-
During the clear out of Occupy Wall Street protesters early Tuesday morning, some Associated Press staffers were swooped up with the arrests.
-
They did what most modern-day journalists would do: They Tweeted about it.
-
On Wednesday morning, the hammer fell: AP sent out a directive to staff: ”In relation to AP staffbeing taken into custody at the Occupy Wall Street story, we’ve had a breakdown in staff sticking to policies around social media and everyone needs to get with their folks now to tell them to knock it off.”
-
Word got out pretty quickly.
-
Associated Press Staff Scolded for Tweeting Too Quickly About OWS Arrests
![]()
A high importance e-mail went out to Associated Press employees early Wednesday morning to remind them of Twitter rules in the wake of st… -
The response to this was swift and critical
-
“AP chides reporters for tweeting about Occupy news before the news hits the wire bit.ly/rTpLzE So shouldn’t the wire speed up?!
-
“AP staffers scolded for tweeting ahead of the wires from #OWS. bit.ly/smSmj8 i.e. The AP tries its damndest to be irrelevant
-
“Do news orgs say don’t break news on Twitter because they want staff to tweet with links or because they don’t “get it”? I say the latter.
-
Under AP’s rule book, reporters can’t Tweet what hasn’t moved across the wire: “Don’t break news that we haven’t published, no matter the format.”Instead of getting “caught in the moment,” the AP’s freewheeling tweeters were urged in the e-mail to run “sensitive official AP business” through editors and corporate communications, New York magazine reported.Many noted that this business model needs to be updated.
-
“@journalistnate Absolutely agree. AP is taking a 1950s business model and applying it to the web, and these are the decisions that result.
-
“. @dankennedy_nu if AP wire claims no editorial value-ad and competes on speed by embargo, they’ve surrendered already.
-
Ouch.I can’t tell you how often as a manager sitting in a news organization we’ve learned more on social media on a breaking news event – particularly Twitter – than we have on any news wire. (Or a TV for that matter).The news wire really has to rethink its business model, and how it must perform to stay relevant.
