Here a Tweet, There a Tweet
by Maria Hench"What are you doing?"
That's the question behind Twitter, the fast-growing microblogging service that allows people to stay connected in real time. The answer, or "tweet," must be 140 characters or less and can be posted through the Web, mobile Web, instant message or text message.
It seems as if everyone is flocking to Twitter lately. It was the fastest-growing member community site in February 2009, with a 1,382% increase in unique visitors over the previous year, according to Nielsen Online. Twitter, which launched in July 2006, is the third-largest social networking site behind Facebook and MySpace, according to Complete, a Web analytics company.
Twitter is certainly having an effect on journalism. The media cover stories about Twitter and prominent Twitterers. In some cases, Twitterers post their firsthand accounts of breaking news before reporters get to the scene or can post stories on the Web. The first photo from the scene of the US Airways jetliner emergency landing in the Hudson River was posted via iPhone by a Twitter user who was aboard a ferry that rescued passengers. Journalists also use Twitter themselves. For example, Rick Sanchez of CNN uses it to interact with his viewers while he's on the air.
"It's an interesting tool," says Lou Rutigliano, an assistant professor in the College of Communication. "It's getting people who may not have been engaged in the news before. It may be a good way to tap into a new audience and get them to talk about what's happening in the news."
Besides interacting with viewers and readers, journalists use Twitter to find sources. "If you're writing a story about a certain neighborhood and you want to get sources there, you can use Twitter to do that. Overseas, too," Rutigliano says.
However, because Twitter is still in its infancy and because some countries are more technologically developed than others, there are gaps in the Twitter universe. For example, Rutigliano's students in his winter quarter News Now: Journalism in the Information Age course used Twitter to find people in different countries who were commenting on breaking news and engage them. As news broke that the Mexican government was sending federal troops to fight drug trafficking in Juarez, students had some difficulty finding Twitterers there. "We tried to find people in Juarez, and it was a limited pool. There were maybe four or five people talking about it on Twitter," Rutigliano says. "There were a lot of people talking about it in the United States, but barely anyone from Mexico."
DePaul student journalists used Twitter when they went to Washington to cover President Barack Obama's inauguration. Journalism instructor and Chicago Tribune veteran Mike Conklin accompanied them and says that Twitter can be a valuable asset when the environment calls for it. "We were in the middle of the National Mall where there were millions of people, and part of the story was the size of the crowd and movement within the crowd. That was the perfect environment for Twitter. Following a student as they were negotiating the crowd—that was the story. You could learn what conditions were like through someone giving these constant updates as they were moving."
Twitter is breaking down the wall between journalists and their audience. Rutigliano says some reporters will tweet on their reporting, making their newsgathering process more transparent and possibly generating more interest in the final product. "In a way it becomes like reality TV; you're watching this reporter in action," he says. But he hasn't seen many reporters using Twitter if they're working on an investigation or special project. "There may be certain things or aspects to a story that you don't want to tip off other reporters to, like the fact that you're meeting with a source. Would Woodward and Bernstein have Twittered that they're getting a document from Deep Throat?"
Conklin sees Twitter as another technological advance in journalism, not unlike when radio reporters covered the Scopes Monkey Trial in the 1920s or when television cameras started going mobile or even when newspapers went online. He says although it is easy to get swept up in the technology, students and reporters should remember that the fundamentals of journalism—developing and working sources, interviewing skills, reporting complete stories—are still key.
"I notice that for some people who Twitter a lot, it becomes harder to write longer stories. You start to think that little bits of information are the story, when in fact you need to string all those little bits of information together to put them in a larger story. It almost gets harder to back up and write a more complete story," Conklin says, adding that he likes that Twitter encourages reporting from the scene. "To me, a very effective journalism weapon would be a well-trained journalist who is a Twitterer. You couldn't put enough of them on the street."
Tweeting from the inauguration and interacting with followers around the world inspired DePaul graduate journalism student Craig Kanalley to harness the power of Twitter with his Web site BreakingTweets.com. "I thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool to have a site that looks at major news stories around the world like this and personalizes the news through tweets from people who are there and writing about it,'" Kanalley says. Soon after, he started Breaking Tweets, first as a personal blog that he figured he'd update once a day. "After two or three days I realized it was going to be something huge because I got an overwhelming response from people all over the world who were following it. That's when I reached out to fellow students and people from my old school and getting more people on board with it."
Kanalley, who was named to this year's UWIRE 100, which honors the nation's top 100 collegiate journalists, wants to build Breaking Tweets into a DePaul project. The site was designed by a graduate student in the new media program and has about 20 students who contribute as content editors. The editors post at least four stories per day, incorporating relevant tweets as if they were quotes. They monitor world news Web sites, Twitter trends and updates from people they follow.
"We follow people around the world, and that's really useful," Kanalley says. "For example, there was breaking news in Madagascar about the president being ousted and a rebellion, and we got that story lead from a Twitter user we were following before it was reported by world news outlets."
Breaking Tweets, which was profiled by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, is also increasing its reach. Breaking Tweets Sports and Breaking Tweets Entertainment were launched this spring, with a Chicago affiliate and perhaps others to follow.
"Twitter's revolutionized journalism already, and it's going to keep doing that. I can't see a world without social networking playing a role in journalism going forward," says Kanalley. "The whole micoblogging concept—if you want to call it tweets, status updates on Facebook—it's really taking off and people are embracing it."