My colleague Annette Schulte has become a Twitter user. As she’s working on new ways for media companies to create content, that made me think, how can media companies use twitter, either to deliver content or get information in? Some media companies already are.
CNN has a twitter feed already, and it’s used to deliver breaking news. A pretty obvious use for it, actually. After all, if you can’t explain your story in 140 characters, then there’s something wrong. And since it’s real-time, it shows up on your phone or your screen more quickly than you might get an email. But there are other uses, too.
If you can find people who use Twitter, not only do you have a ready-made tip line, you can also make sure that you’re actually writing about the things the people in your community care about. Following people in the community makes sure that you know what they’re talking about.
One blogger, Michael Arrington at Techcrunch, had problems with his Comcast internet service. He vented his frustration on Twitter, other bloggers picked it up, and he got service restored. In his post explaining all that, he talked about Twitter as an early-warning system for companies. It can easily be an early warning system for newspapers, too.
Is there something big happening? People are talking about it, and we need to find out where. That way we can make sure their voices get included, makning sure the stories we’re righting are accurate and that they resonate with people.
But it’s also a way to start a conversation with the community. If a reporter uses it, they can let people know what they’re doing and also talk about the stories. News isn’t a one-way street anymore, and the more ways we can make readers part of the conversation, the better off we’ll be.
Finally, it’s a way for reporters and editors to keep in touch. Reporters can tweet to keep their editors (and others who follow them) up-to-date when on assignment, including when a meeting goes long, or something interesting happens that might change how the story is played. A text message might do the same thing, of course, but this has the added advantage of making our operations even more transparent, a good thing.
So do any reporters out there use Twitter in their job?
Responses to “How the media can use Twitter”
August 5th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
I use Twitter as a major part of my reporting now. It started out as an experiment and has become an integral part of how I find, source, and promote my stories. It’s an interesting tool, part information finder and part distribution vehicle. The key for me was finding the networks of people out there who were already communicating about what I wanted to know, as opposed to building the network I wanted from scratch. Happy to talk more about it anytime.
September 5th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
[...] As we at The Gazette are getting better about using Twitter to communicate with readers and each other, I’ve been thinking about more ways that reporters can use Twitter. [...]
April 18th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Jamie, another cool thing afoot in media companies is learning to use social networks — Facebook, Twitter, etc. — as informal focus groups for market research. Audience strategy is hugely important, of course, and this is a way to tap into social media while doing it.