Photo by Zarko Drin­cic on Flickr

This year we’ve seen the steady suc­ces­sion of social media poli­cies issued by major news orga­ni­za­tions. The com­mon theme that runs through these edicts is that they were writ­ten by top man­agers, with the input of lawyers, who seem to have lit­tle under­stand­ing of how social media can ben­e­fit jour­nal­ism and news orga­ni­za­tions by build­ing community.

It’s as if the top edi­tors in the coun­try got together and decided to roll back the clock to 1995, with no appre­ci­a­tion of the enor­mous forces that have reshaped media in the year 2009.

First, here are the social media poli­cies from major news orga­ni­za­tions that I’ve man­aged to track down:

• Wash­ing­ton Post’s social media pol­icy (leaked this week)

• New York Times’ social media policy

• Asso­ci­ated Press’s social media pol­icy

• Wall Street Journal’s social media pol­icy

For posterity’s sake and for com­par­a­tive pur­poses, I’ve repub­lished all of these on Socialmedia.biz at the links above.

I’ve brought atten­tion to the prob­lems with these poli­cies before, includ­ing in this Aug. 3 inter­view with Mash­able. Now, some more spe­cific analy­sis and deconstruction:

A missed opportunity

First, what’s strik­ing about these poli­cies is how they are framed: as a “do not” list instead of a “do well” list. This, unfor­tu­naely, has been the way of the world at the vast major­ity of news­pa­pers since I entered jour­nal­ism more than two decades ago.

But what’s even more strik­ing is how social net­works are per­ceived in the exec­u­tive suites of news orga­ni­za­tions: as a threat, a knotty prob­lem, filled with chal­lenges to the tra­di­tional way of doing busi­ness, rather than as a way for news out­lets to reen­gage with their read­ers and communities.

None of these poli­cies could have been writ­ten by some­one who deeply under­stands social media and what it can offer to tra­di­tional news organizations.

Stan­dards of objec­tiv­ity wob­ble on their pedestal

The winds of change in the medi­a­s­phere have shifted so abruptly over the past three years that news­pa­pers — never agile orga­ni­za­tions — have not kept pace with the cor­re­spond­ing shifts in our culture.

The notion that jour­nal­ists don’t have per­sonal lives or opin­ions, that they shouldn’t reveal polit­i­cal pref­er­ences or engage in civic causes regard­less of their beat, that they should be shielded from direct inter­ac­tion with the pub­lic for fear of dis­clos­ing a com­pro­mis­ing point of view — this is sheer lunacy.

If news­pa­pers die, it will be because they splayed them­selves on the altar of objec­tiv­ity rather than mov­ing to a new kind of rela­tion­ship that the pub­lic is clearly crav­ing for.

Poli­cies with­out a vision

The Wall Street Journal’s pol­icy on online activ­i­ties inveighs against “shar­ing your per­sonal opin­ions.” This backward-looking embrace of the notion that reporters are blank slates is part of the rea­son news­pa­pers are los­ing read­er­ship and rel­e­vance in the dig­i­tal age.

The Wash­ing­ton Post’s social media pol­icy warns against dis­clos­ing how an arti­cle was made. “Per­sonal pages online are no place for the dis­cus­sion of inter­nal news­room issues such as sourc­ing, report­ing of sto­ries, deci­sions to pub­lish or not to pub­lish, per­son­nel mat­ters and unto­ward per­sonal or pro­fes­sional mat­ters involv­ing our col­leagues. The same is true for opin­ions or infor­ma­tion regard­ing any busi­ness activ­i­ties of The Wash­ing­ton Post Company.”

Trans­parency, it appears, is a for­eign idea at the Post. So is human­ity — the oppor­tu­nity to show read­ers that news is not a com­mod­ity pro­duced by a face­less insti­tu­tion but a rich, col­lab­o­ra­tive process where a lot of fast-moving deci­sions affect how a story is writ­ten and played.

I have a hard time believ­ing that the Post would have issued these rules had Jim Brady still been there as exec­u­tive edi­tor of washingtonpost.com. What does it say when the exec­u­tives with vision are being cut loose?

Later this month I’ll take a look at the social media poli­cies of major cor­po­ra­tions — and con­trast them with the sorry “don’t do” lists offered by the news­pa­per industry.

Related

• Mash­able: WSJ Social Media Pol­icy: Still Not Get­ting It

• Mash­able: When Does a Social Media Pol­icy Go Too Far? Ask the Asso­ci­ated Press

• Stowe Boyd: Orwellian Non­sense At The Wash­ing­ton Post: Reporters, Shut Up!

• paid­Con­tent: WaPo’s Social Media Guide­lines Paint Staff Into Vir­tual Corner

• TechCrunch: Twit­ter Unearths A Secret: Jour­nal­ists Have Opinions

• Kyle Austin: WSJ Memo to Staffers on Twit­ter and Face­book Use

• Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMa­chine: Miss­ing the point

JD Lasica works with major com­pa­nies and non­prof­its on social media strate­gies. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact JD or leave a comment.

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