Several Members of the Guild are part of a journalists’ Twitter panel answering questions and providing comment on the role the agricultural media.
The @AgriChatUK initiative pulled together by Guild chairman Jane Craigie will be held on Thursday, August 29, 8-10pm.
“This is the first Panel event on #AgriChatUK,” points out Jane. “A panel comprising Members of the Guild and other invited journalists will take questions on their role.”
The forum @AgriChatUk and its hashtag #AgriChatUK has a regular ‘slot’ on Thursday evenings to share ideas, discuss pressing issues, debate hot topics or simply connect with people in the industry on a particular subject.
“Since we started in March 2012, AgriChatUK now has nearly 8000 Twitter followers and we regularly have high level guests such as Defra, MPs and the NFU joining in,” says Simon Haley, a co-founder of the forum and a Member of the Guild. “As a platform for real-time views, there is immense value to journalists in finding out what the hot topics are and what the online farming population thinks about them.”
Members of the Guild lined up for the Question Time panel include Alistair Driver, political editor at Farmers Guardian; Gemma Mackenzie, Farmers Weekly deputy business and farm energy editor; John Tasker, chief reporter, Farmers Weekly; freelance Caroline Stocks; and Adrian Bell (@PanCakeFarm), of the Whisper.pr agency.
Also on the panel are Louise Gray (@loubgray), environment correspondent at The Daily Telegraph; Julia Glotz (@juliaglotz), fresh food editor at The Grocer; and (recording schedule permitting) Charlotte Smith, BBC Radio 4 Farming Today presenter.
Simon Haley will moderate the session with the help of Guild chairman Jane Craigie and Sophie Stanley (@sestanley1) a Nuffield Scholar from New Zealand researching social media. Questions can be tweeted to #AgriChatUK beforehand and during the discussion.
Anyone can watch the online discussion as it unfolds by searching for ‘AgriChatUK (on Google, for example), clicking on the forum’s profile account, then on the hashtag, and then on the ‘All’ column above the tweets. However, Members wanting to participate by posting or answering tweets need their own account.
