Washington Post Tells Reporters To Stop Engaging Readers On Twitter

from the how-not-to-connect dept

I've occasionally gotten into debates with Techdirt critics on Twitter, and I'll admit the medium is not all that well-suited for thoughtful debate. But, I have found that it is often a good way to, at least, better understand why someone might be upset about something we said or did, and to perhaps try to address it in some other manner (a separate blog post, email, etc.). Of course, it's certainly possible to do a bad job of engaging someone via Twitter, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to say that it's a mistake to respond to criticism. Yet, it appears that's what the Washington Post did. It had published a rather ridiculous story from an "anti-gay activist" implying that being gay is a mental health issue, touching on a few recent stories of suicides by several teenagers who were, in some manner, bullied for their homosexuality. Not surprisingly, a gay activist group, GLAAD, complained on Twitter about the article.

The Washington Post's official Twitter feed tried to defend the story, by claiming that the newspaper was trying to cover "both sides" of the story. As GLAAD correctly pointed out, this was not a story that had "both sides." It's unfortunate that so many news organizations appear to believe that there are two (and only two) sides to every story, and are willing to report each equally without ever taking a stand on which is the actual story. Either way, after this exchange, the Washington Post alerted its staffers to no longer engage with the public via Twitter in this manner:

Even as we encourage everyone in the newsroom to embrace social media and relevant tools, it is absolutely vital to remember that the purpose of these Post branded accounts is to use them as a platform to promote news, bring in user generated content and increase audience engagement with Post content. No branded Post accounts should be used to answer critics and speak on behalf of the Post, just as you should follow our normal journalistic guidelines in not using your personal social media accounts to speak on behalf of the Post.

Perhaps it would be useful to think of the issue this way: when we write a story, our readers are free to respond and we provide them a venue to do so. We sometimes engage them in a private verbal conversation, but once we enter a debate personally through social media, this would be equivalent to allowing a reader to write a letter to the editor--and then publishing a rebuttal by the reporter. It's something we don't do.

Now, this raises some questions. First of all, if part of the purpose is to increase audience engagement, doesn't that involve... um... engaging? It seems weird to suggest the way to increase user engagement is to avoid engaging. On top of that, the second paragraph just has me shaking my head. Why wouldn't a newspaper let a reporter publish a rebuttal? Isn't that what engagement is about? The search for "truth" comes from discussing things with different viewpoints, and it seems like something of a massive cop-out for the Washington Post to say that it will refrain from engaging with those who question its reporting.

Filed Under: engagement, readers, twitter, washington post

Some Simple Concepts For Better Engaging With Fans At Shows

from the ditch-ticketmaster dept

We recently wrote about the live music market, noting that lots of people seemed to agree that the massive additional fees and surcharges seemed to be a huge problem -- and most of those fees seem to come from Ticketmaster. So it's interesting to see that some are finally looking at ways to get around the old way of handling tickets. Shane Richmond at The Telegraph recently discussed his experience going to see The Pixies in London, where the band used some rather straightforward and simple tools to make the concert-going experience a hell of a lot more enjoyable:

As soon as I got the email I went to the Pixies' website and bought tickets. The tickets -- not a receipt but the tickets themselves -- were emailed minutes later in PDF form. I printed them off on the day of the gig and they were scanned at the venue by an iPhone-wielding staff member.

Apparently, this was all done via a new Topspin app. In this case, The Pixies had apparently used Topspin to put together an email list -- starting from scratch and got it up to over 100,000 pretty quickly -- and then sent a single email out announcing the show, selling the tickets directly. You can see the iPhone scanning operation below: At Hypebot (the link above) Rogers noted: "100% of fans acquired via Topspin, all marketing direct-to-fan via Topspin, every ticket sold via Topspin, and every person entering the venue after being checked in by the Topspin iPhone application." While that's nice buzz for Topspin, certainly other tools could be used to do the same thing (or something similar). The really interesting part is the lack of Ticketmaster.

But, perhaps even more interesting is some of the other aspects of how the band then took a few very simple steps to make the concert going experience even more enjoyable. Going back to Richmond's post:

Anyway, a couple of weeks before the show I got an email from the Pixies:

"If you're reading this email, it means we'll see you at TROXY London for two shows in June. We're looking forward to it. What songs do you want us to play? Reply and tell us."

Just before the show they emailed again thanking everyone who sent requests and saying that they had a setlist they thought we would like. Now for all I know, some guy who works for the Pixies might have dealt with all the emails and the band themselves may never have looked at them but it doesn't much matter. The engagement -- even if it was an illusion -- helped to build my excitement about the gig.

A few weeks after the gig, the band emailed again, this time sending me a link to a download of two songs from the gig I went to. So I now have a very nice souvenir of the show too.

Now, I'm sure that some will respond to this with a "so what?" There's no whiz-bangery going on here to make all this happen. This is all pretty straight-forward and simple. And, that's part of the point. None of this needs to really be "new," it just needs to be done well, and that means focusing on the stuff people like, such as making things convenient and making people feel like they belong, and minimizing the stuff people hate, such as excess fees and surcharges and feeling like an afterthought rather than a valued part of the community, and you can really do an amazing job connecting with fans (and, oh yes, giving them a reason to buy).

Filed Under: engagement, experiences, live shows, pixies
Companies: ticketmaster, topspin

The Problem With Newspapers: Lack Of Innovation, Lack Of Engagement... And Lack Of Reporting

from the it-doesn't-look-pretty dept

And here we go again, with yet another post about the troubled business of the newspapers, but this time I've got three separate articles that, combined, give a pretty good explanation for why the newspaper business has been in trouble. Basically, the newspapers failed to innovate, they failed to engage with their communities -- and worst of all, they failed to actually do much reporting.

First up is Frank Rich's column on how the American mainstream press is on "suicide watch." He does a decent job describing the problem, in discussing the industry's fear (or outright disgust) towards any sort of innovation, while others did the innovating for them. He compares how the newspapers have acted to how the movie studios acted when TV first became popular.

But... then, he falls into the same old fallacy. Assuming that those who are talking about new models mean "citizen journalists" with no business model:

Reporting the news can be expensive. Some of it -- monitoring the local school board, say -- can and is being done by voluntary "citizen journalists" with time on their hands, integrity and a Web site. But we can't have serious opinions about America's role in combating the Taliban in Pakistan unless brave and knowledgeable correspondents (with security to protect them) tell us in real time what is actually going on there. We can't know what is happening behind closed doors at corrupt, hard-to-penetrate institutions in Washington or Wall Street unless teams of reporters armed with the appropriate technical expertise and assiduously developed contacts are digging night and day. Those reporters have to eat and pay rent, whether they work for print, a TV network, a Web operation or some new bottom-up news organism we can't yet imagine.

Indeed. But no one has ever said otherwise. No one has said that "unpaid" reporters will replace all of the paid ones. We're just saying that the paid reporters may end up doing their jobs in a different way and getting paid via other business models. And, Rich also seems to be underestimating the ability of the people who are already in those places to be a part of the journalism process -- not necessarily the core component of it, but certainly a part of it.

The second article worth reading is Robert Niles discussion of how the ruling in the 1995 lawsuit Stratton Okamont v. Prodigy scared newspapers away from engaging in online conversations. The ruling effectively found Prodigy liable for anonymous comments on its message board because it had hired a moderator for those boards. While the passage of the CDA the following year -- and specifically section 230 of the CDA granting safe harbors -- effectively erased that decision, "risk averse" newspaper feared to actually engage with readers in comments or forums for fear that it would suddenly make them liable for the content written by the community. Thus, they ignored their own communities and did little to really interact with them.

The final piece may be the most interesting. Walter Pincus talks about how so many newspaper reporters have stopped reporting and really started repeating the messages being handed to them. For all the talk of "investigative reporting," there's very little of that being done. Most reporting isn't reporting. It's not digging up the details and presenting an informed piece that gets at the facts. It's simply parroting what someone told them, and then perhaps presenting an alternate point of view (what Jay Rosen has referred to as "he said, she said" journalism) without any effort whatsoever to actually determine who's right. It's as if journalists have figured that "balanced" reporting is to present two sides to any story, and then leave it up to you to do the actual work. Pincus seems to be one of the first we've seen in this ongoing debate to make the point that we've been focusing on for a while: the newspapers aren't adding value.

Pincus also highlights another point that we've mentioned, but which is almost always ignored in these discussions: the big newspapers put themselves into massive debt over the past two decades. Many are still profitable, but not profitable enough to service the debt. And when they top that off by not innovating, not engaging with their community (which is their most valuable asset) and not actually doing real reporting, but just acting as stenographers, is it really any surprise the business is struggling?

Filed Under: engagement, innovation, journalism, reporting

Insight Community Participation Directly Through Techdirt

from the making-it-more-accessible-than-ever dept

As you hopefully read in my last post about our new branding, Floor64 has separated out the Insight Community brand from the Techdirt blog. However, that doesn't mean the two won't still work together happily. In fact, we're also launching a new effort today, that will allow Insight Community cases to appear directly within Techdirt. You will see the first such integrated Insight Community case on the site in a short while.

Starting a Real Conversation, Rather Than Advertising

The idea here is similar to what we started last week with American Express sponsoring an Insight Community case concerning how small businesses are responding to the current financial crisis, the results of which are starting to appear on American Express' Open Forum blog. In situations like that, where we believe the wider Techdirt community would be intrigued by, and benefit from, the wider conversation, we'll be placing those cases directly on the Techdirt blog. Thus, a selection of Insight Community cases that are relevant to the Techdirt community will start appearing directly on the blog, allowing members to jump right in to respond (and for non-members to join up and participate).

This evolution fits in nicely as one of the many ways that the new Insight Community can be used by companies to generate insight and engage with the broader community. Integrating Insight Community cases into Techdirt is based on our strong belief about content and its relationship to advertising. Traditional, annoying, intrusive advertising is a market that won't last -- especially in economically troubled times. It's based on the false belief that there are still captive audiences.

While the online advertising market is still a big one, it's going to need to change. It's entirely focused on a one way push. Companies that buy advertising are pushing a message to an audience. The site is just the one-way pathway to get to that audience -- and that audience often doesn't care about the message being pushed. That's simply not that effective for the advertiser. And yes, before people point it out, we do include some advertising on Techdirt, though we think that the companies buying those ads could spend their money more effectively by actually engaging the community here.

Engage the Community, Reward the Community and Get Value Back

So, rather than focus on that one-way street of merely pushing "message" at an audience, we believe strongly that the concept of "advertising" needs to diminish, and in its place, the focus should be on providing good content that provides real value to all participants. That means not just viewing things as a one way street, but actually engaging the community of folks a company is trying to reach by getting back insight from them and then rewarding those in the community who provide that insight. This is much more of a win-win situation than advertising. It's about actually creating value -- about building an insightful discussion that everyone benefits from, and then making sure that those who participate can be rewarded both monetarily and through reputation, rather than just being seen as a "target" market.

Thus, rather than focusing on "advertising's" one way street to pushing a message on our community, we're asking companies who are interested in the Techdirt community to actually engage with them via the Insight Community, where not only can they start a real dialogue, they can learn from the community, gain valuable insights that can be used elsewhere, and reward the community for participating. That seems a lot more effective and valuable than "advertising." It's about good content and a real conversation where everyone benefits.

Filed Under: advertising, content, conversation, engagement, insight community, techdirt, value