#bbcsms: A changing audience or changing audience expectations?

If anything summed up the expectation that the former audience has of news in 2011 it was the reaction created by three words: 'Chatham House Rule'.

"Tear down this wall!" demanded Jeff Jarvis. "People across the world risk all to speak openly,"said Stephen Punter, "and the BBC has a closed session on social media. Which it exploits. Shame on #bbcsms."

The message to the BBC Social Media Summit was clear: people did not expect this from a modern media organisation. They wanted to be able to interrogate this event from afar; they wanted the decision-making processes of journalists and editors to be open; and they wanted transparency and accountability.

Those expectations were familiar to the event's participants. One after another talked of how their former audiences were growing increasingly used to taking an active role in the news process, and journalists were trying to find their feet in dealing with those demands. The cultural battle had been largely won; the practical battle was ongoing.

Firstly, there were the new and multiple audiences to deal with. Online audiences that were two or ten times as big as print readerships. Fans on your Facebook page; people following your Twitter streams; photographers sharing in your Flickr photo pool. Segmented and fragmented, distributed and connected, distracted and interested - each with different interests, needs, opinions and knowledge which the reporter must negotiate in deciding what stories to cover and how.

The key, it seemed, was to be able to go where the conversation was, but also to seek to speak to those not involved and give them a voice too. If you were involving users in your process, for example, you should be asking for help and guidance - not simply telling them what you want.

It was also about understanding shifting patterns of consumption and providing the right news in the right places: online while people worked; broadcast while they relaxed; and mobile as they browsed for more.

Journalists have always been good storytellers, but now there is an increased emphasis on communication - being able to switch between codes of speaking depending on the situation, and being clear enough that there is no room for misinterpreting your meaning.

Ultimately, the BBC Social Media Summit itself embodied the final challenge for journalists: to make difficult decisions about the objectives of their communities and their own work. In this case, the primary objective was to facilitate a free and frank discussion between 40 people in a room, which meant requiring some privacy. That undermined the secondary objective: to involve those outside the room - but that was secondary. 

For all the fluffy talk about communities, their shameful secret is that they are often defined by exclusion as much as inclusion. How do we bridge that in our newsgathering? It's a question we should ask more often.

Tomorrow, the second day of #bbcsms, the objectives - and the rules - change to an open event. We'll be able to see what sort of difference it makes.

Paul Bradshaw - @paulbradshaw - is founder of the Online Journalism Blog and the crowdsourcing website Helpmeinvestigate. He is a visiting professor at City University, London and runs the MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University.