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During the clear out of Occupy Wall Street protesters early Tuesday morning, some Associated Press staffers were swooped up with the arrests.
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They did what most modern-day journalists would do: They Tweeted about it.
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On Wednesday morning, the hammer fell: AP sent out a directive to staff: “In relation to AP staffbeing taken into custody at the Occupy Wall Street story, we’ve had a breakdown in staff sticking to policies around social media and everyone needs to get with their folks now to tell them to knock it off.”
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Word got out pretty quickly.
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Associated Press Staff Scolded for Tweeting Too Quickly About OWS Arrests
A high importance e-mail went out to Associated Press employees early Wednesday morning to remind them of Twitter rules in the wake of st… -
The response to this was swift and critical
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“AP chides reporters for tweeting about Occupy news before the news hits the wire bit.ly/rTpLzE So shouldn’t the wire speed up?!
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“AP staffers scolded for tweeting ahead of the wires from #OWS. bit.ly/smSmj8 i.e. The AP tries its damndest to be irrelevant
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“Do news orgs say don’t break news on Twitter because they want staff to tweet with links or because they don’t “get it”? I say the latter.
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Under AP’s rule book, reporters can’t Tweet what hasn’t moved across the wire: “Don’t break news that we haven’t published, no matter the format.”Instead of getting “caught in the moment,” the AP’s freewheeling tweeters were urged in the e-mail to run “sensitive official AP business” through editors and corporate communications, New York magazine reported.Many noted that this business model needs to be updated.
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“@journalistnate Absolutely agree. AP is taking a 1950s business model and applying it to the web, and these are the decisions that result.
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“. @dankennedy_nu if AP wire claims no editorial value-ad and competes on speed by embargo, they’ve surrendered already.
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Ouch.I can’t tell you how often as a manager sitting in a news organization we’ve learned more on social media on a breaking news event – particularly Twitter – than we have on any news wire. (Or a TV for that matter).The news wire really has to rethink its business model, and how it must perform to stay relevant.
On Google+ Roeland Rooves made this argument:
Good point by +The Associated Press . AP should first provide its customers. I see the same thing very so often at +Reuters . If the news wires keep doing this they’ll start to loose their own news media customers who are paying big amounts of money to get the news journalists of news wires provide them with stories. If they do want their journalists to do so, it should be done in closed environment, like for example yammer, where customers of +The Associated Press or any other news wire may find these tweets/facebook wall posts/google+ updates.
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IMHO you’ve got the right anwser!
Wow I must conefss you make some very trenchant points.
You’ve got it in one. Couldn’t have put it betetr.