AP appoints new social media editor

The Associated Press (AP) has appointed Lauren McCullough to the newly created role of social networks and news engagement manager.

The new post was announced by AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll, who first told Journalism.co.uk of plans to hire a social media editor in November.

McCullough, who has led the agency's social media projects so far, will work from a new office created for the role, the AP Nerve Centre, part of the agency's new New York headquarters.

The post will entail finding story leads and newsgathering using social networks, while also working to promote the AP presence on social media sites. McCullough will also feed back news of trending topics on social networks to news editors and work on developing a set of standards for agency journalists when using social media.

McCullough, who joined the AP in 2006 as an online editor, led the agency's recent social media experiment to cover a Supreme Court judge's nomination. In partnership with Yahoo, the agency tweeted, blogged and brought readers' questions into its reportage of judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Court in July 2009.

She also oversaw the AP's collaboration with 10 other international press agencies to run the Climate Pool - a Facebook page featuring multimedia updates and reports from the United Nations' climate conference in Copenhagen last month.

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