Here’s a pickle. You link to a story. The story + HED are later corrected. Do you correct your Facebook & Twitter posts? Real life example:
I recently linked to a story from another publication on The American Lawyer’s Twitter stream as well as our morning newsletter. The story and headline turned out to be inaccurate and was corrected.
Because we treat the newsletter as a unique published item, we ran a correction in the next day’s edition.
Do we consider our social feeds a publication? Even if the link takes the reader to the story, where they can read an accurate version plus a correction, our Twitter feed remains inaccurate.
A link on The American Lawyer Facebook page went up much later using an accurate headline, but I could this could present a more of an issue on facebook, where the Page is a destination and the inaccurate Headline would be glaring at readers for ever.
What to do?
My inclination is to correct inaccuracies—using the comments on Facebook and a Retweet on Twitter.
Twitter’s Top News feature is the company’s attempt to compete w/ Google in real-time search, news aggregation.
The mechanics have people guessing how it might source those links in the Top News spot. Algorithm? Human curator? Divine intervention?
My 2Cents: LinkedIn Today might offer an example. Twitter may choose to use a blend of verified accounts and an algorithm to deliver news links.
The New York Times’s Jennifer Seinhayuer profiled the Republican party’s evolved use of social media and shared this account of Brad Dayspring, communication director to House Majority leader Rep. Eric Cantor, firing off a Tweet to counter claims made just minutes earlier by President Obama:
Within seconds, Brad Dayspring, Mr. Cantor’s Rasputin of retort, was on the case, his fingers ripping across the keyboard as if individually caffeinated. “Obama says he’s open to any “serious #GOP idea,” typed Mr. Dayspring, the aggressive spokesman for Mr. Cantor, the Republican from Virginia who serves as House majority leader, in a message on Twitter. “Here are 15 jobs bills stalled in the Senate to get him started.”
A link from Mr. Cantor’s blog was quickly pasted in, the send button was hit, and Mr. Dayspring sat back slightly in his chair, pleased.
The Tweet:
What’s interesting is the final step, the one that brings it all home, literally. Dayspring linked the Tweet back to Cantor’s blog (a post job creation bills), where readers could dive deeper into the topic, float off into other topics and witness a more complete view of the majority leader.
It isn’t enough to engage in Tweets, status updates, checkins and video posts. You want readers engaging on your turf—your Web page—where you have built your own environment to drive the user experience, connect them to alternate social media channels, keep them consuming content or take some sort of action, be a purchase or a vote.
Content on our own turf is the key to social media engagement. Otherwise, you’re just another voice in the void.
Steve Buttry shared the Journal Register Co.’s plans to open up its newsrooms to the community.
JRC newspapers will “invite bloggers and other community members into the buildings and to reach out into the community digitally and in person.” And the Register Citizen in Torrington, CT, unveiled “Newsroom Cafe, an area with computers and a microfilm machine for public access (with free printouts), a classroom and a lounge where community art could be displayed.” A fantastic idea.
When I was a reporter at The Ocean County Observer, in Toms River, N.J. our newsroom was downtown and readers, sources, fans and haters would often stop by to chat. To our own shame, we often considered it a bit of a nuisance, but good stories came out of it and kept us connected to the readers. The same will come of JRC’s open newsrooms.
It got me thinking about an idea I hadn’t considered in more than a year — Story Meetups.
At a Hacks/Hackers event last in 2010, Meetup invited journalists into its offices for a demo of the product and to brainstorm ideas on how to use the platform. The obvious idea, shared by many was Story Meetups — After publishing a story, reporters would host a Meetup on the topic of the story to discuss their reporting, hear criticism and complaints and gather the leads for the next story on the topic.
There isn’t a Meet Me, button to add to your page, but maybe some enterprising soul or Meetup itself, could craft one that would let reporters designate something akin to office hours that would let readers elect to attend.
