The day of the long blog comments

That’s how today is going to be marked in this little corner of the blogosphere.

I have been lucky to get some fantastic comments today on two of my posts.

David wrote a very insightful comment about the difference between audiences taking a reactive and a proactive stance towards privacy issues on my post about Facebook. He also gave the best justification for the “death knock” (when a journalist calls on a recently bereaved family) that I’ve seen yet.

Jon Walker and Markmedia also left fantastic comments on the post discussing the lack of business knowledge amongst many journalists. 

Jon argues that journalists have very little impact on business decisions and is concerned the production of good content might not be enough to save the industry. Mark argues collective union action to focus on business strategy would empower journalists.

Both have also turned their comments into blog posts (Jon | Mark), which are also worth a look.

Facebook foraging – leave my friends out of it

My Facebook privacy settings

Being online most of my waking hours, I often think of the identity trail I’m leaving around the web and the issues that has in terms of my privacy.

However, I’ve seldom stopped to think how my activities may affect the privacy of my nearest and dearest.

Tonight, as we in the newsroom sought to follow up on reports that named two girls who have been murdered in Ladywood, it was the latter that struck home.

One of the girls had kept her pictures and her profile public to the West Midlands network. Her sister had been more careful, but there was enough there (her profile pic) to identify her in her sibling’s pics. Family and friends were also listed publicly as “friends” in both profiles.

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