Thomson Reuters, my former employer, published this week its social media guidelines, rules that all its journalists should consider before Tweeting, blogging, uploading, or simply publishing, the news. The principles espoused – accuracy, objectivity, transparency – are hardly futuristic. They are values you’d hear in most any “Introduction to Journalism” course and well worth repeating in news rooms over and over again.

I was reminded of the Reuters social media code of conduct while talking to Keith Childs, a social media specialist at Opel, the German automaker owned by General Motors. He’d just returned from The Geneva Auto Show where he and two colleagues had embedded themselves as reporters, Tweeting, blogging, photographing and shooting video reports of everything they saw that looked newsworthy over a manic two days.

“I was a reporter,” Childs wrote on his blog. “Or, more accurately, I had to think like a reporter… Instead of re-purposing press material I was part of a team creating content. Writing text. Taking pictures.”

Reflecting on this experience, Childs and I discussed what he refers to as “the changing role of communicators,” or, what you might also call the need for companies to “find their voice.” (“Finding your voice” is a phrase journalism professors use a lot. Yes, I used it often when I taught an introductory journalism course a few years back.)

The company-as-news-outlet concept is not entirely new, nor is it revolutionary. General Motors, for one, introduced for car lovers a few years ago a series of blogs dedicated to its car brands at GMblogs. (There are now six blogs in the GMblogs garage; GM’s social network for Saturn users, ImSaturn, was recently pulled offline presaging the brand’s own demise). The editorial emphasis of GM blogs like Fastlane is akin to that of a glossy car magazine, minus any hint of breaking news, but they do have their loyal readers. Another lesser example comes from McDonald’s. It’s using its YouTube channel to detail its CSR and sustainability commitments, for which it’s attracted in the first two months a whopping 657 viewings. We’re not talking billions and billions served.

Companies unwillingness to break news of any kind on the corporate blogs, YouTube channels or Facebook fan pages make them all too often a secondary news source. Their obvious biases too don’t help. But that doesn’t mean brands cannot become a valuable source of specialized news. To boost their credibiltiy, they just need to think like journalists, as Childs says.

I asked Childs to share with me the lessons he took from the Geneva Auto Show that companies could apply for their own in-house editorial operations. Here’s what he says:

1) Don’t ever script what your in-house reporters should write. “I would have felt uncomfortable if I had a brief,” Childs says. The task was to show car enthusiasts on the Opel blog a behind-the-scenes look at what Opel was doing at the auto show. Childs is confident they achieved this and it’s because he and his editorial colleagues weren’t pressured by anybody within Opel to follow a certain news agenda.

2) Organize yourself like a mini news operation with specialized tasks. The trio divided up the tasks such as shooting and editing the video reportage; writing up interviews (and taking photos) for the blog; and someone stayed close to the computer to monitor the Twitter feed. “Everyone had Tweetdeck open, but you have to be sure just one person responds,” he instructs. “Sounds simple, but it takes coordinating.”

3) The publishing technology is still well ahead of the corporate mindset, and this imbalance poses a problem. “It takes very little time and money to launch a Posterous blog,” Childs says, referring to the publishing platform they chose. And of course there are plenty of people within an organization familiar with Twitter, YouTube and posting to Facebook, he adds. “It’s the cultural aspect within companies that is the only thing holding it back,” he says, adding, he thinks companies, particularly those in Europe, are on the eve of a tipping point where they begin to fully embrace in-house reporting. The upshot: deal with it, purists. More companies will be blogging the news that impacts their bottom line very soon if they aren’t already.

4) Read your blog, check your Twitter feed, monitor your YouTube videos regularly, Childs says. Otherwise, you’ll have no idea what your audience likes and dislikes. It’s not as obvious as you think. There are all kinds of assumptions that circulate through an organization about the public’s tastes, preferences and opinions. To be charitable, not all of these assumptions are correct, and certainly they do not add up to base a rigorous editorial strategy on. Where then to turn? Your readers.

5) Transparency is key to any news forum that allows for public opinion. For example, GM has a very progressive reader response policy. It welcomes all comment, even critical, as long as it isn’t racist, sexist, xenophobic or an outright menacing threat. Opel adopted the same policy, Childs says.

So how does this stand up to Reuters’ social media guidelines? Accuracy? Check. Transparency? Check. Bias-free? Childs, for one, would say that too is key. See Point 1. Check.