Who needs a news channel in the Twitter-age?
Image: ITV News
A week after ITV News launched its social media strategy, the editor of the News at Ten has questioned the need for news channels when breaking news is distributed through the internet and Twitter.
Jason Mills, who is leading ITV News' move into social networking, said that they were developing a four-pronged web-strategy that will include the website, Facebook, Twitter and a YouTube channel. He asked why they would want a news channel when people can get the latest news from them via the internet.
"Do you sit at home watching news channels?" asked Mills. "No. Having a website is more important than a news channel. Why would you want a news channel?"
ITV News presenters and correspondents started tweeting last Monday as part of a brand re-launch with the tag line "Bringing the facts to life." A Facebook page has been created, with a YouTube channel and new-look website planned for the new year.
Mills said that the web strategy is important in reaching viewers outside of the four main bulletins. ITV News closed its 24 hour news channel in 2005.
"My own personal belief is that people don’t want news when you give it to them now," he said. "They want to be part of the newsgathering process, they want to be able to comment on it and they want to get it when they want it.
"The internet allows us to talk to viewers outside of the traditional bulletins. Twitter is useful for us in giving us the chance to put news out there before our bulletins."
He highlighted the example of International Editor Bill Neely who has been tweeting from Afghanistan. His coverage of the death of five British soldiers last week was picked up by other news sources.
ITV News International Editor Bill Neely has been tweeting from Afghanistan. Image: Twitter screenshot
"There are not many people who are able to tweet from Kabul and he had some good lines in relation to the deaths," said Mills. "It helped to exploit us before our bulletins at 6:30 and 10 o'clock at night. It was good for us."
Mills said that the social media launch is hopefully just the start for ITV News. "We're initially starting small, but eventually who knows where this will go. Five years ago we had not heard of Facebook or Twitter. It might be that at some stage it becomes vital for a bulletin," he said.
ITV News has appointed a web producer to run its new strategy and staff are being invited to train on how to use Twitter.
Mills said, "Tweeting is pretty simple, if you can use a mobile phone you can tweet, so the training is not that difficult. We have only been doing it with correspondents who have come forward and say they would like to do this. We are growing it organically.
"We have produced some advisory notes reminding people of how tweets might be perceived. The only real guideline that I would stress is that we are only tweeting what is broadcastable. It is important that we have the same standards of accuracy on Twitter as we would in our bulletins."
Becoming a ‘Twitter quitter’ is the new must-do
Becoming a 'twitter quitter' is the new on-trend must-do. Lily Allen quietly ended her tweeting at the end of September. At the start of October Miley Cyrus quit, leaving 1.1 million followers behind. Then over the weekend Stephen Fry threatened to quit, but later backed down saying he was more sheepish than a sheep. The growth of Twitter quitting has raised the question of how the media use tweets and how wise it is for celebs to be online.
Miley Cyrus said she thinks Twitter should be banned after questioning how the media used her tweets as the source for news stories. Image: The Insider
Fry tweeted that he was considering leaving the site after fellow user brumplum described his tweets as boring. The twitter fall-out and following make-up was picked up by several websites and newspapers. On brumplum's blog he wrote: "For a major newspaper to pick up a spat between users of an ultimately insignificant glorified chatroom is absolutely mind-boggling. To make a national (and international) story of it is beyond silliness."
On Monday the Guardian's PDA blog described how "news organisations pick up stories from Twitter as if it were a wire service." The quantity of stories generated from twitter feeds has been increasing, but is nothing new. There have been a wide range of stories trickling into the press over the last few months, some more worthy than others.
One of the weaker examples being the Sun's story, 'Sport aces, 15, Tweet hearts,' about the tweets of Olympic diver Tom Daley. The article started: "Diver Tom Daley has been bombarding fellow teen sports star Laura Robson with flirty Twitter messages - sparking rumours of a budding relationship." The only two messages he had sent her were "hey just thought I'd say good luck for your next tournament : ) your doing awesome : D" and "good luck in your US tournament : ) x" 'Bombard' and 'flirty' may not have been the most accurate descriptions.
Miley Cyrus made a rap on YouTube to mark her departure from the site, in which she said that everything she typed was taken by 'lame gossip sites' and made into news. Since she has said Twitter should be "banned from this universe."
However, on the whole surely what is said on twitter is fair game. It is naive to think that tweets are conversations that are off-limits for journalists. They are statements made in the public sphere and unless you protect your updates they are available for the whole world to see.
It seems that celebrities and their PRs are finally seeing that social networking can provide both promotional opportunities and pitfalls.
As one publicist told the LA Times, "Giving some celebrities Twitter is like giving a kid a loaded gun. Twitter can be enormously valuable as a branding tool. But like everything else, it's a double-edged sword, and if you have impulse control problems -which strangely a lot of celebrities seem to have - it can be very dangerous."
It will be interesting to see how celebrity tweeting develops and whether PRs will have a more active role in controlling their clients' social networking. As the Washington Post reports there is the problem that accounts filtered by PRs sound like infomercials, while the public also do not take to phoney accounts not being written by the celebrity at all.
