Social journalism
Posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014 by ATC in Industry News with No Comments
By Clement Charles, CEO & Founder, AllTheContent News Agency
In an interactive, connected world, the careful use of comments and community interaction supports journalism, often enhancing content. Somewhere between crowdsourcing and real-time panels, social journalism has carved a place of its own.
Although many editorial boards and traditional media are still reluctant to let readers provide feedback on content, a new approach is emerging, integrating community participation directly into the editorial process. Both interesting in terms of contributing content and expertise, this approach also bolsters credibility between professionals and the general public.
The morphing of consumers into contributors has brought to light several broad categories of comments and active media visitor participation. The simplest, easiest, and most widespread approach is of course rating, which consists in voting or simply expressing likes and dislikes. Even though it is biased by nature, the statistic and quantitative data it provides is nonetheless interesting.
The next level involves correcting content, whereby Internet users notify the media of content errors or typos. This level brings us to that of expertise, in which a contributor shares personal and often professional expertise with the community. As the world becomes more complex and as generalist journalists have increasing difficulties in adequately covering highly specialized topics, and while this type of expert contribution may be hard to swallow for an author’s ego, it provides highly added value to the article and to its readers, and therefore to the media at large.
The last big category of contributions relevant to social journalism is the possibility to ask and glean first-hand accounts, leaving the all too often tightly closed circles of traditional editorial boards. Today, the fact that the same contributors, be they scientific or professional, collaborate with the same journalists is at best indicative of professional laziness, hindering any effort to seek out diverse accounts and evidence, and at worst, it highlights an ill-concealed agenda to show off one’s personal network.
In order to benefit from community wealth and make its wide range of comments available to journalists, these interventions must be integrated into the broader journalistic approach, by clarifying expectations, highlighting enriching contributions and staying honest and sincere in its relationship with Internet users.
The French website Rue89 is one of the best examples of this approach. In addition to allowing users to comment and share content, the website also produces content intended solely as “launching ramps” for comments, before writing articles which aim to compile and make sense of the most interesting contributions.
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