One session definitely worth attending at next month’s SES in San Francisco is Real-Time Storytelling where panelists will discuss how mainstream media must embrace social media and take on the critical role of curator of the conversation in order to survive. I was able to catch up with Dermot Waters, Senior Director of Product Development, CNN.com, who will be participating on the panel. Read our chat below:

[Manoj]: What is CNN’s approach to real time and how important is it as foundational strategy of spreading the news?

[Dermot Waters]: At its core, CNN was founded on the concept of real-time storytelling. At the time, that mainly centered around spreading the news around the world as soon as it become available. That has of course evolved as the world has become more social. Now in addition to spreading the news, we’re focused on encouraging and curating the conversation to ensure that what is being spread is both personally relevant and compelling for our users.

[Manoj]: What are some ways your team filters out the noise to get to the meat of the conversation?

[Dermot Waters]: CNN is constantly looking for mechanisms to help highlight the most pertinent parts of any conversation. From a newsgathering perspective, we are monitoring trends in the social world and coupling that with our traditional sources of newsgathering to deliver the best story. We use a variety of methods ranging from manually monitoring social feeds to some automated platforms that can identify and analyze trends and viewpoints that are at the heart of what our audience is looking for.

[Manoj]: How has Twitter changed the way CNN does business online?

[Dermot Waters]: Even prior to Twitter, we noticed a trend that people wanted to not just consume the news but be a part of the news. They wanted to offer their opinions and viewpoints, share their stories, pictures, and videos. This participatory style of journalism was the driver behind us creating iReport in 2006 and then launched more broadly in 2008 with iReport.com.

The evolution of user-generated content and social networks, including Twitter, has given CNN more tools and resources for not just broadcasting the story, but sourcing it as well. We use a variety of tools to monitor all the social networks as a compliment to our existing newsgathering practices. CNN’s goal is to get the full story – the real story – that our users care about.

And now with iReport, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the social web, we can also reach out to our users for opinions, feedback, and as a source for our stories.

[Manoj]: Isn’t it really difficult to produce quality content at such an incredible pace?

[Dermot Waters]: The entire CNN organization is set up to produce top notch content in a real-time manner, across TV, the web, mobile and any other platforms. It is certainly a challenge, but one we embrace everyday with our newsgathering, iReport, and the use of the social web.

[Manoj]: Where do we go from here – how does the game change from real time?

[Dermot Waters]: From a philosophical standpoint, we are focused on making CNN more social. Part of that is rebuffing terms like “social media”, “new media”, or “traditional media”. To us, it is all media and our goal is to make that media more social, plain and simple. Going forward, social interactions and participatory journalism will continue to play a role in how we deliver news.