After reading the articles “The Journalist Guide to Twitter,” ”Five Ways to Gather and Report News With Twitter,” and “How to Verify a Tweet,” I realized two things.
One was that I knew most of the tips that the articles had to offer. This realization was great because it means that I know how to use twitter. The second realization was that even though I already knew a lot about using twitter in relation to the news, I wasn’t actively using twitter as a news source.
I’m subscribed to a lot of public and private persons on twitter, but I don’t check my feed often enough to actually gain useful information or breaking news.
Twitter is at the forefront of web journalism. It is a great place to post breaking news, read news, and to find other journalists. Any journalists who is not using twitter, should.
The article on how to verify a tweet was the most helpful. As a journalist it is important to check your sources especially if that source comes from a social media platform. Twitter is a platform that private persons sometimes use very liberally and without a thought for the consequences of how a tweet might affect those who read it. So, when re-tweeting, a journalist must first make first the tweet is true.
This is especially true around major news events—like Paterno’s death. Oftentimes the race to scoop is overshadowed by the need to get things right. Our advice? Find 15-20 really solid Twitter sources who are actively tweeting about that event, throw ‘em in a list, then built it out from there based on who they’re following, who they’re interacting with, and so on. It’s the closest one can get to ‘on the ground’ when they’re sitting at their desk.
I’m still completely baffled by twitter, to be honest. I keep telling myself that once I have more time to dedicate to really learning how it works I can just keep familiarizing myself with the site by using it for mostly personal reasons. I know this attitude is probably not the most proactive, but as a student journalist with no ties and no assignments at the moment, what other choice do I really have?
