But, in the short time I was there, I did get to listen to a very interesting talk by Stephen Fry. How Stephen is discovering, using, experiencing and reacting to Twitter is fascinating.

One point he made particularly made me think. He explained his annoyance at how some in the mainstream press had suggested he had orchestrated the online reaction to Jan Moir and also the breaking of the Trafigura super-injunction.

Stephen was annoyed that he was being singled out when many, many others had particpiated in both these events. As he correctly pointed out, it was unfair to others who had been more involved and had not been recognised. It was, he argued, lazy journalism.

Actually, Stephen went on to argue, he doesn’t have any influence at all. His followers are intelligent beings who can make up their own minds about things. If he had asked them to stick their heads in the oven, would they have done it, he asked? It is a point he explains more fully in a post he wrote last month.

This gets right to the heart of my concerns with the perceptions of influence and responsibility that people have online. I have two points which I would very much appreciate your thoughts on:

Point 1: If a newspaper with a circulation twice the size of The Times (or 3.5 times the size of The Guardian) joined a campaign (even it it was late in the day), how much influence would you credit them with having over readers that joined in? How much responsibility does the newspaper have for the outcome of that campaign? How would you feel if this was a campaign with aims that you agreed with? How would you feel if it was something you disagreed with?

My point being that Stephen has over 1 million followers on Twitter. Why should his influence on them be any more or less than a newspaper has on its readers? How do we judge that?

If we can say his influence is the same, then surely we have to say that his responsibilities when wielding that influence must be the same. We need to look at this both for campaigns we agree with and ones we don’t because we will react differently to each. I suspect we are more likely to claim the newspaper acted irresponsibly if we don’t agree with their campaign’s aims.

Point 2: A very interesting chat with someone who understands the intricacies of UK libel law revealed this nugget to me: when it comes to libel, you do not necessarily have to sue the person who was first to utter the libel. You can sue anyone who repeated the defamation.

In this situation clients are advised to choose to go after those people who can afford to pay damages. The people most likely to fall into this category? Large organisations (like newspapers) and anyone with a large influence and (as a result) a potentially larger-than-average bank balance.

Of course Stephen is a pretty sensible tweeter and is unlikely to be retweeting libellous statements and getting involved with questionable campaigns. But, I worry about his lack of awareness of the influence he has and, therefore, the potential consequences of it. I don’t think he is the only one who thinks like this.

It seems, as I’ve mentioned before, that individual influence and responsibility online is a tricky thing for us all to guage. I think the consequences of that are interesting and slightly worrisome.

Running over the two days of the G20, it was like no other live blog I have been involved with. Four journalists were filing pictures and texts to the CoverItLive blog through Twitter and we had comments from tens of thousands of readers.

It was primarily run by web development editor Lucia Adams, my counterpart on news (I’m on business).

That meant that as well as being a contact point for reporters and responsible for answering readers’ questions, she was also moderating comments.

It was a pretty full-on task.  I tried to help out by offering up a few helpful links when and where I could and, if Lucia needed to step away from the computer, I would take over moderation.

Moderating a Times Online live blog is a task verging on insane. Comments are pouring in – at some points in their hundreds in a minute – and one person is responsible for allowing them on to the site.

You have to check that the comment is legally ok and that it is not offensive and inciting violence – that’s standard. But, in addition, we had a large number of comments that looked like protestors sending coded messages to each other. If anyone knows who the “Rofchester Crew” are, please let me know. Those had to be moderated too.

Yet, even after removing all these comments there were still too many coming through to get them all up on the blog. We did explain to those commenters convinced Rupert Murdoch was blocking their comments that there was a moderation process and that we weren’t able to publish everything because of the volume.

But what was the decision process behind the ones that did get on screen?

At the time, I didn’t really think about it. It wasn’t until Lucia and I started planning a talk on the subject for last week’s Social Media Camp, London, did we realise we had been applying our own unique criteria for what would get published.

This was what we were both doing:

Me: if it’s longer than a sentence, it goes in.

My justification: If someone has posted a few words, it’s unlikely to be adding anything particularly well considered and, very often, it was more likely to be abusive. Therefore, with very little time to dedicate to reading and approving comments I chose to spend my time on the ones that came in sentences.

Lucia: if the comment is adding something new, it goes in.

Her justification: Lucia decided to put the reader before the contributor. Very often different commenters would repeat the same point (“why don’t these protesters help the economy by getting jobs”, “I bet the taxpayers are going to have to pay to repair the RBS bank’s windows now, why didn’t they board them up?”). If a reader came to a live blog that was just a stream of comments all repeating the same point, it was unlikely to encourage them that the live blog had any value.

In Lucia’s mind, the role of live blog as a public service – answering questions on traffic disruption, providing latest information from the police, reporting on G20 developments, etc – was paramount. Therefore, she chose to publish those comments that best fitted that.

Who was right? I’m not sure there is a definitive answer. Certainly when we talked it though with others at SMC London, there was understanding for both points of view.

I guess part of it is about how you see the live blog. Is it primarily an editorial tool (live updates and information of the G20 as it happens), or is it a forum (where commenters are free to say whatever they like about a subject, within the law)?

One thing I found particularly fascinating was that, in the 48 hours of running the blog, we built up what we named a “flash community”.

People that enjoyed the live blog stayed and started to help us answer questions from other commenters. As this community solidified, the quality of comments improved and moderation became easier. At one point one commenter was helping Lucia to transcribe the G20 Summit speeches.

Perhaps community is too strong a word for what happened, but I like the idea that such blogs can encourage collaboration. It’s something I would like to build up with live blogs I do in the future.

The answer seems to cause some consternation: I am keeping the account and changing the name to reflect the new publication I work for.

“But these are contacts you’ve built up during your time at The Post! You can’t just take them with you,” has been one of the responses. (NB. It is worth noting that The Post has been very happy for me to retain my account – the comments have mostly come from people outside of journalism).

I guess it raises the question: who owns a journalist’s account on a social network, if they use it purely for work?

The answer seems simple to me: what journalist doesn’t take their contact book with them when they leave (or at very least a copy of it)? The nature of the job is that you build relationships with people and, although some will leave you when you switch titles, others will be contacts throughout your working life.

The benefit of a Twitter account is, of course, that all my contacts are publicly available for anyone to see. So, unlike a contact book, I can’t run off and hide it when I leave!

This blog post is the start of letting people know that on March 9 I hope to change @bhampostjoanna to @timesjoanna.

Alternate Birmingham Post Twitterers include:

@marcreeves, editor
@mikehughes, executive editor
@steve_nicholls, multimedia editor
@paulmdale, public affairs editor
@jonwalker121, political editor
@tomscotney, business reporter, legal and financial
@anna_blackaby, business reporter, creative industries
@mandybrain, marketing development manager

Below is a copy of the (unsubbed) version of my column that will go into The Birmingham Post tomorrow.

I wanted to put it here so that people could add comments to it and I could link to it in Del.icio.us before the article was published.

As was pointed out to me, 600 words is never enough, and there is a lot I’ve missed out. So please help me add to it!

There is something I want to share with you. Something that I don’t think a lot of people know:

Journalists are people too.

They are. Honest!

But I doubt you’ll believe me. I am, after all, a journalist.

As a collective body, we seem to be ranked in the public consciousness as something akin to pond life… except a little less trustworthy.

There are numerous surveys placing journalists amongst the ranks of used-car salesmen, estate agents and, heavens forfend, politicians when it comes to trust.

Yet there are many that joined journalism because they wanted to be the trusted, responsible champion of the people.

So what makes people so convinced that, at the drop of a hat, us reporters are willing to lie, cheat and sell our grandmothers for a story?

A straw poll of contacts and friends on micro-blogging service Twitter (an interesting platform that I will delve into more on in a future column) offered up a few explanations:

• “Because some of them are plain untrustworthy – remember Hillsborough and Viglen?”

• “Most who’ve had an article written about them can see how many mistakes get made.”

• “Because when you have a 600 word limit something always gets left out.”

• “Lack of accountability.”

• “Tabloid digging into private lives.”

These show, collectively, we journalists have a long way to go before we are considered even as trustworthy as the ordinary man on the street.

But it is the man on the street that journalists have to worry about in the shiny new world of digital media.

In March, I was lucky enough to be part of a small team of young, West Midland “media types” sent to the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, by Advantage West Midlands-funded project Digital Central.

The conference, which originally started as a music festival, is fast becoming known as a premier event attracting the top international talent in digital media.

My fellow attendees were all “early adopters”. Whether they be housewives, techies or students, they are the ones surfing the crest of the digital wave, the first to adopt all the new and shiny tools and applications that the web has to offer.

Many of them write blogs or produce their own videos, but what shocked me was the ability of some of them to command audiences in the thousands or tens of thousands.

When I asked them how they did it, the answer was pretty uniform: They were trusted and they were “part of a conversation”.

This conversation may be had through blogs, video or audio podcasts, but the fundamental idea is that their audience has redress and can correct and build upon the original work.

By opening up in this way, and by acknowledging their readers as real people, they show themselves to real too – something journalists have avoided in the pursuit of an ideal of objectivity, or a belief that their opinions and writing should command authority.

But these digital pioneers shaping a future for online media are demonstrating that, above all, trust is where it’s at.

The old model of distance between journalist and reader is going to have to change.

It is something The Birmingham Post has been investigating over recent months with the launch of its blogs, its experimentation with social bookmarking service Del.icio.us and Twitter.

By realising that they are just one – hopefully well-researched, well-written and interesting – part of a bigger conversation, journalists have a chance of raising themselves out of the pond and – hopefully – becoming seen as the trusted champions they really should be.

To see some of the websites that helped to inform this column or to respond, please visit http://del.icio.us/joannageary/column2

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qrmTJWbmdU]

“…not many people do it, but me and Scoble do.”

“The cool thing about Twitter is you get to meet new people. You even get to stalk the famous ones too.”

[via Fred Wilson]

It started with a tweet. This one:

And then the whole thing snowballed, with my editor, Marc Reeves, publicly stating that he wanted The Birmingham Post to be the first UK newsroom fully signed up to Twitter:

Of course, such a statement wasn’t going to be ignored by those with an interest in online journalism: namely Paul Bradshaw from Birmingham City University and author of the Online Journalism Blog and Martin Stabe from the Press Gazette. There were two other tweets that I couldn’t find. One was Paul Bradshaw saying: “@marcreeves, can I quote you on that?” and another was a response from Marc: “@paulbradshaw gulp. go on then”:

So… from one tweet from me, The Birmingham Post has developed a policy to be the first UK newspaper to have all its journalists sign up to Twitter and decided to embark on a training programme for its journalists.

Then… after a little while… the policy was signed off by Editorial Director of Trinity Mirror’s regionals, Neil Benson (who, it appears, was also having a spot of bother with his iPhone):

From tweet to twittevolution. All in a day’s work off sick!!

It’s the second time the earth has moved for me in Brum – the first being the Dudley earthquake in 2002.

The difference this time (as well as it being bigger – rumours are that this one was the largest earthquake in the UK for 20 years) was that I could confirm instantly that there had been a quake by logging on to Twitter, whereas I spent hours in 2002 convinced the rumbling must have been an explosion. As my Twitter account demonstrates, there were a fair few of us wondering what had shaken us out of our slumber.

It was interesting too that the first report I saw about the earthquake from a news organisation was via a tweet from Bounder. Through Twittersearch he had found a report from Twitter-based Dutch news service BreakingNewsOn. I then found other links to sites including a Seesmic (apt name for this) video blog from Midlands-based Documentally. [this was blogged seconds after the quake, I am told] I even tried to put my not-so-great skills into a Google map of the epicentre. [which, according to Podnosh, scooped Sky News!]

More on how the story unfolded from ReadWriteWeb. I’m off back to bed!

The post starts in German, but Paul’s bit is in English:

halbluchs: @paulbradshaw what makes twitter so popular and addictive? is it just a hype or is it more? 03:14 PM January 04, 2008 from Snitter

paulbradshaw: @halbluchs the same things that have made texting so popular: brevity, connectivity, control. 02:31 PM January 04, 2008 from txt

Worth a read, especially for journos who are trying to figure out the best way to use Twitter in their jobs.

The story ended up making the nationals (due to a press release by Labour who, apparently, didn’t credit their original source). But bounder’s tweet got to me well before then and about five seconds before one of my colleagues put down the phone to a contact who had rang him about it.

Now it was always going to be my colleague’s story as he has far better political links. But, if it shows one thing, it shows how Twitter can be a rather speedy way to transmit a story.

I just wish the Twitter feed on this website updated faster – so far it has been as slow as a very slow thing going slowly. Grr.

I’m going to start tweeting about what I’m working on. When I know what the main story is I’m going to work on each day, I’ll tweet about it. That way it might allow folks who can and want to shed light on the topic to do so.

Will it work? No idea! I haven’t got many followers at the moment. But I’ve already started with today’s job: a story on energy.