Jon Wells, reporter at The Hamilton Spectator
Social media interview by babyjournalist
00:16 “How and why did you first start using social media?”
I needed to get an account, so I could use it as a tool. That’s how I saw it. I wanted to find people on it, but we were encouraged, as reporters, to start posting our articles on Facebook, to expand our audience and get people involved. So, I have a personal Facebook account that I created, to help find people and that sort of thing. And I also have one that is called ‘Jon Wells Spec Author’ where I link my articles.
13:16 “So you find it fairly beneficial then, to use social media?”
I do. I’ve done a fair bit of true crime stories for the spec over the years, you know a big long series, so I’ve got lots of time to dig. This kind of thing that I’m doing with that (referring to Jeanette Smith story) I’ve done it many times. Let’s say there’s a victim, and you want to find friends that knew the family, or you want to find people that knew the killer. So, what you’re looking for is to turn up little stones, to see if you can contact people. It’s just kind of the layers you’re going through. People post so much stuff that you can squeeze a lot out of that social media sponge.
14:14 “Do you find that people are usually pretty open to speaking to you through social media?”
It does seem like that. Maybe because I’m old school I always kind of think people are so private, maybe they don’t want to speak to a reporter who’s getting in touch with them out of the blue. But of course, I forget that people post because they want to put themselves out there. It’s a sign that they are often willing to talk.
14:49 “Do you think they would speak more easily through that social media context than they would with a phone call?”
I think so. I’ll use Canada 411 to find a phone number and use what used to be called a phone book. I’ve done that hundreds of times, making what is called a ‘cold call’. I call like ten numbers trying to find somebody, and when you find them, it can be jarring getting a voice on the phone. It’s more personal, it’s more direct. And sometimes you don’t have a lot of time once you say you’re a reporter, sometimes they hang up on you. But, when you can write someone a message, and couch the message and massage the words, it gives them a chance to look at it and sit back. And, for better or worse, people send stuff, they write stuff back, even if it’s not in their best interest. So social media can open up these doors where people are more willing to crack something off back to you and open up about stuff.
16: 57 “Do you have guidelines to follow, from the paper, for how to use your social media?”
I know when it come to posting things on Facebook or Twitter, you have to make sure you’re using a personal account if you’re giving certain opinions. You have to declare that your views are your own, not The Spectator’s. The rest of it is more a matter of ethics in terms of dealing with other people. You know, if you write someone you have to represent who you are and what you are doing. It’s certainly not illegal to tell someone you are a friend when you are a reporter, but it is unethical.
21:24 “Do you find it a little risky live tweeting as a journalist?”
I think in the case of the type of live stuff that I’ve done, there’s no concern, because that stuff was about me. If I was in court, tweeting or something like that, I’d be more cautious.
There are people out there who do a lot of tweeting, they cover accident scenes, they do a lot of monitoring of the police radios, and they’ll post stuff, quite quickly. And sometimes it’s not accurate. And now the concern there is, what if they want me to write a little brief on thespec.com about an accident, the police haven’t called me back yet to verify anything. Meanwhile someone else has tweeted ‘three car pile up, two people injured,’ but I can’t use that stuff. Even though there’s a couple guys who do this who are almost always correct, they don’t work for us, and until we can verify with the police or fire department, we can’t use it. Now you can use what they’re saying as a nice spring board to call the cops and say ‘I’m reading a tweet that says this happened, can you confirm that.” So social media increases the whole pool of information that’s available to you. The question is: what are you going to use?