An excellent commentary about how local news organization can cover those stories that won’t make the nightly news or the next edition of the deadwood edition.
Applications like Twinkle are also great journalistic tools, of course. In the old days, newspaper reporters had the TV on in the background, in case TV news had something that they should know about. Today, someone in the newsroom should be monitoring local tweets; it’s the new early warning system for news, with an army of witnesses feeding you information.
I’ve noticed that Twitter is already doing this to a large extent. I’ve seen traffic updates from most of the major cities in the state and the amount of breaking news I’m seeing on the site is ridiculous.
I just keep watching. One problem here is that there aren’t a lot of people who know about Twitter.
I think it’s coming though.
UPDATED: When I wrote this earlier this morning, I didn’t know about the school shooting in Knoxville. Where did I hear about this horrible tragedy. On twitter.
The Knoxville blogosphere is mourning their loss, and we mourn with them.
You are absolutely right. It amazes me the head stuck in the sand attitude the msm has about this stuff. Beat checks at most TV newsrooms are phone calls to PD’s and flaks ignoring blogs and networks like Twitter that more than a few times contain the kernels of stories they’ll be stealing from the newspaper three days in the future.
i too found out about the shooting via twitter. it’s becoming my news spoiler. i’ve heard about all the recent celebrity deaths via twitter first as well.
I have as well Gavin. I think this is bigger than we think.
[...] also become a Twittering devotee: and I am once again flummoxed by Newscoma’s ability to be almost clairvoyant about how these things [...]