:
The BBC for 26 years – always in news.
CNN for 11 years – always in news and channel management.
And now at Reuters — this time head of multimedia in a business which primarily serves the financial professional.
All three organizations have a lot of history. Reuters has been around since 1851. So a career in pretty traditional news organizations, though in the case of all three they have each managed to reinvent themselves several times down the years to stay ahead of the competition.
very well written piece…found it on facebook on a journalist friends page 
…i totally agree with what has been written and agree with the comment “We think the future of successful journalism is to produce information, intelligent information that matters to people and has context”….i so wish this is followed by media …
Rethinking rights, accreditation, and journalism itself in the age of Twitter
The follow is the text of a speech by David Schlesinger, Editor-in-Chief Reuters News, to the International Olympics Committee Press Commission on June 23.
On May 29th, James Coleman of Bristol smacked his skull on a tree branch while filing updates to the Twitter service (or tweeting) from his Blackberry during a run. His accident spawned a new word: a “Twinjury”.
Just think about it: Jogging, Blackberrying, tweeting simultaneously – what more 21st century manifestation of the spirit of amateur sportsmanship could there be?
That same day, St. Petersburg Times sports journalist Rick Stroud tweeted on his Twitter page about US Football developments: “Hearing reports that Bucs might be interested in Marvin Harrison,” he wrote to anyone following his feed.
His reader/followers read it and believed what he wrote.
Turned out, though, Stroud had different standards for his Twitter account than for his newspaper.
“People, if I tweet something…it’s … speculation,” he said. “If there’s news, I’ll post it on Tampabay.com.”
Brilliantly said. Your audience needs to understand that the “anyone can and does publish” djinni is out of the bottle. Your industry need to go with that flow.
from Mark Jones:
Davos through social media
I spent last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos producing content for reuters.com, running some experiments in new ways to cover a conference, and observing the growing integration of social media into a major mainstream event.
We had great success with giving our correspondents ‘Flip cameras’ with which to grab short comments from delegates on the key issues of the Forum. You can see some of these on our ‘Davos debates’ on the economy, financial regulation, environment, and ethics. The major learning point was that these were much, much easier to use than the mobile phones we used last year in Davos.
Less successful was our attempt to make the Forum more participatory by turning the tables and getting delegates prepared to admit they didn’t have all the answers to 'ask the audience' via Reuters. This was a good idea in theory, and one that we'll try again, but it was a struggle to find delegates comfortable with the notion that the Davos brainpower might not be enough to solve the world’s problems.
Nevertheless, World Economic Forum President Klaus Schwab set an excellent example (and got a very healthy response):
Elsewhere, we did use mobiles and the qik video-streaming service to go live ‘behind the scenes’ of the forum and the Reuters News operation.
I was co-sited with the team that produced the WEF-sponsored 'Davos Today' programme -- a high-end TV show with a professional team of Reuters broadcast journalists behind it.
