Dirk Smillie
wrote at Forbes.com in Journalism's
Hottest Job that there are now about 200 social media directors
at newspapers, book publishers, magazines and television news stations. Most
started in the last two years. He writes that, “Rarely offline, their job is to
tweet, ping, blog and friend-find throughout the day, building and interacting
with new audiences, promoting media brands and sometimes breaking news.” I have been talking about the
relationship of social media and mainstream news for a bit (see Social Media Does Not Replace Traditional Mainstream
Media and Social Media Helping TV Stations Attract More Viewers and It Could Change
Way TV News Created).
Dirk goes on to question whether simply
tweeting the news is a money maker. He points out that most newspaper RSS feeds
don't carry ads; neither do blog posts or tweets that break news and adds that Lynn
D. Johnson, senior vice president for social media at the Advertising Research
Foundation, says news organizations aren't earning "anything
significant" from social media. This is where the mainstream news needs to
get creative. They should not simply reproduce the old media content in the new
media. For example, social media can be a useful means to drive traffic to your
regular, ad laden channel. A Seattle TV station took over the top TV news
ratings spot when its news staff tweeted to establish a better connection to
their audience.
Dirk concludes his post with a quote from Woody
Lewis: "Whether news organizations believe in its potential to make money
or not, they see the train leaving the station and don't want to get left
behind. They know that social media is where users want to be." Woody
writes the blog, "Save the Papers," which debates how mainstream
media can use social media to survive. They certainly need to be more creative
in how they broadcast their content with all the new options open. They need to
lead readers and viewers to revenue producing channels as well as add revenue
to the new channels.
There is another way that mainstream media
can use social media. They can better mine it for breaking news and trends.
Using the Darwin Awareness Engine ™ we observed a few weeks ago that social media was
all over the Lou Dobbs story at least a week before the mainstream media. Social media creates a vast amount of
interesting content. For example, as early as 2005 news people were turning to
bloggers for story ideas. The
Awareness Engine can provide greater control and flexibility over how you mine
this data.
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