Media Interaction on boards.ie?

Markham

Thoughts on the boards.ie's new Media Interaction Forum, anyone?

Any other journos on here care to comment on this new initiative from boards.ie and how useful/obstructive it might be?

flogen

I think it's stupid.

Sure, there are a few media outlets / journalists who come on the site and spam looking for a story or interviewee but they tend to get deleted very quickly or scorned by the userbase. The ones that come on and do it professionally get helped where they can and everybody benefits.

It's not a bad idea to have a place where journalists can go if they're not sure of who to contact or where to go with their query, but to have it as compulsive is hammer/nut stuff. All it's going to do is slow the process down and make it an ordeal for no reason.

All this does is add a layer of communication where there's no need for one. You've got to go to Guy B if you want to talk to Guy A, even though you already know who/where Guy A is.

It's like phoning 11811 to put you through to the person standing next to you, only more stupid.

mike65

I'm underwhelmed myself, hard to see point. It may evolve I guess.

Mike

Gekko

surely it's not a great sign if you have to come to boards to look for a story, or even for info for a story!

flogen

Gekko wrote: »

surely it's not a great sign if you have to come to boards to look for a story, or even for info for a story!

Well it would be a bad sign if you came onto a site like this and searched through posts with the express intention of finding a story, but sites like this are great resources nonetheless.

A lot of published stories come about as a result of an everyday conversation - it might be something a friend or someone a journalist is talking to mentions. Likewise you can find some stories on boards.ie just by being a passive reader/contributor of/to the site.

There are some people and outlets that also like to use sites like boards.ie to gain real-life examples for items they're working on too. So say if they're doing a piece on dodgy mortgage brokers (a subject I just picked as it was dealt with on Prime Time the other night), someone might come here and post asking if anyone has had any experience with deceptive or unprofessional brokers. It's not entirely uncommon for shows like PT to source their, shall we say, 'non-expert' interviewees from routes like that.

jdivision

Pointless I think.

Stargal

Boards needs to find a way to deal with journalists. The Media Interaction forum isn't it.

There's been a lot of discussion, especially in the Mod forum, about what the best way to deal with media requests is and there were a lot of good suggestions put forward. The MI forum is a camel. It's a horse built by committee. It's clunky, unclear and pointless.

My main problem with it is the confusion that it generates. The charter advises journos that: Instead of posting directly to that forum, post here first and we'll then subsequently introduce to the users of the forum and it will make the process a much smoother and friendlier process for everyone.

What does that mean? That the mods of the MI forum will post up a thread in a relevant forum every time there's a request from a journo? Pretty pointless. The journos can do that themselves. If anything it's going to lower the response rate since people probably won't be bothered to check out the original request. Also what about the ones that aren't clear cut - for example, there's currently a request from someone who's writing an article about internet dating and wants to talk to people. What is going to be done to put him in touch with relevant people? And why can't he just stick up a thread in TLL/BGRH or somewhere and be done with it?

There's also some serious uncertainty about what exactly the forum is supposed to do. There are about 8 threads on it right now and only one of them is a genuine request from a journalist looking to get in touch with people for an article. One is a request from someone looking for info on getting dentistry work done in eastern Europe and one is someone looking for a feedback on a website they made...

We need more of a debate on this. It's an important issue and the MI forum is not the right way to go about it.

jdivision

Why can't journos just be allowed post a thread in the relevant section. People can respond if they want, ignore it if they prefer.

monkeyfudge

Stargal wrote: »

There's been a lot of discussion, especially in the Mod forum, about what the best way to deal with media requests is and there were a lot of good suggestions put forward.

And I haven't seen either yourself or flogen contribute to it. So why the moaning about it here?

The forum is called Media Interaction BETA It's a work in progress and we need to work out what to do to make it work.

I've been very busy the past week and simply haven't had much time for boards. It certainly needs more mods anyway.

Stargal

monkeyfudge wrote: »

And I haven't seen either yourself or flogen contribute to it. So why the moaning about it here?

The forum is called Media Interaction BETA It's a work in progress and we need to work out what to do to make it work.

I've been very busy the past week and simply haven't had much time for boards. It certainly needs more mods anyway.

Well not that I think it's relevant but I have contributed a fair bit to the debate(Linky - it's in the mod forum so not everyone will be able to see it but basically I said that journos should be allowed post in relevant threads without spamming and should encouraged to contribute to the boards community). Monument wrote a good bit about it in the same thread. I'm pretty sure I've read stuff by flogen about it too but a quick search hasn't thrown up anything so I could be wrong on that. But even if we had never weighed in on the debate before that shouldn't negate our contribution now. It's a huge issue and you should be looking for as many opinions as possible on it.

No-one's knocking you monkeyfudge. This isn't personal. It's not about you not having time to mod it - I'd be more than willing to muck in and help out and I'm sure there's others on this forum who would too. It's about the forum itself and whether it's the best way to deal with journos. Sure, it's Beta, but since there doesn't seem to be any other thread discussing its future, why not have this one?

flogen

monkeyfudge wrote: »

And I haven't seen either yourself or flogen contribute to it. So why the moaning about it here?

I've paid such little attention to the Mods forum lately that you'll probably find I've not posted anything there in a long time.

I'm not sure why that should preclude me from voicing an opinion of it here. The fact that my own point of view has been made by others in the thread (probably in a more concise and coherent fashion too) means that any contribution I would have made would have amounted to repetition or a '+1' anyway.

Stargal wrote: »

No-one's knocking you monkeyfudge. This isn't personal. It's not about you not having time to mod it

Exactly - this isn't an attack on the people or person behind this move, just the logic that brought it to fruition.

I think Boards.ie should be encouraging all users to abide by the basic principles of respect no matter what their reason for coming here is. As long as a journalist is respectful to the forum they post in or the person they try to contact then I can't see why change (or at least this kind of change) is required.

lostexpectation

hmm it takes the post out of the fourm nobody's going see them.

Chips Lovell

I've used boards once before to find people to talk to about something I was working on. Started a thread on the relevant forum, said who I was and what I was looking for and asked people to PM me if they were interested.

That was before the media interaction forum came along. I don't know why its needed as it seems to just overly complicate the process. That said, I don't know how other people in the media were using boards or just what the issues were that led to the creation of this forum.