During Meg Pickard’s Social Media briefing today, she discussed how journalists could use the comments posted on newspaper websites as a potential source for new stories or interesting angles on a current story and it made me wonder, why is this practice so underused in journalism? Having spent the time and effort to build up a community filled with intelligent people with local knowledge and often specific expertise, why do newspapers seem not to make the most of this easily accessible, cheap and willing resource?
It took me back to my studies, where I would often use local messageboards and comment sections to look for potential leads, with mixed success. Often, I would find little of use, but occasionally I would find an interesting comment that I could follow up. I was once able to scoop the Birmingham Mail with a story about how police were failing to crack down on the trading of illegal goods across the region. I discovered this story in a forum post on the Birmingham Mail’s own website.
So it would seem that there is potential for news stories to come out of user activity on newspaper websites. Yet, as far as I know, it is not a particularly well-utlised area. Time is clearly an issue here. How many journalists have time to scroll through all of their comments to search for something that could well resemble a needle in a haystack? It was commented that, ironically, freelancers may make better use of this resource as their need for that next story is greater than their staff member counterparts.
If time is the issue, then why not have other staff members do it for you? As commented before, the moderation team at guardian.co.uk now has a Twitter feed @GuardianVoices which highlights good individual comments and interesting debate. Could they be used as a tool to collect potential leads? After all, moderators will already be reading the majority of content of the publication they work for. However, it would require a rather different mindset to look out for story leads compared to the more usual role of finding and removing offensive content.
The idea, I think, is a good one, but requires a more concerted effort than merely scrolling through comments. ‘What do you want to talk about?’ threads are often used to garner ideas and often work quite well. They certainly aid interactivity, giving the user the opportunity to present their ideas and, potentially, have them reported by a professional journalist. Also, a number of blog posts ask for user opinions about a particular subject, or for ideas to fill a new series, which is a semi-effective of utilising the community.
I can’t help but feel though, that lots of potential ideas are being missed. Increased interactivity with users builds trust, which in turn produces a higher class of debate and, with it, more opportunities for follow-up articles. Since commenting became the norm on newspaper websites, community conversations have been inspired by the journalists articles. Perhaps it is now time for the journalists to take inspiration from their communities as well.
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Tags: comments, community, journalism, newspaper, social media, story leads, todd nash
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