Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

Tag: editors

The Social Media Editor is Dead, Long Live the Social Media Editor!

Is the role of the newsroom social media editor dead? A lot of journalists seem to think so, according to this piece by Rob Fishman at Buzzfeed.

Fishman* talked with a lot of industry leaders who noted that “social was no longer peripheral, but core to their strategy. Concentrating authority in a single personage no longer made sense.”

They’re right, to some extent, but most of the people interviewed in Fishman’s piece are from larger news organizations with long-established roles in social media. Coming from a perspective of smaller local newsrooms, I beg to differ. Many news organizations out there still need someone on staff to be thinking about how to use social media effectively and strategically across the entire news organization.

It isn’t the social media editor that is dead, but rather the Newsroom Social Media Rockstar Ninja Guru (and thank goodness).

As Fishman notes, many of the early social media editors were able to build quite a name for themselves:

More followers, more about them, more about their “personal brand.” Instead of finding a niche within the newsroom, these hires carved one out for themselves, largely outside of existing structures. They became self-appointed spokespeople, faces and names.

The exoticism of social media created a whole class of (mostly young) journalists who suddenly were a big deal – but who were ultimately supposed to be working themselves out of a job. Many instead worked themselves into bigger and better ones (and good on them). ** These days, there are a lot of tasks heaped on the social lead that aren’t so glamorous.

Even outside the news industry, the pedestal on which social media ninjas have been placed is slowly sinking. According to this excellent piece by Amber Naslund, the spotlight for social specialists is dimming as they move into the larger machinery of the digital space – and the enthusiasm of the would-be Brand Builders is fading along with it.

There’s definitely still a lot of work that needs to be done in many newsrooms when it comes to social media. The evangelization to join social media is no longer a job to be done in most newsrooms. Using social media well isn’t enough anymore either. It’s become a more widely-held skill to be able to write a good tweet, get response from an engaging Facebook post or set up a new Tumblr to capture a fly-by meme – but it is much more difficult to determine where it fits in the overall picture and long-term goals of the organization.

As my friend Daniel Victor noted, social media editors are not created equal. That title has a lot of different meanings and job duties across the industry – it can range anywhere from the Twitter monkey manning the newsroom accounts 24/7 to a strategist working social in at the highest levels to the Thought Leader/Guru (or some combination therein).

So what do newsrooms really need from the modern social media leader? I say it involves the following:

  • Elevate the use of social media across the organization. Help staffers craft and evolve their own social media plans around their jobs – don’t just get them on a tool and throw them out on their own. Monitor their use over time, make suggestions and encourage them to grow in their comfort and skills.
  • Manage your news brand’s social presence – not necessarily with hands on the Tweetdeck all of the time, but driving the overall message.
  • Be the evangelist for community engagement in all newsroom endeavors. Make suggestions for how social media, curation, crowdsourcing and UGC fits with particular coverage plans, experiment (or help others experiment) with new tools and offer feedback based on metrics.
  • Be the voice of encouragement for using social media, but also the voice of when not to use it.
  • Act as the customer service agent – both inside and outside the newsroom. You aren’t the ombudsman, but you can certainly help connect someone with the solution to a problem. Be the sounding board and staff researcher for social media issues, be they ethical quandaries, UGC concerns or larger trends in the crossroads of social media and news.
  • Craft and/or carry out a social media strategy for the entire news organization – preferably as part of a larger team across the newsroom, sales, marketing, corporate structure and management. Work toward an overall vision for what the various aspects of the organization are trying to do with social media and how they all fit together.

What would you add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

The truth is, most social media editors working in news today aren’t being paid to be thought leaders or personal brands — they’re being paid to make their newsrooms better. The rest is just gravy (mmm, gravy).

 

 

* Full disclosure, Fishman hired me on at Huffington Post two years ago, though we never had the chance to work together.

** I’m not saying the whole Social Rockstar thing isn’t great. In fact, it’s fantastic and intoxicating. Early on, when I first started in a social role in 2008 at the Cincinnati Enquirer, the social media role gave me a position of visibility in my newsroom and community I didn’t have as a web producer. Then, when I moved from Cincinnati to DC for TBD, it gave me that visibility on a much larger scale – it gave me a brand. I was suddenly invited to conferences and asked to speak to classes. People introduced themselves to me at conferences because they recognized my name from Twitter. My name was referenced alongside people who I considered to be famous journalists. That was pretty cool. It was also fleeting.

Ron Liebau

Lessons Learned From An Old Dog Who Excelled at New Tricks

Earlier this week, I lost a good friend and journalism lost one hell of an editor in Ron Liebau. I worked with Ron at The Cincinnati Enquirer and whether he knew it or not, he shaped a lot of how I thought journalism should work. He’s an inspiration to all trying to move our industry to the future instead of worrying on the past.

In this wonderfully-written obituary, Tom Callinan, the former editor-in-chief of the Enquirer, noted how Ron wholeheartedly embraced the web.

“So many people had such a difficult time adapting, and he just jumped right in and took the leadership. He took that whole new world and put it in words that people could understand.”

It might sound like a tired cliche nobody believes, but it is true. Ron ran to the future with arms open, and he pulled many others in the newsroom with him by both his reputation as an old school news man and sheer force of will.

Ron Liebau

Ron Liebau

As a former print reporter and editor, Ron was old school about a lot of things: Sourcing, fact-checking, winning the day, good copyediting, solid ledes and prompt budgets. He was an encyclopedia of knowledge about the local area, public figures and notable dates. Ron was the archive, the stylebook and the voice of reason to me in the years we worked closely together.

One thing he wasn’t old school about was news delivery. He didn’t just embrace the web, he throttled it. As the online news editor, Ron constantly pushed reporters and editors to confront the web for what it was: An opportunity. He saw the web not only to reach our readers in new ways, but a means to beat the competition now instead of risking a second place finish later. He established a workflow and a mantra that probably drove many a reporter crazy, “Write for the web, update for print.”

Ron lived that workflow to a T. He was up and online early, writing web updates from the early news, sending tweets, taking down quotes over the phone (and later, Twitter) from our reporters in the field to get a quick paragraph and headline on the website. He’d get frustrated if print lineups took priority over what was popping on the web in the morning news meetings. If a reporter said, “I’ll file that story for tomorrow”, Ron would reply with, “It’s news now.”

Ron would be the first to say he didn’t always get the latest lingo, but he knew what he wanted to get done and he’d learn what he had to in order to get there. This is exactly the sort of journalist we should want to be, the sort of editor newspapers today need to have on staff. So when I got word that Ron was laid off from the Enquirer last year, I was flabbergasted. The industry needs more like him, not less.

So I say to you, fellow journalists: Be more like Ron and take these lessons to heart:

1. There’s no such thing as a journalist who has nothing left to give and nothing left to learn.

You are never too old, too “analog” or too “set in your ways” to learn new skills. Whether it’s a new workflow, a new tool or a whole new way of thinking about your industry – you CAN learn it if you try. It might take a long time and you’ll make mistakes, but you’ll get there and get comfortable.

2. Lead by example.

When you are a journalist other staff members look up to, the future of your newsroom is in your hands. When the reporters of the Enquirer joined Twitter, I believe it was due to more to the example shown by this well-respected former print editor rather than the cajoling of the twentysomething social media editor.

3. Try not to assign work you wouldn’t or couldn’t do yourself.

This is a vastly underrated trait of the best newsroom leaders and it goes back a bit to #2. If you don’t know how to find a story in your CMS, make a simple edit on a page or send a tweet, it can be tough for frazzled staff members to believe you really understand what they do and why it is important. I’m not saying all editors should be able to do any job in their newsroom, but knowing the basics goes a long way in the internal PR department.

4. Develop good relationships across your newsroom and across generations.

It didn’t matter if you were a page designer, an overnight web producer or a newbie cops reporter – Ron had an amazing array of useful advice, anecdotes and war stories to impart. Coming from different backgrounds, skill sets and age groups gives us a lot to learn from one another – and can be the basis for some wonderful friendships.

5. Mentor others – or reach out to someone to mentor you.

Many young journalists and former young journalists have shared their stories in recent days of how Ron touched their lives in lasting ways. If you spot a coworker who could use some guidance, constructive feedback or just a sympathetic ear – reach out. If you’re the one in need, don’t be afraid to approach those you respect and admire and ask for their support.

6. It’s the journalism that matters, not the medium.

The medium doesn’t determine the quality of your journalism – you do. It doesn’t matter if it is in a tweet, blog post or 1-A story, if you’re telling a story that entertains, enlightens or explains something to readers – you’ve done your job well. I can only hope I’ll still have Ron’s voice in my head someday when the web is old and busted and there’s some new transition to be made. “It’s the story that matters”, he’d say. And he’ll still be right.

Twitterizing your staff

Newspapers all over the country all seem to be springing into action on Twitter. If they aren’t already there, many are at least starting to check it out for use in their newsrooms.

Steve Buttry, the Information Content Conductor (how’s THAT for a title?) at Gazette Communications in Iowa is holding a webinar entitled “Leading Your staff Into the Twitterverse” through the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Here’s the tipsheet he’s including for the webinar of several resources for those getting started on Twitter. It’s got a lot of info on how to set up and run an account and how to make Twitter work for you as a journalist (including an answer that question I get in every training session, “What do I say?”).

Check it out. Also, revisit yesterday’s post about my own Twitter tips.

A bright new future for the gatekeepers

What do you think will be the role for professional journalists in this rapidly approaching future we keep hearing so much about? Will the bloggers have taken over? Will there be any real reporting left?

I, for one, fully believe that the world needs journalists. Not just writers and reporters and photographers – but editors as well. We need these editors to determine what’s legitimate in a world of information overload.

Technologist and Big Thinker Steven Berlin Johnson put it pretty well when he spoke at SXSW last week and I felt it needs to be shared with the naysayers and doomsday theorists who believe we should all start training to be nurses.

In his address, he notes how much the availability and speed of content has vastly improved since even the late 80s – and he expects that to only continue with the continuing rise of hyperlocal news and citizen journalism.

Sure, it won’t be all done by professional journalists. Sadly, a lot of us won’t be journalists long enough to see this age of information equality. But there will still be news – and noise. While savvy news consumers will be able to sort through this mass of information for the information most relevant to them – there will be too much to handle for many (if not most).

He says:

Let’s say they need some kind of authoritative guide, to help them find all the useful information that’s proliferating out there in the wild. If only there were some institution that had a reputation for journalistic integrity that had a staff of trained editors and a growing audience arriving at its web site every day seeking quality information. If only…

Of course, we have thousands of these institutions.  They’re called newspapers.

Isn’t that a great thought? We should be editing content – even if we aren’t always the ones producing it. We’re in the process of doing this right now at the Enquirer in the form of aggregating off-site local content from unaffiliated blogs and news sites. We’re making our site a destination for all of the best local news – hand-picked by our editors.

So stop your bellyaching already – we might still be here just yet.

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