Do Facebook and Twitter Threaten or Complement the News Industry?

Five reporters from radio stations in in Canada, France, Belgium, and Switzerland are going to spend five days locked in a French farmhouse with only Twitter and Facebook to get their news. It's not a lame reality show, but an experiment looking at the quality of news from social media.

This experiment may be flawed from the start. One can almost imagine that people will purposely put out false information via Twitter and Facebook just to mess with these people (they can be followed on Twitter [updates in French]). Reporting on this story, AFP's Marie-Dominique Follain asks if social media is really a serious threat to established media.

Is this a worthwhile experiment? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends... what you think.

It appears that the credibility of social media as a way to get news is what is coming into question (not that this is the first time that has happened). "People tweet about fake events. Social media is rife with hoaxes," people will say. Yes, that's true.

People do put out false information, but what seems to be overlooked is that Facebook and Twitter are just the platforms for people posting their updates. They often are accompanied by links to blogs and traditional news sources. While the group have agreed to only connect to the outside world through Facebook and Twitter, and no web surfing, they are reportedly still allowed to follow links to outside sites from these social networks. With the 140-character limit of Twitter in particular, linking out is often very necessary in getting the whole story across, or at least gaining access to that story from the reader's perspective.

Maybe I will be proven wrong, but I don't see any possible result coming from this experiment that indicates social media is not useful for finding news. I don't believe social media threatens traditional media. It complements it, in a variety of ways.

Sometimes stories break there before they are reported by a traditional source...that's a source for that traditional channel. It could just as easily come from someone saying something in a crowded bar. If it's newsworthy, it might be worth covering, but it might be a lie, and facts are worth checking. It's just that with channels like Facebook and Twitter, those bars are as big as the entire world, and the patrons aren't all there to relax, drink, and have a good time (though some of them certainly are). Some of them are there to spread news. And people know that they can get news there because of that very fact (a study last year found that news was a top priority of Twitter users).

Not all news breaks on social media (although the ever-increasing accessibility to social media through mobile seems to be greatly narrowing the margin), but social media is always there for open discussion about the news, which tends to make for a more rounded outlook on any particular event. It doesn't eliminate the bias, but it provides a means for all biases to come together to form a more complete view of the story. Open discussion allows for points to be made that wouldn't necessarily be made by a traditional news outlet because maybe that outlet does have some kind of bias, even if it strives not to. Some say everyone has some bias.

The fact that people do turn to social media for news emphasizes the fact that they do want a look at the whole picture, and do want to have open discussion on matters. True, some of that is pointless noise, but strewn throughout that are often important facts and otherwise unconsidered viewpoints.

So what can this experiment really prove? That you can limit yourself to social media for news sources if you want? Isn't the point of social media (at least in the news sense) to strip away the limitations? Share your thoughts.


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Two More Publishers Talk About Blocking Google

A couple of major publishers are siding with (or at least edging towards) Rupert Murdoch in the News Corp./Google content dispute.  MediaNews Group and A.H. Belo execs have said that they're interested in keeping Google away from parts of their sites.

Let's talk about MediaNews Group first.  It operates 54 daily newspapers with a combined daily circulation of 2.4 million.  Corresponding websites are part of the mix, as are a TV station and some radio stations.

As for the organization's take on blocking Google, CEO Dean Singleton told Greg Bensinger and Brian Womack that some pay walls are going up next year, and "[t]he things that go behind pay walls, we will not let Google search to, but the things that are outside the pay wall we probably will, because we want the traffic."

Then there's A.H. Belo to consider.  It owns and operates four papers and 12 sites, and is weighing a similar approach.  Only Executive Vice President James Moroney seemed less than interested in search traffic, saying, "It's akin to a person who drops into town, buys one copy of your newspaper and leaves town again and yet you spend a whole bunch of time building your business around that type of customer."

The idea of keeping Google away from content appears to be gaining a bit of momentum, then, and with some additional prodding from Microsoft, Rupert Murdoch's idea could go further than critics first expected.

Have You Read This?

> Is The Murdoch Bing Deal Really Just About The Wall Street Journal?

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

> Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

YouTube Bringing Local News To You, Traditional Outlets Cringe

YouTube has yet another new—or should I say news?—feature: News Near You. The New York Times reports that the biggest video site in the world is taking after it parent company (you know, Google?) in cornering the news market—or, if you’re the CEO of Dow Jones, “sucking the blood out of the newspaper industry.”

YouTube started promoting their news partnerships a month ago. Along with News Near You, which actually started in the spring, these are part of a larger news strategy for YouTube. The NYT reports that “nearly 200 news outlets have signed up with YouTube to post news packages and split the revenue from the advertisements that appear with them.”

There are some doubts about whether this is a good thing for news producers, however. The NYT says:

YouTube says it is helping TV stations and its other partners by creating a new — but so far not fiscally significant — source of revenue.

But news media companies may have reasons to be wary. Few TV stations have figured out how replicate profits on the Internet. YouTube can easily act as another competitor.

But it’s not just news stations in News Near You. In fact, the NYT says that “most” of these videos come from sources like radio stations, newspapers and colleges. Everything from enterprising locals to local businesses and churches is bringing relevant, localized video content in the new feature. This could be a gateway to further citizen journalism, especially with video phones to upload directly to YouTube.

However, the vampiristic element (it’s a great newsday when you get to use that phrase in a sentence!) in News Near You is far lower than in Google News. As the NYT reports, YouTube “is not sending digital spiders around the Web to collect videos automatically; instead, it is asking news outlets to sign up as partners and promising a wider audience for their material.”

And so far, the adoption rate is low. For the most part, News Near You has to rely on a 100 mile radius around users for their localized content. Clickthroughs on the module, however, seem to be going well. Steve Grove, head of news and politics for YouTube, “said about 5 percent of users who see the News Near You module watch at least one local news video, a rate that YouTube sees as encouraging.”

What do you think? Is 5% good enough? Do you want to see local news on YouTube? Would you rather see local news from individuals, businesses, or traditional news providers?

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