WUSA 9 in Washington, DC started the new year offering weekly training seminars for everyone on staff called 9 University. Each week, there are courses ranging from SharePoint and Google Docs to writing better headlines and streaming Mogulus.
Twitter was taught as a two-part series: how it works, and how to use it in a newsroom. I won’t go into how it works, since there are many sources online (this video being my favorite), but using it as a resource for gathering news can help keep the station on top of most local and breaking news. I know, it’s quite a shocker to the newsroom when I say it’s not just a tool for people to show off their crab boiling skills.
As Digital Development Director for WUSA 9, I taught the course, featuring select Twitter-based sites and tips below. Researching the sites, you could easily see how some could beat an assignment desk scanner or become more reliable than a phone call to a source.
News Gathering:
- Twitter Search – search for any word or phrase among all tweets. It’s like Google, but much faster and in real time. Did you feel an earthquake? Type “earthquake” and find out instantly.
- CityTweets – In select cities, this site will split your screen so that tweets FROM your city are listed on the left, and tweets ABOUT your city are listed on the right. This site auto-refreshes, too. It’s the best site for getting an ongoing live pulse of your city through the eyes of local tweeters.
- Twellow – Directory of users organized by niche or profession. Data comes from information written in bios and is separated by category. This is good for finding lawyers or teachers, but the downside is that it’s not a local directory. In that case, you can type your city/suburb then the profession in the search bar to help narrow your results (“DC lawyers”, for instance). Getting a list of local politicians, cops, and business owners related to your beat can provide extra sources, and if they’re active users, they usually don’t ignore DMs (direct messages).
- Media On Twitter – See how other media professionals are using Twitter. Stalk an equal in the business and share/steal ideas. This is a wiki site, so it’s always being updated by anyone, including yourself.
- Twilert or TweetBeep – If your beat is the mayor of your city but you don’t have time to search Twitter for the latest tweets, let either of these programs do the work for you. Create and account and type in words or phrases you’re looking for, then you’ll get e-mail updates when that phrase is tweeted.
- Google – this is obvious, but you can narrow your search results if you type in “site:twitter.com location Washington, DC“. the result is the most popular Twitter users. Follow them.
- BreakingTweets - Find groups of conversations based on breaking news events. Speaking of breaking news, follow @BreakingNewsOn, @CNNbrk, @APNews, @BBCbreaking. Any others, let me know.
- TweepSearch – Find people based on their bios and profiles. You can also search for specific people you follow, too.
- TwitScoop – See what phrases are hot right now. The site aggregates the top words and presents them in an real time tag cloud. This is good for national breaking news. Clicking on any of the words shows you the recent tweets using that word.
- TwitterLocal (desktop application) – Allows you to follow posts made by users within any geographical location. For instance, if there’s a building collapse, you can search a 5-mile radius where the collapse took place to find anyone who may be twittering updates.
News Reporting:
- Set up the account to populate your top stories automatically. Use TwitterFeed to help with that process. Be careful not to post hundreds of updates a day, since that can overtake a follower’s account, especially if they’re not following very many people. At @wusa9, I only feed top stories, sports, weather and politics. Some media outlets have two accounts. Example: The State newspaper’s news and sports accounts.
- If there’s breaking news, manually update the account. Often times an RSS feed could take 30 minutes before it posts anything. Train your assignment desk to post quick one liners when there’s breaking news. Follow up as the story unfolds and watch replies closely just incase someone provides more information.
- Tweet a news story as it’s happening. I just read a recent article about a judge allowing a reporter to use Twitter to provide constant updates from a racketeering gang trial.
- Poll the audience in between commercial breaks. Ask them what they thought of a news package or story. Chances are you’ll get feedback, especially if you let them know their tweets could appear on air.
- Use Twitter to interact with your audience for upcoming news segments. Ask them to submit questions about a topic or interview occuring at a later broadcast. Or, if they’ve ever used or had experience with a consumer product or service (i.e. The Snuggie body blanket), see if they are willing to participate in a future broadcast.
You can follow me on Twitter @obrienmedia
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