When should newspapers break exclusive stories online?

How does a newspaper define an Exclusive? Is it a story it has to itself; a story it publishes before anyone else, or - on occasions - a story the publisher is sole owner of because, frankly, no other media outlet cares?

The Online Dictionary defines exclusive as:
* Not divided or shared with others
* Excluding much or all; especially all but a particular group or minority
* Single: not divided among or brought to bear on more than one object or objective

Interesting definitions... particularly as the words 'excellent', 'interesting' or even 'good' are conspicuous by their absence. And yet, for newspapers, that is how we regard an Exclusive; as a 'good' story - something interesting. But how often does an Exclusive story turn out to be 'this is a great story that you simply cannot afford to miss'.(On the occasions that definition might apply it can also morph into a 'World Exclusive'.)

Exclusive can also sometimes mean: 'We've got this... no one else has... um, we think... although that might change in the hours between us designing the front page and the paper being distributed..."

I was involved in some fairly lengthy discussions this week which, essentially, revolved around what was an Exclusive. And during a break I indulged in the Web 2.0 equivalent of askin' the Magic 8 Ball; I called on Twitter.

The tweet read: Debating the issue should newspapers break exclusive court cases online or wait to go to print. Twitter - your thoughts please?
Obviously those on Twitter would be more likely to be biased towards web-publish first, but the reasons posters supplied were very strong: "There is an expectation now that things go online first"; "You will get the respect of your readers for immediacy and increased followers" (a good point - build readers online, build advertiser interest); "break 'em online - how many people buy a paper to see a court story you know is exclusive"...



"How can a court case be exclusive? It's a public hearing" was another point raised.
Now, Patrick Smith from Press Gazette has considered the 'contemporaneous court reporting online' issue in an excellent post here.
I want to consider when papers should break stories online first - starting with the problems inherent in that phrase when papers should break stories online first.

For me, the continuing distinction between a newspaper's print and online products is just another extension of the 'journalist as gatekeeper' debate - when do we decide to share things with our readers and when do we let them have (some) information? This, I think, is the reason the US citizen journalist blogger industry is so strong - they get the information, push it out there and collaborate with their readers who interact through comments; through social networks blog news posts can take on a life of their own.

At the most basic level, when I posted a tweet about a serious road accident near my home on Tuesday night, I was depriving my newspaper of an exclusive. But that's social media - people who witness incidents now don't automatically tell their local paper; they update their blog, their status, share links, photos or videos online - this is what we are up against and what we have to be able to compete with. This is also a phenomenon that is only going to grow. Exclusive is an empty word unless you can prove that no other person knows about the story - that it hasn't been shared on a forum, Twitter, a MySpace page, a niche blog.

The question is, do readers prize exclusives more than they prize information? Would being a part of the conversation - through comments, related links or perhaps tracing the geographical development of a story via a map - be more valuable to them than the fact no other news outlet had that particular tale?
If the answer is yes, then where does that leave the printed page? Well, for me it leaves us with a choice: We can break the exclusive any way we can - get our multimedia brands associated with being first and best for pushing the story out there; Or we can hang on, keep promoting our print exclusives, and try to protect the print product for as long as possible.

These aren't easy choices - these just don't exist in the changing world of Newspaper Journalism. But the fact is that 'Exclusive' on a splash page won't halt the decline of our print readership.
'Exclusive' has been a word much loved by newspapers for decades but, funnily enough, it means far more to us than our readers. It's our badge of honour - our little dig at the competition. If we insist on holding back our exclusives, we may just be digging our own grave.

Breaking news with Spinvox

UPDATE 2013: SpinVox subsequently closed down

I've got another option for updating my status on various social networks now.

I've been using SpinVox as a way of turning my phone voicemail into text alerts for a long time - it's so much more convenient to read my message as a text than have endles voicemails to wade through. I also find it useful for dictating memos to my Gmail, and (sometimes) posting to this blog although I tend to use Utterz more often as I like posting the occasional podcast. But the status update is an interesting development and has, I think, real opportunities for newspapers that have social media sites.
For example, a reporter at the scene of a major fire could post a live update to a blog, instantly post a news flash via a Twitter feed, update the paper's Facebook page and even speak a text message newsflash to multiple mobile phone subscribers. It is, I think, a very cool development.
Of course, a reporter at a fire could already send alerts direct to Twitter and potentially have that Twitter feed linked to a Facebook status, but SpinVox makes it much faster... and with news, breaking or otherwise, that's what counts.

What's Your Main Source of News?

That's the question I've been asking people on a nifty website Nath from Travel Weekly discovered and shared on Plurk today.
It's called ask500people.com and allows you to pose questions - multiple choice, comment-enabled, photos etc - which visitors to the site can respond to. I've not got 500 people yet and don't expect to but the site is so easy to use (and some of the questions are such good fun) that I'd anticipate a wider audience before too long.

There are multiple polls running at any time, but some appear on the Homepage (mine made it on there tonight!) in response to voters adding "Points," or up-voting questions that they like and would like to see answered by the community.
According to the website's FAQ "Questions with the most points are promoted up the the question list until, hopefully, they appear on the homepage.
"If a poll doesn't make it after 24 hours, it's removed from the lineup. All polls, however, remain available to voters and can be linked to or embedded on websites."

That's great... until you get to the final three words of the last paragraph. Because I can't embed the poll or the widget that accompanies it on this website - it simply won't happen.
And The Daily Post asked a question about Everton's stadium situation, but had exactly the same problem with embedding. So I guess there must be a coding glitch somewhere, hence the posted screenshot here to illustrate my poll.

Luckily, you can also link directly to your question using code - as I have here.
I think it's a handy tool - one of the LDP reporters has posted a poll of her own about education, which is here as part of a crowdsourcing project she's running. It shows the geographic spread of voters using a map, handy at-a-glance panels and a little results sidebar.

So a useful site and one I'd say was a good addition to a journalist's toolkit. I just wish I knew why we couldn't get the embed options to work...

UPDATE: I got 522 responses in under seven hours and five comments - I reckon that's pretty good for an off-the-cuff poll. You can see the results here.

Using Dipity to tell a news story

Timelines have been used by newspapers for years to help lead readers through the twists and turns of a complicated, long-running saga. This, for me, is just another way of doing the same thing.
I've used Dipity and the Daily Post's Flickr group photos of Capital of Culture events to tell the story-so-far of Liverpool's Culture Year 2008; I could also add Post & Echo videos I guess, but I liked the idea of keeping it just for the Flickr group.
Now I'm thinking of the possibilities of using Dipity to report, for example, a court case; we could load images, pdfs of the previous day's coverage, locator maps, videos, links, all updated day by day. Liverpool and Everton's football season could be charted in the same way.
There are so many exciting possibilities to use this; and it can be made more interactive by giving readers the opportunity to upload their own content.

Plurk, interaction and my morning commute

Just a quick example of why I like Plurk.
I took this photo when I was trapped in stationary traffic on my morning commute. The whole package - rain, cones and queues - summed up what a great start to the day I was having.

Learning social media on YouTube

This is one of the most amazing videos I've found on YouTube, created by Professor Mike Wesch, assistant professor of Cultural Anthropology and Kansas State University, I stumbled across it a while ago, saved it to Del.icio.us and then, well, it filed it away in the back of my brain.
But happily I rediscovered it at the weekend and realised it was still utterly amazing and compelling. It's a fantastic piece of work and perfectly sums up the possibilities and implications of Web 2.0.

Just why are Flickr's online communities so good?

I've been agonising over how newspapers can build successful online communities in a couple recent posts, notably here. And while I don't want to drone on, I'm returning to the subject as I forgot about one flourishing website/newspaper/audience collaboration that's doing just fine, thanks very much.

The Liverpool Daily Post's Flickr 08 group was set up by the Post & Echo's digital editor, David Higgerson, before he was spirited away to do Great Things at a strategic level, and he handed the responsibility to me... which is why I've started noticing just what an amazing place it is.

The Flickr group is everything you could want from an online community: Interesting; informative; collaborative; encouraging; supportive; constructively critical; self-policing - I could go on but you get the picture. (Sorry! couldn't resist that one...)

So why does this group exist so amicably when other online spaces can be waspish, unhappy or downright mean places to visit?
Certainly shared interest is a major factor - these are people who love photography, love the photographic opportunities presented by the North West and love sharing their work with others.
Football fan networks tend to have the same sort of mutual desire to broadly get along, but footie followers seem more likely to fire off a snarling ripostes to a post they disagree with.
On Flickr the comments tend to be either praise or requests for technical information. I've noticed the same thing on interest-specific channels like this one on YouTube.

I think the fact that the Flickr community as a whole is so keen to interact with each other is something to be considered too; for example, many admins visit other groups, spotting shots they think are exceptional and requesting permission to add them. I love the fact that various awards are given out on Flickr for excellent work, and that users are generous with feedback and advice.

The discussion threads are also great opportunities for focused and supportive debates. On the Daily Post group a single post asking whether there should be an upload limit became a useful debate about the issue, culminating in a decision. I got the impression from reading the thread that members felt some users were uploading more images than strictly necessary, but it was all 'no names, no pack drill'.
If that had been a similar debate on a newspaper forum I suspect it would have been derailed by arguments by the third post.

So maybe one of the keys to running a successful newspaper general interest forum is to not run a forum... it's to run several. Most papers will already have football forums - should we now extend that niche approach to news? Poltical forums, crime forums, social issues, health - pick a topic, seed it with stories and links and see if people want to discuss it.

If debates do begin there's no reason why a moderator shouldn't post something along the lines of 'Nice point, X, I think there's more information about it through this link... what do others think?' It just shows that the debate is being monitored by someone who has half-an-eye on people's conduct, and who recognises valuable and interesting comments.

If one of the topic-specific forums doesn't flourish then maybe it's being done better by someone else, somewhere else. And I believe that with Web 2.0 it's a real case of 'if you can't beat'em, join 'em' - reporters should get involved with the debate where people are talking and link back while posting comments there.
That's when a forum starts to become a useful network. And that, I think, is why Flickr is so successful.