July 25, 2011

The Wall
Laura Kuenssberg built up more than 60,000 followers of her @BBCLauraK Twitter account as chief political correspondent for the BBC. Then last week, she became the business editor of ITV and renamed her account to @ITVLauraK. Tom Callow at The Wall blog questions whether the BBC should have a claim to retain control of the account:

“Many people, myself included, wanted to follow the updates of the BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent (@BBCLauraK). We might be less interested in updates from the ITV’s Business Editor.”

Social media account ownership is complicated by many factors — who created the account, was it prior to employment, does the name include the media brand, was the account use primarily professional or personal? There’s rarely a clear answer unless a news organization and staffer get an agreement in writing, in advance, on what will happen to a specific account when a journalist moves on, which may be something your organization should do. || Earlier: The BBC released a new social media policy, but it doesn’t address this issue

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Jeff Sonderman (jsonderman@poynter.org) is the Digital Media Fellow at The Poynter Institute. He focuses on innovations and strategies for mobile platforms and social media in…
Jeff Sonderman

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