Twitter for Journalists
I’m Twittering NowI’m embarrassed to say it, but I’ve been wondering for a year now what the deal is with Twitter. I first heard about it when Kat Angus, an editor at DOSE.CA, started posting Twitter status updates on her Facebook. Around the same time, Phil Barrett, a mobile and interactive marketing professional, also started referring to Twitter.
I thought I was savvy with online journalism - having blogged about music and created a podcast - but Twitter seemed more mystifying.
With the desire to immerse myself in online journalism, I signed up for a Twitter account. The process of joining was made easy by reading Twitter’s helpful FAQ.
Twittering for the masses
In a nutshell, Twitter is being used by people to send quick, frequent messages - tweets - from a computer or cell phone, that are then distributed to everyone following that person on various sites.
According to Sharon Gaudin, social networking sites are changing the way North Americans experience historic events.
How journalists are using Twitter
Mike Miner, a writer for Toronto Life and a producer at TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, spoke with me on facebook chat about Twitter.
Amanda: How did you first start using Twitter?
Mike: I took it upon myself to get every producer on The Agenda signed up. To be honest, I wasn’t really sure how to use it at first. But it was clearly an emerging site that was drawing a lot of traffic, so I figured we should be using it and learning with everybody else.
One producer, Dan Kitts, does a pretty good job of using it regularly, but all he does is post when he’s done something, like: About to produce a show on Iran, Just finished producing a show on Iran. It will air tonight at 8….
Not exactly scintillating. But it was good for me to watch this.
Amanda: How are you using it more effectively now?
Mike: On Twitter you’re being followed by lots of people, and you’re following lots of people.
Karl Rove added me… and a journalist I know and respect sent me a personal message based on one of my posts. So what you have here is a very casual, almost ambient, connection with an interesting pool of people.
People don’t read everything that you put up…it doesn’t make sense to make it a mechanical, scheduled part of your job.
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Mike Miner also revealed that Twitter is great for journalists to do the following:
- Float questions
- Send a direct question to someone who has said something interesting
- Add people who you saw at a conference or a news event.
At the end of the informative conversation with Mike Miner, he revealed that in fact he found two sources through Facebook yesterday. He said, these forms of social netoworking “show how the search for people is changing.” Indeed, these tools can be very useful if used wisely!

