Horrocks: 'Responding on blogs' leads to 'improved journalism'

Peter Horrocks, the BBC's Director of the World Service, discusses the use of blogs and social networking tools by journalists in an article entitled 'The End of Fortress Journalism'.

'But new news journalists will need the flexibility to cope. They will need to network with the audience as much as they do with their colleagues. The audience is becoming a vast but still untapped news source. The most go-ahead journalists are using social networking tools to help find information and interviewees.

'Responding on blogs and using those to promote a dialogue with informed members of the audience is leading to improved journalism. It can be time-consuming but it can yield real benefits.

'So journalists will need changed culture, changed organisation and an improved understanding of the modern tools of journalism – audience insights, blogging, Twitter, multimedia production. It sounds like being pretty challenging...But I suspect that the public may well appreciate a journalism that puts serving their information needs at its heart, rather than one which is about organising the world in the way that journalists prefer.'

Horrocks' paper was one of a series that the BBC College of Journalism have published (pdf) from the Future of Journalism Conference in November 2008.

In addition to Horrocks' standpoint, there are other passages on blogging to be found in this collection including: an outline of Panorama's uptake of blogs; a discussion about which journalists within a media organisation should blog; and a few bits and pieces on the use of blogs by journalists.