EIJ13: Curation Station: Effective Use of Social Tools for Breaking and Big-Issue Reporting
“News consumers are turning to Twitter in ever-larger numbers when big news breaks. But the news media make the same well-publicized mistakes during breaking news and most organizations fail to use the platform to its full advantage.
On Aug. 26 at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California, Prof. Kelly Fincham of Hofstra University and P. Kim Bui, an adjunct professor at Annenberg School for Journalism and Communication at the University of Southern California and mobile product manager for Los Angeles-area NPR station KPCC, ran through best practices for covering breaking news using social media.
The panel was inspired, Fincham said, by how much of the media mishandled the Christopher Dorner manhunt story this spring.
One way to do better is to make a plan before a big breaking news event happens, and to plan how to spread the load.
“One person can handle all social media, but that doesn’t mean that they should,” Bui said. “Work this stuff out ahead of time.”
Also created ahead of time: an online Twitter list of all the relevant first responders to watch when something happens.
“We made a big long list of all the people who would tweet (breaking news) and that includes our competitors,” Bui said. “Once there is a fire, or a terrible accident, all you have to do is pull up that list and it’s all there. … That’s something I suggest you do TODAY.”
If a newsroom doesn’t want to openly follow, say, politicians,Twitter lists can be made private, so no one but authorized account users can see it.
And vet the list ahead of time: KPCC checked out all of the first-responders they put on their list, and discovered a fake fire department account.
And one more task to do ahead of time: Figure out the hashtag for an imminent event.
KPCC staffers contact first responders about what agencies they’re going to use in their communications. In Southern California, and other areas, for instance, large wildfires are named. The station, Bui says, gets in touch with fire agencies to find out what the official name of a small blaze is before it turns into regional news.
And they don’t try and brand the breaking news hashtag:
“It makes more sense to latch onto a hashtag than start one yourself,” she said. “#KPCCRimFire — no one’s going to follow that,” as opposed to following the then-recent hashtag #RimFire. (And don’t go crazy with hashtags; use them when they’re appropriate and no more.)
But the biggest, most infamous — and most recurrent — problem news organizations have when covering breaking news with social media is getting things wrong, whether it’s the Sandy Hook massacre, the Boston Marathon bombings or any number of smaller, regional news events.
Avoiding that sort of basic error requires going back to journalism basics: question the origins of information, and verify it.
“It’s totally OK for you to ask (someone reporting news) ‘were you there? Did you see it?'” Bui said. “If you’re unsure, ask. You don’t have to be first on everything.”
Google Image Search allows journalists to upload images to discover their origins — think of the Hurricane Sandy subway shark image that was passed along, unquestioned, by many news organizations.
Digital photos also have metadata encoded in them that can reveal when and where they were taken. The data can be exposed in Photoshop and there are also smaller, dedicated EXIF data viewers to see the information as well.
At the moment, the only Facebook posts that can be edited after the fact — if, for instance, a update ends up being wrong — are photo posts, although the company has said that will be changing soon.
(Bui is a fan of Twitter, but says both major social media platforms have their strengths: “It’s easier to curate on Twitter. … It’s better to have photos and long deep conversations on Facebook.”)
To avoid misinformation coming out unvetted, Bui said, at KPCC, “(journalists) can break breaking news on Twitter, if your editor knows.”
But it’s not the end of the world to not be first on a news update — it’s something that mostly only journalists care about.
“If you’re the fifth person to retweet that the mayor got shot, you’re not breaking it,” Bui said, and don’t hashtag it #breakingnews.
If you can’t be first, she said, embrace it and fill in background details and other facts. During the Dorner manhunt, she tracked down who actually asked the media to stop tweeting. (Something widely attributed to the police or district attorney’s office.)
“It was really just one guy.”
And gone are the days when acknowledging the existence of other competitors — many of whom will also be appearing in readers’ social media feeds alongside your posts — was taboo.
“Journalism has changed so much that ideas like ‘it’s our exclusive, we can’t retweet it,’” Fincham said. “That horse has bolted.”
“Is it OK to retweet your competitors? It depends on your news organization, but I wish they’d all say ‘yes,’” Bui said.
But no matter who created content, whether it’s professional journalists or users creating YouTube videos, give credit where credit is due. It’s not just good karma, but it enhances your credibility with your audience.
And while the tools may change, the mission does not.
“We’re storytellers first,” Bui said. “That should never, ever stop.”
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