Check and double check
“The fact that individuals are active on social media offers many opportunities for us as a news organization. A whole network of information is created that the NOS can use, where in the past it was all about the official organizations, press conferences, etc. The worlds of the individuals and the news organizations are no longer separated. Breaking news is now a co-creation. A story is created together. Just think of the news about Alphen aan de Rijn. We work together with these individuals to create the story. The NOS provides depth, validates the facts and does the check and double check. This is where the difference lies between news institutes and individuals. The NOS ensures that it is, as it were, royally approved and with that the NOS is still that reliable news partner for people. An authority,” says Laroes.
Understanding News Making: Transparency and Interim Information
Every day we are bombarded with information from all sides. We can no longer see the forest for the trees. The density of information has increased enormously. “People need a familiar name or brand . We see the appreciation for the NOS brand increasing. We have worked hard on this and will continue to work hard on it – of course also after my departure.”
“We have found that it is important to give the public insight into how news is created. This insight contributes to the need to be well-informed about the considerations when making news, the trust in the NOS and future developments within journalism. We describe how a story is created. For example, we post live blogs on the website in which the interim progress can be tracked, while in the 8 o'clock news we come with the end result and the essence of the news of that day. The live blogs are actually never finished. More and more information becomes available during the day. Think for example of recent current affairs such as Libya and Japan, where the live blogs are always in the making.”
“The NOS offers transparency in the process through the blogs. Even more important is that we can sometimes make announcements in the meantime through these live blogs, we can say that we are working on something and that it will be checked. A good example was the message from a woman from Leiden who had heard from her family that Benghazi had qatar phone number list fallen into the hands of the rebels. The NOS published this news via a live blog with the message that the facts would be checked. It turned out to be true. Thanks to this quick approach, we had the scoop and were able to announce this news in the Netherlands 2 hours earlier,” says Laroes.
“I am proud of NOS on 3. In the morning we tell what we are going to do that day so that people can come up with suggestions and additions. We often find new speakers via the live blogs. We have more sources at our disposal. There is always someone who knows more about something. We no longer speak of news consumers but of news partners, because individuals help us create a story. It can also happen that we want to pick up a story, but that we decide not to create the story due to a lack of information from the audience. Social media form the infrastructure that makes it possible to quickly and directly interact with individuals. Social media also means a change in mindset. Individuals can actively participate in the news creation process,” explains Hans Laroes.
Mindshift and NOS Net
Hans Laroes has been intensively involved in making news in the digital age in recent years. We know the King of Dutch journalism, as he is also called, from NOS News in 2006, where he and a number of colleagues campaigned for the digitalisation of the production process. “The NOS website had a different allure at the time. Many people thought that it should contain reams of written text. We gained our experience with guest books, but soon discovered that it was mainly the same pool of annoying types who responded. Internally, we were ready for a rigorous mind shift. Once we got going, we worked on the refined websites that we have now. We are present on Hyves, Facebook and Twitter, which keeps us connected to the individuals.”