Am I a spammer?

I was a bit taken aback when a self-proclaimed Social Media Genius (wannabe) sent out a prickly tweet yesterday evening which I'm fairly sure was aimed at me. It was complaining about journalists following him. He only has 11 followers, and as far as I can see, I'm the only hack there - other than his friend @charlesarthur. I sent back a reply asking if he'd rather I unfollowed, but haven't heard anything back yet.

Given his social media proclamations, I'm of the opinion he should know better. But it got me to thinking - this isn't the first time people have been a bit taken aback at my signing up to follow them. There's nothing sinister in it - if people say they're from Croydon, or my summize search feed picks up mentions of it, I'll follow them - both to see what they're up to, but in the hope they'll follow me and I can make the website seem interesting enough to visit.

So far, only two people have blocked me. For the record, one was a girl who was into hip-hop videos. The other was someone pretending to be Dr Who's assistant Sarah Jane.

I'd hate people to think I was intruding on their innermost thoughts - but ferchrissakes, this is Twitter! Protect your updates if you want privacy, people. But another possiblity is newspapers are seen as another variety of spam - that would be pretty depressing.

I wanted to know if there's any kind of emerging etiquette on this for newspapers. I'd found this compilation of general Twitter guidelines, but they don't really cover this. But a post about an American company Zappos' experiences of doing pretty much the same as me, albeit for more purely commercial reasons, made me think twice. We may have genuine, if lofty ambitions of just wanting people to engage with their community via the paper/website - but if people aren't interested, maybe this is just another hard sell of something they'd rather not be confronted with? Ultimately, I have to ask - am I a spammer?

P. S. It's only taken one day for the editor to get the hint and start blogging again - I'll ignore the slightly grumpy start and say I'm glad he's back. And I guess I'll have to start thinking of embarassing things to do to give him enough material to keep it going . . .

News for sale

I've just come back from a chat with a hacky friend tonight, who reminded me of one way the web has changed things for reporters which I don't think is often considered when looking at newsroom management and workflows. And that's that great perk of the job, selling your story.

It's a time-honoured tradition on local newspapers that if you've got a great scoop, you spend the evening before the issue hits the stands phoning the newsdesks of the nationals, trying to interest them in running your fantastic exclusive in return for hard cash. Sometimes the editor encourages this, sometimes it's done surreptitiously - but it always goes on. And it's not just the money - for a reporter wanting to jump onto the nationals, it's also a great way to get yourself noticed.

Now, when you're increasingly in the business of putting those scoops straight up online, this window of opportunity can disappear. Most of our reporters' sellable stories are still held over until the moment they've appeared in print, but not always.

It might not be an officially acknowledged perk, but I think it's definitely something which should be taken into consideration when considering the impact the web has on the reporting team.

I also wonder how it's going to impact on news agencies, which from where we stand seem to make a big chunk of their living from selling our stories when we don't get in quick enough. Will the fact it's getting so much easier for the nationals to check what gems the locals have thrown up from their London HQs via the web make any dents in their business model?

On an entirely separate note . . . I'm going to briefly touch on the editor's second appearance in the Guardian's Media Monkey column, which follows his stated intention to take a vow of silence after a blog post which attracted some unanticipated intention from the monkey last month. Even though I'm the news editor (almost) named and shamed in the original post (and he's spilled some of my more embarassing beans in the past ), I'm also sorry it's stopped for the moment. But I'm assured it is temporary (and probably something to do with other projects he's been busy with). I'll let you know when it's back up and running.