Nieman Journalism Lab |
| Wall Street Journal consolidates its blogging with MoneyBeat Posted: 17 Apr 2013 09:31 AM PDT
At a time when every major news organization seems to be adding verticals, building out blogs, and creating sub-brands, The Wall Street Journal is hoping there’s merit in consolidation. The Journal debuted its new blog MoneyBeat, this week on WSJ.com. But MoneyBeat is more of a rebuild than an entirely new product, as it brings together a number of other Journal properties, including two of the paper’s oldest blog, Deal Journal and Market Beat. As the Journal puts it:
By putting all the blogs under one roof, and adding new features like a corresponding MoneyBeat video program for WSJ Live, they hope to create a constantly updating hub for global financial news. “It’s about the reader experience,” said Stephen Grocer, editor of MoneyBeat. “We created great content across multiple blogs, but they weren’t talking together as well as they should.” Merging all those blogs into one means a faster-moving content stream: MoneyBeat posted 28 stories between midnight and noon of its first day. Francesco Guerrera , the Journal’s finance editor who oversaw the project, said the coverage on MoneyBeat will focus on three main areas: finance, markets, and deals. Guerrera said the Journal will be able to take advantage of its global network of correspondents to cover breaking news with greater depth and breadth. “There’s that old adage, that all news is local, right? That doesn’t apply to finance, or markets or deal making,” he said. “All financial news is global.” Grocer pointed to news of Dish Network’s bid to buy Sprint, a story that has an impact within the boundaries of the U.S. but also around the globe. On MoneyBeat, they’ll chase those stories earlier, tease out the details that investors and consumers are curious about, and help lead the coverage the print edition of the Journal. “The goal on a daily basis is to cut through the reams of information that are driving the financial markets and centers across the globe every day and bring readers the most important news,” Grocer said. That also means pulling the international Deal Journal content that had previously been separated by country into a common mix. Moving the blogs under one title is as much a consolidation as it is an expansion, one that recognizes the speed and accessibility that comes with blogs. “We’ve seen it anecdotally and in traffic numbers,” Guerrera said. “The sweet spot for us, thankfully, is the the same for our readers. It’s global perspective in deals, finance, and markets.” Phillipa Leighton-Jones, London-based European editor for MoneyBeat, said the appetite for financial news on an international scale has been growing in recent years because of the ongoing economic problems in the US and Europe. Readers today are more familiar with terms like credit default swap or Libor then 5 years ago, she said. “Readers have become more used to reading things they didn’t think they were interested in or didn’t have the language to make it accessible,” she said. “I think there are correlations that even we didn’t really appreciate before.” Blogging makes for a good platform for most financial news because it tends to move at a faster clip and often lends itself to dissection, Leighton-Jones said. Instead of a 3,000 word story on how actions by Japan’s central bank are causing ripples around the world, the story could be broken out in a series of bullet points or data, she said. That mix of content, along with a rapid posting cycle, is what builds an audience, she said. “I think people are more open to wanting to know what is going on,” she said. “It makes for good dinner party conversation and a people feel this is more accessible than it used to be.” |
| Social media and the Boston bombings: When citizens and journalists cover the same story Posted: 17 Apr 2013 08:53 AM PDT Editor’s note: Hong Qu is a user experience designer who was part of the startup team that built YouTube. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Nieman Foundation, working on an application to help journalists and other users better follow stories though Twitter. In a breaking news situation, journalists get an adrenaline rush. There is a palpable eagerness to get the scoop, to be the first to bring the story to the public. In today’s world of social media, mobile phones, and the real-time 24/7 news cycle, though, journalists face competition from all sides: eyewitness accounts, official sources, and even friends and family are sharing news before mainstream news institutions have “published” the official news story. To illustrate this predicament, I compiled 26 tweets that “broke” the Boston Marathon bombing news.
Upon examining this timeline, we might ask: How does social media transform the role professional reporters play in these kinds of news events? I would say that journalists have three capabilities that are vital to the news ecosystem: broadcasting, credibility, and storytelling. As citizen journalists inadvertently gather and (attempt to) distribute news, they lack the ability to broadcast to millions of people. In theory, their posts in social media can reach anyone who has Internet access. However, in practice, few can find them among all the noise and, even when found, few will have reason to trust them. Journalists track down these sources, vet their credibility, and, finally, assemble scattered pieces of information like a jigsaw puzzle into a meaningful story by filling in context. Others edit the story before broadcasting to a mass audience. This process definitely takes more time and resources than clicking the retweet button. Nevertheless, the public needs news organizations that have sufficient credibility to vouch for the accuracy of the eyewitness, the amplifiers, and the information itself. In the long run, news organizations to which the public turns for good judgment in adjudicating news will accrue goodwill and command attention. The pace of the news cycle is quickening, but the fundamental responsibility of a journalist to gather and disseminate reliable news hasn’t changed, nor will it be supplanted by savvy social media auteurs. The only way for any person to become a good reporter — regardless of whether she has a degree or works for a news organization — is to consistently produce news stories in a way that is useful and engaging to consumers of news.  A conceptual representation of symbiotic interplay between social media and mainstream news that produces a more participatory, accurate and compelling news cycle. Image by Hong Qu. There is a reflexive reaction to pit emergent social media behavior against the traditional journalistic practices and norms. This defensive posture is counterproductive for both sides. Rather than pointing out flaws in order to uphold one model over the other, we should appreciate the interplay between them with a sense of symbiotic dependence that ultimately produces a more participatory, accurate and compelling news cycle. Social media is not going away. Even though the mainstream news industry might be experiencing creative destruction, demand for good storytelling from trustworthy news sources that enrich the public discourse isn’t going away either. |
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