Twitter made a new appeal to get journalists aboard the Twitter bandwagon with the release this week of “Twitter for Newsrooms.”
Twitter for Newsrooms isn’t anything new per se- it’s more a platform to teach new media resisters to embrace the microblogging service for leads and information. It’s a nice idea, but it seems like the individuals and organizations who know about the benefits are probably already using Twitter for their reporting and the ones who have yet to embrace it might have a bit of a learning curve- although Twitter for Newsrooms does aim to change that. From media.twitter.com:
We know you come from different generations. Some are native to the pilcrow, others native to the hashtag. You began your careers in different media: radio, print, broadcast, online and mobile. But you share a common bond: the desire to make a difference in the world, bringing reliable information to the communities you serve.
Twitter for Newsrooms is divided into four areas- #report, #engage, #publish and #extra, each with some subsets detailing the different applications of Twitter for journalists perhaps new to the service.
RWW was skeptical of the new push:
Twitter is not a newsroom. It’s more a smoky bar, shadowy garage, corporate breakroom, and boisterous mob gathering — places reporters traditionally went to tease out news leads — all rolled into one. Twitter is a place where people talk, often while inebriated or delusional (believing a public forum is somehow private). It’s a gathering of intelligent and average people with smart thoughts and dumb thoughts. It’s peppered with marketing people with PR ploys and social media pros with marketing plays. It’s a collection of friends and enemies, strangers and acquaintances, rebels and tea partiers and traditionally scandalous politicians. In other words, it’s a reflection of the real world with a bounty of tidbit pickin’s and tantalizing leads, but it isn’t a newsroom.
Do you think Twitter for Newsrooms will make it likelier journalistic organizations will trust Twitter for research or fact checking? Do you find Twitter useful for fact checking, finding on the ground images or getting quotes or answers?
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