CAITLIN FITZSIMMONS

Evolution of a social media editor

Caitlin — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:43:13 +0000

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Caitlin Fitzsimmons

Roaming Tales

Fri, Nov 04 2011 20:00:00
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CAITLIN FITZSIMMONS — Freelance writer and editor
Freelance writer and editor

Caitlinfitzsimmons
Pioneering social media

At university I trained to be a radio and television journalist but by the time I graduated it was 1997 – the dawn of the dotcom era. It was clear that aspiring journalists needed to understand the web.
By 2000 I was an online journalist at australianIT.com.au and I was doing social media as part of my job – even though the word had not been invented yet.
We had a comment form at the bottom of our news stories. Our passionate, techie audience loved it and the best stories attracted dozens – even hundreds – of comments. I took the initiative to make sure we published a “Your Say” comments story several times a week. When I wasn’t writing breaking news, I spent hours selecting the best comments and preparing them for publication. When one commenter responded to another commenter, I coded a link back to the specific comment, not the generic page. It was all done by hand in HTML because my vision exceeded the capability of the content management tools.
Growth as a journalist

In 2003 I moved to the general news desk at The Australian and made it my mission to develop my writing and to get to know the paper. I wrote a range of stories for General News (including page one), Business, IT, Media, Health, Higher Education, Travel, Arts, and Inquirer.

During my time in general news, I regularly used social media in my reporting. I was often asked to find “real people” for case studies to illustrate news stories – for example, a couple with a scary Sydney mortgage to illustrate a story about rising interest rates, or a couple with a baby named Josh to illustrate a story about the most popular children’s names. I was so good at finding these case studies that I became the go-to reporter for this job for most of 2003. My secret? To a large extent, I found most of my real people by posting on various internet forums and mailing lists, such as Yahoo! groups.
Since leaving The Australian in 2004 I have worked in London and San Francisco. I have gained editing and staff management experience and done a lot of interesting international reportage. I have travelled to places like Syria, Senegal, Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea, Sumatra and the Orkney Islands to write for publications like The Guardian, New Statesman, Anyway magazine, the Los Angeles Times and South China Morning Post.
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A marriage of inconvenience
Hind Al-Rubawawi twirls on the dance floor with her groom. Dressed in white, including the obligatory hijab, the 22-year-old university s…

Guardian
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Caitlin Fitzsimmons

Roaming Tales

Fri, Nov 04 2011 20:00:00
Media journalism

Since 2004 one of my specialties has been media journalism. For the first 18 months of my time in London I was deputy news editor and then acting news editor at trade magazine Media Week. Then I went freelance and wrote for Media Guardian and Campaign among others. I wrote regularly for The Australian as well.

My background as a technology journalist was very useful to me because the lines between media and technology were blurring. I became the go-to person to write about all the latest online trends, including the rise of social networking and user-generated content.
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Monetise this! – Brand Republic News
Technology is driving big changes in society, let alone media. But, while consumers embrace new ideas – from podcasts to blogs – media bu…

Brandrepublic
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Is Second Life just hype?
In-game advertising will be huge, but Second Life is just a distraction. Another day, another story about Second Life. Excuse me while I …

Guardian
In 2009 I moved to San Francisco and I continued writing about media for The Australian and also for US trade magazine Advertising Age and Media Bistro’s AllFacebook.com. With my proximity to Silicon Valley, my work for The Australian became tightly focused on social media.
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Cookies must be enabled. | The Australian
Enabling Cookies in Internet Explorer 7, 8 & 9 Enabling Cookies in Google Chrome

Theaustralian
Use of social media

I became an early adopter on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and Digg because of my work as a media journalist. It was important that I understood the phenomenon properly and could write about the latest trends with authority. I still experiment with new social media continually, most recently with Google+, Storify, Pinterest and Facebook subscriptions.
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@niltiac – 29993 Tweets, 5102 Followers, 1531 Following.
Freelance journalist and travel blogger who has lived and worked in Sydney, London and San Francisco.

Caitlin Fitzsimmons

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TurtleHeart’s favorite websites – StumbleUpon
Rated Dec 26 2011 • 22 reviews • animals, nature, photography, wildlife • 35photo.ru Rated Dec 26 2011 • 1 review • travel • roamingtales…

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Sydney-based journalist and writer
Journalist who has worked in Sydney, London and San Francisco. Founder of travel and food blog Roaming Tales.

Caitlin Fitzsimmons
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Caitlin Fitzsimmons (niltiac)
Caitlin is using Pinterest, an online pinboard to collect and share what inspires you.

Pinterest
I have also continued using social media as a reporting tool. Most recently, I sourced off-the-record comment from Optus via LinkedIn after receiving a “no comment” from the PR department. I found an appropriate source via a company search on LinkedIn, sent them an InMail and they called me over the weekend for a conversation on background.
Blogging

In February 2005, I started a blog. Initially it was a personal blog and my aim was to replace group emails and help me stay in touch with friends and family back in Australia. Later I launched a travel blog and a food blog. Currently my blogs are consolidated at Roaming Tales.
Roaming Tales has around 8,500 unique visits per month and earns me a small income through advertising and affiliate sales. Roaming Tales has been named on several reputable lists of best travel blogs and the Facebook page has 470 fans.
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Roaming Tales
Roaming Tales – A travel and food blog by Caitlin Fitzsimmons. | Facebook

Facebook
Blogging has served as a calling card in my work as a freelance journalist, attracting the interest of editors. Most importantly it has ensured that I have kept my digital skills up to date and allowed me to participate fully in the social media sphere.
Best Job in the World Campaign

My first experience with tapping into the power of my audience on my blog and social media was in 2009 when I applied for Tourism Queensland’s Best Job in the World. The job was to run blogging and social media for a year, based on Hamilton Island but travelling around the Great Barrier Reef. Applicants had to make a one-minute video application.
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Caitlin, United Kingdom (41640)

islandreefjob6

Thu, Jan 22 2009 17:25:21
There were more than 34,000 applications around the world. The criteria to make the top 50 was internal at Tourism Queensland rather than based on public vote. However, my strategy was to actively prove my social media skills by drumming up support in the first round. Although I didn’t get short-listed my social media campaign was a great success.

More than 150 people – many of them friends of friends – joined a Facebook group to support my application and spread the word to their friends. Dozens of people lobbied people to vote for me on Twitter. At the end of the first round, my video rated four stars and had over 1,000 views on the Tourism Queensland sites. It also rated four stars on YouTube (separate rating system). There were only a handful of other applicants that matched that achievement and only one other from the UK.
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Best Job in the World – end of round one | Roaming Tales
A social marketing success story as Tourism Queensland deliberates over the top 50. You know that fabulous job on Hamilton Island on the …

Roamingtales
Kickstarter campaign

There can’t be too many journalists who have used social media to pay their bills. In 2010 I successfully used crowd-funding website Kickstarter to raise money from my blog fans. I raised $540, beating my target, which paid for my airfare and other expenses to travel from San Francisco to New York for a travel blogging conference.
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Send Roaming Tales to NYC for TBEX

Caitlin
What I found interesting about this experience was that it was my contacts on social media who funded my campaign – my friends and family did not contribute. I think there is a lot of potential for freelance journalists, and possibly publications as well, to fund journalism from the public through sites like Kickstarter and the Australian equivalent Pozible.
Passports with Purpose

I have also used the power of social media and blogging for charity. I was a participating blogger in the founding year of Passports with Purpose four years ago and I have taken part every year since. Passports with Purpose is a fundraiser founded and run by travel bloggers, with a different beneficiary every year. Bloggers source prizes – such as accommodation in hotels or the latest tech gadgets – and write about it on their blogs, then promote it through social media. For each $10 donation, people are given an entry in a prize draw. Last year we raised more than $89,000 to build two libraries in Zambia with Room to Read – pretty impressive for a grassroots effort.
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Passports With Purpose
Posted on | February 16, 2012 | No Comments Thank you so much for your participation in Passports with Purpose this year. We were blown a…

Passportswithpurpose
Debbie Dubrow, owner DeliciousBaby and co-founder Passports with Purpose:
“Caitlin has a friendly and informed presence on Social Media and a good sense of how to get people engaged in a conversation without being overly self-promotional.” via LinkedIn.
Professional social media work

In 2009 I worked on a social media project for the FIPP 2009 World Magazine Congress in London. I was initially hired by FIPP’s UK partner the Professional Publishers Association (PPA) to write news reports on the conference for the official website. I proposed that we should also do an official Twitter stream with live updates from the conference floor. My client agreed and the Twitter stream was a great success because it created buzz around the event and encouraged a wider audience to join the conversation. By the end of the two-day conference we had 571 followers to the @fipp2009 account and dozens of people interacting by retweeting or replying to my tweets and even translating them into Portugese!
Sheelagh Doyle, brand manager at Wiley & Sons in New York, formerly head of press at PPA UK:
“I hired Caitlin in 2009 to write news reports for the website of an international media conference (FIPP World Magazine Conference) for which I was running the communications. … She suggested a social media strategy that really fitted in with the communications objectives of the event. Even though it was still relatively early days for social media reporting, Caitlin significantly enhanced engagement levels and buzz by delivering a compelling twitter feed and reaching a key audience of influencers attending the event. Her contribution helped to raise the profile of the event amongst press, and media influencers.” via LinkedIn.
After moving to the US, I helped run the Twitter account for travel start-up UpTake and the Facebook page for online lifestyle magazine EcoSalon.
Sara Ost, president, publisher and editor-in-chief, EcoSalon:
“Caitlin is a formidably thorough and passionate journalist and a committed and expert blogger who saw the importance of social and new media platforms long before many working in editorial did. In addition to her superb editorial capabilities, she has a keen grasp of social media strategy and community. She is particularly influential on Twitter, which was a boon during her editorial tenure at EcoSalon! On a personal note, Caitlin is a professional of exceptional integrity and honesty, which makes all the difference.” via LinkedIn.
Elliott Ng, director of product management for APAC commerce at Google, formerly co-founder and VP of marketing at UpTake:
“Caitlin is a creative, organized and insightful writer and user of social media. She has the eye and “pen” of a writer and a journalist, but also the online social connector skills that help her engage and build an audience for her work. I’ve enjoyed working with her on some online advocacy and social media projects, mostly in the travel industry.” via LinkedIn.
Patricia Jenkins, marketing director at UpTake in Palo Alto, California:
“Caitlin was an excellent writer and communicator for UpTake, a travel search engine. She was very reliable, required little to no supervision and consistently delivered high quality work. I highly recommend her as a writer or editor, especially in the social media realm. She had a knack for understanding what worked in the online social realm and for quickly building rapport with our target audience online.” via LinkedIn.
Social media kudos

I moved back to Australia in December 2010 and spent most of last year on maternity leave but I kept up my presence on social media. Recently I was pleasantly surprised to find myself listed in as the 33rd most influential Australian journalist in social media. This is according to analysis by social media consultant Laurel Papworth (@silkcharm on Twitter) based on data from PeerIndex. (NB The ranking has shifted as she has added more journalists to the list)
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Australian Journalists and Social Media Influence | @SilkCharm | Laurel Papworth
Forbes Magazine recently very kindly named me in the global Forbes Top 50 Social Media Influencers. I thought I would repay the complimen…

Laurelpapworth
What next?

I am ready to return to work. I am looking for a part-time job doing exciting, strategic work that is about the future of our industry. Something like this…
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“

Hi folks, The Australian is seeking a new social media editor. Based in Sydney at the Holt St bunker. Please me details or suggest candidat…

nichopkins

Fri, Feb 10 2012 01:01:32

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I’m sure this job will attract a lot of interest. You will find people who are experienced using social media for marketing purposes. You will also find journalists who have dabbled in social media. I believe what sets me apart from the crowd is that I am the complete package.

I have a lot of experience with social media and I also also have a strong editorial background. I have been a close observer of how global news brands from The Guardian to the New York Times are using social media for almost a decade now. The job of social media editor is an editorial role and I believe it is best performed by a journalist with a strategic brain.
Dominique Jackson, columnist at Daily Mail, former assistant editor at The Guardian.
(Not the same Dominique Jackson who formerly worked for The Australian!):
“…[Caitlin] was one of the first originally mainstream journalists I know to grasp the huge implications of what the new “open” media would mean for news-gathering and dissemination. She is a creative and always exciting writer with a truly international perspective. Caitlin would be a valuable addition to any serious and ambitious editorial team.” via LinkedIn.

Location check-in feature in The Australian

Caitlin — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:00:07 +0000

As Facebook launches Places, I’ve written a feature about the location check-in space for Media in The Australian.

20 September 2010 | Facebook falls for location fad with mobile phone help

Social gaming feature in The Australian

Caitlin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:00:36 +0000

In the wake of Disney’s purchase of game developer Playdom for $633m, I’ve written a feature for Media in The Australian on the social gaming phenomenon.

23 August 2010 | Disney pays $633m to expand into social gaming

Electric car story for The Australian

Caitlin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:14:50 +0000

I have a story in the news pages of The Australian today about electric car network Better Place and how it plans to use Australia as a test case for the US.

14 July 2010 | Australia the test bed for electric car push into US.

Reporting on stem cell research

Caitlin — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 18:10:26 +0000

I attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research annual meeting in San Francisco and wrote a feature on new ethical issues for weekly health section of The Australian.

26 June 2010 | Deeper into uncharted waters: embryo research.

Travel story in The Australian

Caitlin — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 22:58:45 +0000

I had a story published in The Australian’s travel section on the weekend. This was a revised and shortened version of the San Francisco streetcar story I did for the LA Times last month. The hook for Australians is that the fleet contains two Melbourne trams.

12 June 2012 | Last stop San Francisco

Travel articles in the LA Times and Galavanting

Caitlin — Sat, 15 May 2010 04:47:06 +0000

Two of my travel pieces were published on the same day. The first was my debut in the Los Angeles Times – an article about San Francisco’s historic F-line trams, which come from all over the world, including Melbourne.

LA Times | 2 May 2010: San Francisco: The rolling transit museum known as the F line

The second was more of a personal essay, on living with an Iraqi family in Syria and my experience as a woman in this part of the world. It was based on the same trip as this piece I did for The Guardian in 2008.

Galavanting | 2 May 2010: Behind the Veil

3D television feature for The Australian

Caitlin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:00:25 +0000

This week I have another feature for The Australian‘s Media section, this time on 3D television. If you have a spare few thousand dollars and you’re prepared to sit around the living room wearing silly glasses, you can have the 3D cinema experience at home. Sports and video games are likely to be the big drivers to convince people to take up the technology, though the HDTV revolution is too recent for 3D to become mainstream just yet.

15 March 2010 | Home invasion of 3D’s visual power

Facebook feature in The Australian

Caitlin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:21:38 +0000

I have a feature in The Australian‘s Media section today about Facebook and the issues with the defacement of tribute pages for dead children in Australia. I met with the face of Facebook Debbie Frost in San Francisco on Friday for a lengthy one-on-one interview and the feature is running in tomorrow’s paper. Of course, it’s already the future in Australia, so here’s the link:
The Australian, Media, 1 March 2010: Faceless no more – Facebook admits errors

CAITLIN FITZSIMMONS

Evolution of a social media editor

Pioneering social media

Growth as a journalist

Media journalism

Use of social media

Blogging

Best Job in the World Campaign

Kickstarter campaign

Passports with Purpose

Professional social media work

Social media kudos

What next?