This is a preentation on Networked Journalism given by Mark Jones, Global Editor for Financial Communities at Thomson Reuters, at the CityWeek summit in London, September 21, 2010
5. Web 2.0 for a seasoned Reuters journalist… BLOGGERS are TAKING MY JOB! I’m TOO OLD to get down with the kids... ANOTHER GEEKY FAD – let me do the REAL job
18. @ markjones Global Financial Communities Editor Thinking like a Networked Journalist Social Media News and Financial Markets
Editor's Notes
If the Tsunami taught us a very clear lesson – that since we can’t be everywhere we need to tap into social networks for content from eyewitnesses – then the Iranian protests of June last year taught us another – that even where we do have people present difficult regimes who restrict access can mean we still need to tap into networks to get content. This is a still from a piece on YouTube showing the last moments of Neda ? ?. It wasn’t shot by a Reuters cameraperson but by a bystander. Restrictions on the movement of journalists and the sheer risks of the situation meant the protests were all but inaccessible. And the demand from Reuters broadcast customers for material was overwhelming.
Last month Forbes magazine wrote up a new phenomenon – the tracking of the twitter streams of US farmers by commodities traders. What started out as a low-maintenance way for US farmers to update one another on how they were faring has turned into a new source of intelligence for some web-savvy traders. Some farmers have many more followers than there are people in the hamlets where they live. And they are beginning to get calls from traders wanting to know what they can see. Source: http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/05/twitter-commodity-traders-personal-finance-farmer-crop-yield.html
Thomson Reuters has launched a series of micro-communities – ten or so services built around chatrooms with an Editorial Community Owner at the centre. We have a series built around equities trading – In the Middle East, India, Brazil and China. Editors at the centre of these communities build up close relationships with members who share insights, interesting links, research, raise questions about what’s going on and speculate about what will happen next. Besides the intrinsic value for members, these communities are beginning to generate news. Back in May on our Trading China chatroom one member mentioned that he’d heard that Standard Chartered was thinking of dropping the Blackberry for the iPhone. It was the first big name bank to confirm it was thinking of moving to Apple and the story went via Reuters to homepages around the world. We’re beginning to think of communities like this as the Virtual coffee houses of the 21 st Century.
This is a story that came from a journalist making use of the ‘follow company’ function on LinkedIn. Using this you can see all the moves and promotions within a company. In this case, Apple took on someone with major expertise in wearable computing – the mind boggles. As a form of intelligence about the kinds of people a company is hiring this kind of stuff has been largely hidden until now. Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1583846/apple-richard-devaul-wearable-computing-mobile-portable-computers-science