An astonishing piece of amateur video obtained by the Guardian shows just how much the world has changed for big media players. The footage shows Ian Tomlinson, the man who died at last week’s G20 protests in London, being struck by a police officer and falling to the ground minutes before suffering a fatal heart attack.
You can view the film and make up your own mind about the incident, now the subject of an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. My focus here is to discuss how the footage and surrounding story has played out across old and new media in an exceptionally powerful and converged way.
The Guardian has scored a major coup, not just in getting hold of what is an extraordinary news exclusive, but for how it has successfully delivered the story via its traditional print product, its own web site, and across social media too. (I have to declare an interest as my husband David Taylor works on the Guardian’s home news desk and has been pivotal in developing this story over the last few days.)
Consider this: The Guardian had an exclusive, yet it chose to share its content before it appeared in print, running the video and a first break on the story on its web site yesterday evening. In the ‘old’ days of print journalism this would have been inconceivable, to the point that the red top tabloids would regularly run weak front page stories in their early editions, revealing their big exclusives only in final 3am print run.
As soon as the video appeared other newspapers’ sites were linking to it and capturing the footage or still images to use themselves, and crediting the Guardian. Meanwhile broadcasters including the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 featured it extensively on their news bulletins, again promoting the Guardian name.
At the same time, social media was fuelling the story, with Guardian journalists using Twitter to share the video URL. Mass retweets followed and within hours, “Ian Tomlinson” was trending on Twitter as one of the 10 most written about topics.
Today the Guardian’s print edition has extensive and detailed analysis of the film by reporter Paul Lewis to augment his online story, while the web site is offering bloggers the footage to embed. And rival media from the agenda-setting Today programme to competitor broadsheets are still crediting the Guardian as the source.
So what does this tell us? Firstly that high-quality content is crucial - without an exceptional story none of this would have happened. Second, strategic use of the right media channels – print, social media, web site – can have a multiplying audience effect not a minimising one. Third, that media businesses now are not “papers” or “web sites” but brands, regardless of how we consume their content. The Guardian’s liberal stance helped it secure the story, and its brand has been strengthened by the extensive cross-promotion it has since received.
