Reuters Editors
Our editors & readers talk
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.”
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.
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.