Mainstream Media Mistakes on Twitter

by Pat Kitano on January 13, 2009

FIRST, WHY ARE THERE NO NEWS PRODUCERS ON TWITTER?

Twellow is the best application to find Twitterers grouped by occupation. I perused through the News category – noted a lot of freelancing journalists and some reporters, but no news producers or editors.

Twitter makes it easy for a community to tip the news media

News producers should understand that news sourcing has become social because anybody can now feed them story ideas. Moreover, news producers should FOLLOW others so their potential citizen news sources can DM (direct message) them with story ideas and breaking news that are best transmitted privately. News producers can provide journalistic value by positioning themselves as media hubs in their community.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA HIDES BEHIND THEIR CALL LETTERS AND BROADCASTS ONE WAY

Advice to mainstream media – don’t hide behind your call letters or mastheads on Twitter – use your real reporter and producer names like WUSA9. And don’t arrogantly just use Twitter blatantly as a one-way broadcast media- this is old media think and keeps your brand isolated from your constituency. Following others who you respect as news sources will expand the distribution network you will leverage as a media hub. And those you follow will be appreciative.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA STILL CALLING TWITTER UNRELIABLE NEWS SOURCING

Granted, individual Twitter sources are not trustworthy at face value. What makes citizen journalism credible is the aggregation of individual sources into a collective, accountable voice. This is what makes citizen review sites like Yelp more trustworthy than the Twitter-like pronouncements of a Zagat’s restaurant review; Yelp’s statistical samples are large enough to prove its results, and Zagats is a black box.

Citizen sources are much closer to breaking news events (as seen in Mumbai and Gaza), and the “reporting” or research / interpretation of the news can be performed by either mainstream media or citizen sources. Dave Winer makes the case that the social media does vet and report news (his diagram above).

It seems obvious that once mainstream media surrenders its position that only they can report news by sending out salaried news crews and cameras, real economies of scale (think free) of news sourcing happens. Mainstream media can then add quality (and value) by filtering interesting stories arising from a magnitude more citizen sources than they have now. Twitter is, in essence, a massive extension to their 800-”hotline”. Now, if the media would only listen.

KUDOS TO MAINSTREAM MEDIA WHO ARE SERIOUSLY EXPERIMENTING WITH TWITTER

Let’s congratulate a few news media companies and individuals that have put together a comprehensive Twitter presence.

Tori Blase, CNN – the only major news producer I see out there

Dave Courvoisier, KLAS TV anchor, Las Vegas – thanks for your sincere offers of help

WUSA9, Washington DC

Patrick O’Brien, WUSA Web Director – Patrick introduced me to the whole WUSA team on Twitter.

Peggy Fox, Anchor

Stephanie Wilson, News Producer

Angie Goff, Traffic Anchor

Lindsey Mastis, Digital Correspondent

Lesli Foster, Consumer Reporter

Kim Martucci, Meteorologist

Sara Walsh, Sports / Skins Uncensored

Andrew Nystrom, LA Times Social media and tech blogger – Andrew seems to be coordinating a massive effort to build media channels by category at the LA Times.

LATimesTweets lists all 59 LA Times Twitter feeds

The New Web 2.5 Opportunity: Create Media Hubs

The Future is LA Times.com, not LA Times the Paper

Slow Death of Traditional News Syndication

Tagged as: broadcasting, CNN, Dave Winer, journalism, LA Times, Mumbai, news, reporting, Social Media, Twellow, Twitter, WUSA, WUSA9, yelp

{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }

Oh My GOFF! 01.14.09 at 5:08 am: I love twittering throughout the morning show at WUSA in DC..often my reports hit twitter before I even give them on-air!
Pat Kitano 01.14.09 at 8:44 am: That is great. “Breaking the news” on Twitter before your broadcast can only help your ratings… it’s simple to do and should be a practice at all news stations
Matthew Daines 01.14.09 at 12:14 pm: Pat,

Actually there are news producers on Twitter. Twellow just didn’t have a category for them. Until now. We’ve gone ahead and added the category which can be found at:

http://www.twellow.com/category_users/cat_id/594

Matthew Daines
Twellow Lead Developer
Pat Kitano 01.14.09 at 12:44 pm: Great to see this Matthew, really like Twellow!
monsieurledan 01.14.09 at 2:34 pm: Another kudos should go to the BBC reporters that are making use of the conversation on twitter:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/workinglunch/declancurry/2009/01/the_joys_of_twitter.html
Amy Le 01.26.09 at 9:58 am: Great post Pat. As a journalist myself, who worked the print newsroom for five years before jumping ship for the online world, I think mainstream media needs to do more with utilizing social networks like Twitter. But I also think some of their concerns about getting too entrenched on these sites, has to do with fact checking. I use to get phone calls all the time getting news tips. Sometimes my e-mail box would be full of messages from people who had a gripe with a business or politician. But 90 percent of the time the tips were false. The other issue is there are people who will only give reporters their first hand accounts if they are left anonymous. It’s hard to verify a story if you don’t know who your source really is.

But it’s important to note that the when the plane in NYC crashed into the Hudson River, the story broke on Twitter first.
Ryan Squire 01.26.09 at 11:28 am: We’ve been using twitter since April of 2008 in just the way you describe. You are right on. Twitter users tell us that now when they think of news, they think of NBC 4. And they send us stories constantly. Now they are commenting and discussing stories, which only makes our product more accurate and balanced. Our twitter presence has also taught us a lot about what we need to become in order to stay relevant in a media 2.0 world.

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