Eliminating Facebook in the Newsroom

by In: Leadership, New Media | Published: Jul 19, 2010

As I update our web pol­icy, I am reminded of a prob­lem that I’ve run into almost con­stantly as edi­tor of my cam­pus news­pa­per: Face­book as a dis­trac­tion from work.

I’ve con­sid­ered block­ing the site on each news­room com­puter except one, where reporters/editors could log on to use the site legit­i­mately. I really don’t want to have to do that though. I’d like to instead enforce a rule that would help curb erro­neous or aim­less use of the site, espe­cially when other work could be done. There are always press releases to be rewrit­ten and story idea sheets to be writ­ten up, etc.

Any sug­ges­tions? I’d like to encour­age respon­si­ble use of the com­put­ers rather than act­ing like a mean babysit­ter. Just for ref­er­ence, its the copyeditors/designers and edi­tors them­selves who are the biggest offenders.

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6 Responses

  1. TauhidChappell says:
    July 23, 2010 at 6:08 pm

    I tweeted a link to this post and one of the replies that I received pretty much summed up my feelings:

    “@TauhidChappell cer­tainly a con­cern, but a lot of news comes from FB pages these days. i think more harm would be done by block­ing. #wjchat“
    via @chadwickgraham

    There’s cer­tainly a rea­son to be con­cerned when you see peo­ple surf­ing face­book and not con­cen­trat­ing on their work. It shows a lack of focus and or apa­thy to do their job.

    Does every­one in your orga­ni­za­tion use FB/Twitter as a means to dis­trib­ute con­tent? Or do you have a select few who’s respon­si­bil­ity is com­mu­nity engage­ment and social interaction?

  2. TauhidChappell says:
    July 23, 2010 at 6:19 pm

    Upon fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion I found that these links may help thanks to prTini

    http://delicious.com/prTini/SMPolicies

    http://www.pr-squared.com/index.php/2010/06/if-you-only-do-two-things-in-social-media

  3. Prodigybiz says:
    August 1, 2010 at 11:00 pm

    Ah, yes web­site cen­sor­ship. I am reminded of the count­less stu­dent gov­ern­ment sen­ate meet­ings I sit in and every time I look up I count at least 2 or 3 sen­a­tors on Face­book; of course they will give some BS rea­son for being on it.

    Instead of block­ing it since it is a vital resource these days. Mon­i­tor usage instead. I am sure you can mon­i­tor each user/staffer. You don’t have to be super dili­gent about it. Ran­dom spot check­ing works, and when you find exces­sive and non-legitament usage take dis­ci­pli­nary action at that time. All out block­age won’t do the trick any­way because if they really want to get on it they will find a way: beat the block, use their own lap­top, cell phone, etc. Also, every so often make an exam­ple of some­one for it– not every time some­one is caught but once in a while to send a mes­sage that says you are watch­ing and you want them to do their job. You have to get a lit­tle cre­ative with man­ag­ing staff on this one. Per­haps even talk to some supervisors/department heads at your uni­ver­sity to see what they do about the problem.

  4. Kelsey Schnell, Creative Developer says:
    August 2, 2010 at 12:09 pm

    All good points.

    I think facebook/social media is too valu­able a resource to elim­i­nate entirely, but if they are scan­ning their news feed, they aren’t out get­ting the story. News doesn’t hap­pen IN the news­room, it’s just about every­where else.

    One thing I’ve noticed, if an indi­vid­ual goes a few days, (3 or 4) with­out check­ing face­book, they sud­denly become less addicted to it. Just have the break the habit of “need to check” face­book and work to insti­tute a “could check for more infor­ma­tion” attitude.

    Also, this was story about mon­i­tor­ing com­pany social media stuff.

    http://www.detnews.com/article/20100802/BIZ04/8020357/Firms-crack-down-on-staffers–Facebook–Twitter–YouTube-posts

    Another con­cern you may have is what your staffers are say­ing about other staffers via the web. Angry tweets like, “This reporter doesn’t know how to use a semi-colon prop­erly. What an idiot!” won’t help morale or cred­i­bil­ity with readers.

    …maybe just avoid semi-colons.

  5. NIULauren says:
    August 9, 2010 at 11:20 pm

    Thanks for the feed­back. I think its impor­tant for jour­nal­ists to be con­nected, and I agree that block­ing a site like that wouldn’t be a step in the right direc­tion. I will out­line expec­ta­tions early in the semes­ter and have stuff to do ready for any­one who looks bored.

    Also, Kelsey men­tioned employ­ees vent­ing about work via social media. Every­one needs to real­ize that a pub­lic place like Face­book isn’t the right out­let for frus­tra­tion, espe­cially with the chances so high that it could come back to the per­son being com­plained about.

    Have you guys had issues with that sort of thing going on? I know a lot of my staffers update openly about work, and occa­sion­ally it will bor­der on inap­pro­pri­ate. I have to remind them that sources may be check­ing them out too.

  6. NIULauren says:
    August 9, 2010 at 11:24 pm

    Also, Tauhid asked about who is in charge of FB/Twitter inter­ac­tion. At our paper, every edi­tor as well as our adviser has access for updates. That way who­ever is in the news­room when some­thing break­ing hap­pens can make sure to get info on the web right away. It also helps to have dif­fer­ent peo­ple post­ing links to sto­ries at dif­fer­ent times of the day, to avoid hav­ing a bunch of posts from our page clog­ging people’s feeds.

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