When Celebs Tweet…

Celebrities will now have to be careful about new social media guidelines being put in place by their studios. The restrictions are being included in contracts from studios like Disney and Dreamworks.

The restrictions are aimed at preventing celebrities from leaking  important announcements on their social media pages that the studios would prefer to announce themselves.

It will be interesting to see if studios use these guidelines to continue to release the news themselves, or instead work with the celebs to break the news via their social networks.

Read more about it on Mashable.

Journalism Schools get Serious about Social Media

While journalism schools everywhere are adjusting curriculum to adapt to the changing media environment, Griffith University in Australia will begin offering mandatory 10-week Twitter course for journalism students. The motivation is to teach students to how to have more impactful tweets. Some students feel this might not be the best use of their time. While journalism schools definitely need to embrace social media, perhaps the focus on Twitter is a bit micro and maybe they should look at creating a more holistic program. The full article is available at PSFK .

Seattle Event Alert

Social Media Club Seattle will be holding their monthly meet-up at the Zooppa offices (911 Western Avenue, Suite 420) next Tuesday from 6-9. The focus will be social media best practices.

Full event information can be found here.

-Lacy

With all the uncertainty about the industry of news these days, it is interesting to note the looming battle between Reuters and the Associated Press (AP).  As reported by Mashable, the AP recently announced that it would be charging people to link to their stories.  Reuters’ president Chris Ahern caught wind and responded by writing a blog post that encouraged people to link to Reuters stories for free.

For those of you out there who are unaware of the war being waged over news content and the role that the internet is playing, let me give you a quick rundown.  News is expensive.  Good reporting is expensive.  There is a reason that traditional media sources are so powerful – people trust and pay attention to journalists and publications that produce high-quality products.  The problem is this: new media sites (i.e.: blogs and other online content providers) have come to a crossroads with traditional media sites over repurposing content.

What’s the big deal?  Well, the big deal is the credit that is given to the original source.  When a blog or a blogger takes information without citing the original source, the result for the original author and publisher is a smaller amount of traffic or impressions, which means less advertising revenue, which means shrinking margins and so on and so forth.  You get where I am headed.

Ok, so now that we have some context, what is the big deal about Reuters saying “yes” to linking to their stories as opposed to the AP charging for the links?  According to Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters, “I don’t believe you could or should charge others for simply linking to your content. Appropriate excerpting and referencing are not only acceptable, but encouraged. If someone wants to create a business on the back of others’ original content, the parties should have a business relationship that benefits both.”

On the other hand, the news industry is still trying to figure out how to keep all these journalists employed.  The ultimate problem is that news has been given away for free when in actuality it is an expensive product that needs to be financially supported.

What I find the most interesting about this subject is that no facet of the news industry has been untouched by shrinking margins.  It should be interesting to see how this particular story plays out.

-Matt Smedley