{"id":2292,"date":"2010-04-27T23:57:46","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T06:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=2292"},"modified":"2010-04-29T23:39:51","modified_gmt":"2010-04-30T06:39:51","slug":"no-policy-no-strategy-either","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2010\/04\/27\/no-policy-no-strategy-either\/","title":{"rendered":"No policy …no strategy, either"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tonight I attended the 14th meeting of Victoria’s Social Media Club<\/a> to listen to five panelists from Victoria’s mainstream media (MSM) talk about how new media (including social media) is affecting their business.<\/p>\n

Panelists included Bryan Capistrano<\/a> (promotion director for radio station The Zone<\/a>); Amanda Farrell-Low (arts editor for weekly paper Monday Magazine<\/a>); Dana Hutchings<\/a> (producer\/ host for “Island 30” on TV station CHEK News<\/a>); Sarah Petrescu (reporter and webmaster at daily paper Times-Colonist<\/a>); and Deborah Wilson (journalist for CBC Radio-Victoria \u201cOn The Island\u201d<\/a>). The panel was moderated by Janis La Couv\u00e9e. <\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

blog might render photo cropped - click on picture to see original<\/p><\/div>\n

~<\/p>\n

The setting was the gymnasium of a former elementary school (now used as the University Canada West campus), hence the …well, gym-like setting.<\/p>\n

But the setting wasn’t really the disappointing bit: it was the panelists. They all came across as very sweet people, but I left wondering just what the hell they’re doing.<\/p>\n

The panelists (representing local heavy-hitters CBC Radio, Monday Magazine, CHEK News, The Zone Radio, and the Times-Colonist) all stated that their organizations have no specific social media policies in place.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s fine – but what was striking was the absence of clear thinking around social media strategy. The one glimmer of an exception was Dana Hutchings of CHEK. In the summer of 2009, while on vacation in Sweden, she received an email from her boss, letting her know that the owners were about to shut down the station.<\/p>\n

CHEK had orders from its owners that forbade the station to report on its own troubles. In his email, Dana’s boss wrote (and I’m paraphrasing): \u201cYou\u2019re on Facebook! What can we do?\u201d<\/p>\n

First, a brief digression on the history of CHEK News, which is worth knowing: see this wikipedia page<\/a> for details. In brief: CHEK launched on December 1, 1956, which makes it a venerable local institution. Over the decades, CHEK underwent various changes in ownership, and by 2000 it was owned by Canwest<\/a>, which happens to be the media conglomerate that owns so much of Canada’s media – including most newspapers, the Times-Colonist<\/a> among them. Canwest, however, was in deep financial trouble by the middle of the decade, and by late 2009 it had to file for creditor bankruptcy protection. Leading up to this, Canwest tried various downsizing moves to save itself, including pulling the plug on CHEK in August of 2009. But by September 2009, the employees had managed to put together a scheme to buy the station and keep it in operation as an independent in Victoria.<\/p>\n

Social media played a huge role in CHEK’s turnaround. Dana Hutchings answered her boss’s question (“You’re on Facebook – what can we do?”) by starting a Save CHEK News fan page<\/a>, which in turn galvanized the local community who learned about the true goings-on at the station through the Facebook page. Before long, the page had thousands of fans.<\/p>\n

The employees at CHEK, spurred by the support they saw pouring in through social media, worked feverishly around the clock for over 46 days, and in the end the station was saved – bought by the employees and contributors.<\/p>\n

The point, however, is that without the resonant support from CHEK’s fans – support that would not have found a gathering spot without social media because of Canwest\u2019s gag order on what was happening at CHEK – the employees wouldn\u2019t have been able to muster the energy and enthusiasm to save the station.<\/p>\n

But when asked how social media was affecting their business models, the other panelists relied on the old separation between \u201ceditorial\u201d and \u201cmanagement\u201d to absolve themselves of any strategic thinking around how the new media might save their old media bacon.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know, I’m editorial, that doesn’t concern me,” was the gist of it. The panelists also seemed to think that the new media folks in the audience were trying to find ways to “pitch” to them, the arbiters of media truth. It was laughable.<\/p>\n

First, people in the audience weren’t trying to figure out how to “pitch” to the MSM – they were trying to sound out the MSM to find out how they could get it to listen to them, the community.<\/p>\n

Second, the panelists repeatedly told the audience that what would work – what they would be willing to retweet or run a story on – would be semi-sensationalist crap, like “there’s a house on fire on X Road,” or “the ferries are running late,” or “it’s snowing on the Malahat.”<\/p>\n

Aside from sensational “news” like this, the MSM wants “human interest” stories: “how I found my true love on Twitter,” or, “my child survived bullying on Facebook,” or similar stuff.<\/p>\n

This is truly sad. There must be more to MSM than burning buildings and true romance, no?<\/p>\n

There were other annoying contradictions, and then also outright delusions. For the latter: the belief that bloggers are just the rumor mill, while the MSM are the arbiters of truth. Hahahaha. If anyone still believes that what is written in the daily paper is the truth, I feel sorry for them – I know for a fact that it isn’t. I know plenty of bloggers who are more assiduous about fact-checking than so-called professional journalists – and bloggers don’t mind correcting themselves. Try getting a newspaper to do that.<\/p>\n

At the same time, every single one of the panelists belly-ached about being underfunded and understaffed, which was their main excuse for no longer doing investigative journalism.<\/p>\n

Ok, so which is it? You can’t do investigative journalism because you’re understaffed and underfunded? Or you’re the arbiters of truth because only you are the professionals who can get at the truth?<\/p>\n

You can’t have it both ways, kids.<\/p>\n

While thumping their chests to claim truth-telling status, the panelists also begged “social media” to “spoonfeed” them potential news items (because, remember, they’re underfunded and understaffed and can’t get their own stories – the news are “thin” these days, as one of them put it). In other words, please spoonfeed us, but don’t think you can pitch us.<\/p>\n

Are they nuts?<\/p>\n

Which is it?<\/p>\n

I could go on, but this entry is already costing me dearly in a town where everyone has to play nice and not step on anyone’s toes – and besides, it’s almost midnight and I’m on a deadline here.<\/p>\n

Update, April 29: a follow-up post here<\/a> (also noted in comments).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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