News in the digital social media era, by Chris Cramer

Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters media, calls it Journalism 3.0 - where stories by Reuters journalists are automatically linked to other, equally relevant stories and websites - with business models that can be all-inclusive.

“The media world is changing so rapidly and so quickly that many of us who work in it are almost overwhelmed by what’s going on, frequently frightened at the speed of change and frightened as well that we may be left behind,” Cramer says. 

“Mostly everything has changed. For a start, we are no longer the gatekeepers of information. These days it seems that the whole world is a newsgatherer. Everywhere you look someone is holding a camera and shooting what’s around them.

“You can upload all that stuff to Facebook or to YouTube, add some commentary, and you have potential access to millions of people overnight. You can become the brand.”

Social media trades in information of first resort - raw, unfiltered and there for the taking. This new electronic dialogue, the online conversation, is here to stay and it has enormous power, as a much more targeted approach than anything we have been exposed to, Cramer says.

How does the traditional news and information business adapt in the era of social media?

Reuters holds true to the Reuters Trust Principles and the firm belief that editorial trust and integrity make a much stronger business.

“We think that customers, end users, place a true value against these qualities, which is why when we make mistakes - and we do - we are quick to own up to those. to explain how they happened, to put guidelines in place to ensure they don’t happen again,” he says.

“So we are very excited by social media becoming the newsgathering of first resort - but also wary that everything we find there needs to be validated, checked and checked again before it goes out in our name.

“Far from being despondent about ceding our status as a major information provider, we believe that new and stronger business models will come from curating global information, filtering it, editing and placing it in context.

“We think the future of successful journalism is to produce information, intelligent information that matters to people and has context - news that enhances their lives, news that has a point and a relevance, and news that remains a good business model.”

Cramer, who joined Reuters last year, was speaking at the annual conference of the UK Association of Online Publishers in London on 7 October. ■