Edward Roussel – The Telegraph

Posted on 05. Oct, 2007 by David Cohn in International

Becuase of the special election taking place in the UK , Edward is unable to attend the conference.

Your work in networked/citizen/collaborative journalism.

We recently launched My Telegraph (www.my.telegraph.co.uk) a product that aims to give our readers dead-simple blogging, rating and news aggregating tools. It’s about introducing a new audience to blogging – 8,000 registered bloggers at the latest count. The average age of the Telegraph newspapers is 55, and many of them find the blogosphere a scary place. We also have a number of other networking tools: a popular daily debate on our website (www.telegraph.co.uk/yourview) which frequently gets several hundred posts; a daily e-poll on a polemical issue (www.telegraph.co.uk/news) and cross-media campaigns, such as our campaign for a referendum on the EU constitution (www.telegraph.co.uk/eu) – more than 95,000 signatories (2/3 in the newspaper, via a coupon, one third online).

What are your goals?

Make networked journalism an organic and ubiquitous part of our news service.

Lesson you’ve learned (including mistakes you’ve made)
1. Our RSS feeds suck as do those of most of our competitors. This is an obstacle to personalizing news.
2. Hard to make money our of network journalism, which makes it hard to get money to invest in the underlying infrastructure.
3. Burning appetite among our readers to be a part of the news-making process and to express their views on a wide range of issues.
4. Moderation vs post moderation – big issue for big media companies who are more tightly regulated than network journalists.

Are you getting revenue for this? How?

Yes. Cisco sponsorship. But I don’t think the value of networked journalism is in advertising. It’s about what you learn about your readers and building a data base with detailed information about your readers.

What’s next? What do you need to get to the next level?
Seeking investment for a broad-range of network tools across our website

Anyone you’d like to talk with, learn from, or work with at the summit
1. Anyone who is on top of moderation/post-moderation issue.
2. Anyone who is well placed to roll out creative network tools across our website at a cost I can afford!