9 posts tagged mashable

1. We lost one of the greatest innovators of our generation. Jonathan Mak from the School of Design at Polytechnic University of Hong Kong gave us something words could not.  

2. Jon Stewart explains how the Daily Show is made (no, they don’t use child labor). (via Open Culture)

3. The Muppets take on Sesame Street corporate greed.

4. You can do some really cool stuff with the new FB Timeline layout and your cover photo.

5. Apartment Therapy turns melted crayons into something pretty.   Sometimes melting Crayolas is just as much fun as coloring with them. 

(Image via communicaitonclinic)

 Ohhh, this is going to be FUN.  

Mashable reported that “Reuters released their social media policy, which includes instructing journalists to avoid exposing bias online and tells them specifically not to “scoop the wire” by breaking stories on Twitter.”

Mashable does a great recap, but in short, this demonstrates the struggle of a traditional news organization operating in a very new world with almost unfettered access to information - both public AND private information.

I call into question the instruction not to break news on Twitter first and instead use the wire. Why? Is it because the public has access to Twitter and by using Twitter journalists essentially takes the news organizations out of the loop? It seems to me this actually levels the playing field - now you can have on-the-ground reporters over a widespread area bringing in multiple pieces of information.  Maybe, just maybe, the answer is to find a way to leverage this new channel and not to avoid it.

It is understandable why Reuters has openly addressed social media usage by their journalists. Traditionally, we expect journalists to remain somewhat void of personal bias. How much could one believe in an expose on a political candidate if the journalist who wrote the story had openly, and even vehemently, voiced opposition to the candidate’s stance on public policy?  Yet if we take a close look at our journalists from major news organizations today, personal bias is just bleeding through - both on the liberal and conservative sides. To find even a hint of an objectivity, one must cull through reporting from multiple sources and reassemble the story on one’s own. 

However, isn’t this something that impacts all of us? How we are perceived by the very information we share and how, today, it can so easily be misconstrued both in our personal and professional lives? 

Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures did a great post that touched on the pros and cons of information sharing via the web. And it’s a conundrum.  Do we censor ourselves for fear of being taken out of context? Or even perhaps, judged by our personal opinions? I’ve had several conversations recently about privacy and how I know that whatever I share, regardless of how “private” I think it is, is probably readily accessible to someone, somewhere.  So does that mean I have to censor myself for fear of professional backlash? Or, do we all continue to be vocal and perhaps become more open-minded about accepting other opinions and ideologies? (And note the word “accepting” versus “agreeing” - very different context).

I am interested to see how current and future journalists handle this - will we see more organizations like Reuters essentially asking employees to censor themselves - or insisting on censorship? Or will we see a migration away from these centralized organizations to a large pool of independent reporters? Will journalistic integrity take another hit? Or will the public more readily accept what is written by a blogger or an independent reporter? 

Get ready for the next round of debates…