I will give big points to the first news organization, big or small, that:
* Sets up an instance for its newsroom,
* Sets up an instance for the community it serves,
* Enables rel=me for staff,
* Creates a boost-on-Mastodon sharing function,
* Enhances that function so headlines/images (with alt-text) appear in the toot,
* Covers the Fediverse as more than a geeky curiosity or alt-Twitter,
* Listens to and joins in the conversation here.
@jeffjarvis Having news orgs have their own instances for their staff sounds good, but it may not be great for journalists. On Twitter, a journalist can develop a following that they take with them when they move employers. But someone who develops a following on their employer's mastodon instance loses it when they leave (unless they allow them to migrate the account elsewhere).
@mattblaze That is precisely the value of the Fediverse: You can take your identity and your social graph with you when you leave.
@jeffjarvis Only if your instance allows it. Will they? Moving also effectively erases the post history.
Anyone establishing a presence on their employer's instance better be clear up front about the rules here.
@mattblaze If a news organization starts an instance that doesn't allow interoperability, no one should join and everyone should mock them.
@jeffjarvis It can interoperate just fine. It just need not send the migrate messages.
Again, maybe norms will develop in the industry. Or maybe they won't. But it would be foolish to assume it will just work out the way you hope it will.
@jeffjarvis Explicit agreements >> thoughts and prayers.
@mattblaze @jeffjarvis Just from a practical labor/management POV, what happens when reporters go on strike? Is it crossing the picket line to use an employer-owned instance? (Twitter was a win for all kinds of content labor because it's a byline namespace independent of employment relationships)
@dmarti @jeffjarvis Yeah. People are being incredibly starry-eyed about this (and lots of other things about the fediverse). The devil is very much in the details here, and we've seen these sorts of issues play out in very ugly ways many times before, in news and other areas.
@dmarti @jeffjarvis And figuring this out now (while the stakes are low) will be much easier than sorting it out after the first mess.
Jeff Jarvis
Matt Blaze
Don Marti
DaveC-CO 