Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Newsrooms are posting more of their content directly to social media platforms, but with little idea of what the rewards will be.
That insight comes from data presented by researchers at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University last week at a half-day event, “Digital News in a Distributed Environment.”

Researchers surveyed more than 40 journalists and news media executives, from both national and local brands, as well as eight executives from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google and Snapchat. They also held a roundtable attended by fifteen social media and audience editors.

They found that a publisher’s business model is what determines its social media strategy – and no one solution works, said Claire Wardle, the research director at the Tow Center. While some publishers are optimistic about the new opportunities that social media provides, others feel powerless. And relationships between publishers and platforms are not always amicable, with one respondent referring to a platform as a “frenemy.”...

There are already strategic choices facing the organization, specifically the fate of the World Service, though the report from parliament may signal its future is relatively safe. Either the World Service will need to grow more, or it will need to be cut back to basic, and cheaper, levels and focus resources on other key parts of the BBC charter.

The report is more firm on quality over quantity, putting it at odds with a bulk of news websites currently bombarding Facebook and Twitter with hundreds of links to hoover up any potential clicks for advertisers. Because the BBC within the UK does not allow advertising on any of the channels or websites, the need for clicks is merely to prove they are serving the public. That allows a different emphasis for news.

This is not a report for the public, though it is publicly available. Even as a reporter, I still haven’t worked out what some of the buzzwords mean in terms of day-to-day news journalism. Just as the Leveson Report in 2012 was at least a decade too late and barely touched on the Internet, the Future of News report feels late. Being that it is only the first part, it may be that the second part will offer more specific and comprehensive forward-looking proposals....