Alison Gow on Twitter as a journalism tool

Using Twitter as a news gathering tool:

Three interesting things here I think:

1: "Twitter is part of my life, not just my working life" says Alison:
Social media tools are changing the way journalists see themselves and how they are perceived. The myth of objectivity, the pretense of being able to separate the "private" me from the "professional" journalist is becoming increasingly questioned (and, in my opinion, questionable). This should lead to a discussion within journalism and particularly journalism education, around what "professionalism" means in a network based journalism where stories are built not told.

2: Twitter is beginning to break news (Alison talks about the recent U.S. Airways crash) and to distribute links to both pictures and videos faster than the traditional media. This in some ways replicates the situation Ca. 2005 when blogs began to do this. Twitter speeds up the process.

3: Alison talks about the need to grow your network and how Twitter (or any other networking/microblogging tool) becomes increasingly more useful as your network develops.

One of the problems I see journalists facing is a lack of patience. Many journalists new to Twitter et.al want to see immediate returns. If they do not get a tip, find a source, see a story, within the first few days (or even hours for some), they dismiss the concept out of hand.
They seem to forget that as a journalist it can take weeks, months and sometimes even years, to cultivate sources. This process is in fact accelerated in the digisphere as our willingness to share resources and our transparency in how we do our jobs, research our stories and deal with sources allows for a network-based trust building.

This is not intuitive for journalists from traditional media, nor for journalists schooled in the analogue world view that still pervades all to many of our J-schools.

[see earlier epesodes with Alison Gow]

Comments

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Nice post,They seem to forget that as a journalist it can take weeks, months and sometimes even years, to cultivate sources.

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This is not intuitive for journalists from traditional media, nor for journalists schooled in the analogue world view that still pervades all to many of our J-schools.