Ethos Public Relations Manchester

The changing face of journalism

by Tom Lloyd Assistant Editor (Online), Inside Housing

From a media perspective one of the most interesting developments of 2010 was the coming of age of Twitter. Although it was launched in 2006, and has been becomingly more widely used for the last few years, last year it really seemed to become accepted into the mainstream.

Celebrities started using it to share the tedious details of their lives. Politicians and sportsmen and women were busy tweeting away, saying things that would never have got past their armies of press officers. Riots were covered. Births and deaths were announced. Twitter went from being a bit of a joke, used by teenagers and techies who couldn’t manage to type a thought of more than 140 characters, to being a phenomenon no-one in the media could really ignore.

At Inside Housing, many of the staff are on Twitter. We have a main Twitter feed for the title as well, where we put links to all our stories, as well as updates on what we are doing, thinking, or finding out. It is also somewhere we look for leads for stories, and a way to engage with our readers.

It is tempting to say Twitter – and other social networking sites – don’t really change anything. They are just another way of getting in touch, of finding information - no different from sending letters, emails, or ringing people up. This misses the point, however.

The principles of journalism are still the same. We still want to find out interesting stuff that few other people know about, and pass it on to our audience. The more interesting and relevant a story is, the more likely it is to make it into the magazine or onto the website. But the flow of information is changing.

The BBC news operation has a group of 20 people at the heart of it dedicated to social media. They interact with readers, pick up stories, and help other teams. The public can become part of the reporting team, sending in pictures, leads, and comments on a scale never seen before.

The other key change is the ability to get feedback from readers. People tell us what they think of our stories through the Inside Housing website, Twitter, and Facebook, and we listen and take on board their views. True, some people used to write letters, but the type and level of interaction has now changed dramatically, as has the speed at which we can respond.

2011 may bring new types of social media. It could even see a slight deflating of the social media bubble, which did swell to gigantic proportions in 2010. But in the long term we are seeing an ongoing change in how people view and interact with the media.

Posted at 1:40pm on 12^th January 2011