CNET, journalists and the whole social net thing

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism]. OK, this is getting eerie. Or perhaps my presentation at the AJE conference in Huddersfield on Friday just happens to take in too many things, but also on my list of Things To Talk About is the vague term of 'social media'. Hey presto, Jemima Kiss writes a thorough piece on the subject at CommentUnlimited following a forum held by the Association of Online Publishers:

"Daniels outlined CNET's move towards what Tim O'Reilly (the Web 2.0 guy) described as architected participation. She said CNET's core mission was to interpret and filter content and that that will remain the same, but that the public have different expectations about the media they use and expect to be able to find and use their voice to participate in the community around it.

"Daniels said: "It may not necessarily be that many people but what they say is incredibly valuable. We want to enable those thought-leading people to engage with the site and give them a platform equal with our editorial team. And if we can get our thought leaders to contribute, the lurkers will benefit more."

"Daniels was referring to CNET's new-ish "My CNET" type feature, where users can set up their own profile page, add comments to stories, write their own blog and so on. The most frequent contributors can even get their byline on the front page - which CNET's own journalists can't."

I could go on quoting, but you may as well read the article...


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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media