Comments on: What Twitter did for crisis journalism today

By: Michael Becker

Michael Becker — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:45:14 +0000

Yes, that is journalism. The breaking news was brought to the public as it happened, in real time. Yes, it repeated a lot of the news coming out of other sources, but those sources, themselves, repeat each other. Think about how it sounds to sit and watch a breaking news story unfold all day on CNN. I'll bet the kind of chatter you get there -- unconfirmed reports, eyewitness testimony, facts as they come in -- would be very similar to what you saw on Twitter yesterday.

As a professional writer, blogger, media expert and credentialed (yes, credentialed) member of the Bozeman press corps, I'm impressed with the speed and quality of the information that came out of Twitter yesterday.

I'm willing to bet that for every person who found it boring and unnecessary, like yourself, there were probably 20 or 50 people who found it to be a vital source of information about an uncertain situation. That is what journalism and reporting are all about.

As for those people who used it to promote their own interests, I agree with you. That was in poor taste, but Twitter is an equal-opportunity sounding board, and the majority of those posting to #bozexplod yesterday were helpful and honest.

Thanks for reading!

By: John

John — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:57:51 +0000

I actually live in Lexington, MA but my cousin and his family live in Livingston (re quoted post above). I would not normally be the audience for a story from Bozeman, but the Facebook plea alerted me to something that affected my family — which made it highly relevant. Without Twitter I would have been totally in the dark. This is the true power of social media — allowing people to interact with relevant stories no matter where they are occurring in the world. If CNN was just watching Twitter trends they would have had this story quickly.

By: disquiet

disquiet — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:10:10 +0000

I watched the “reportage” on twitter all day and into the evening — my first exposure to twitter in this manner. As a reader and non-participant, I might be a bit more objective than those who spent the day tweeting and retweeting the same things over and over, w/out there really being much substance. I don’t think anything that was on twitter was unavailable thru other sources — radio, bozeman city website, etc. Calling twitter Journalism is a stretch — the only people terming it such are the users. And I’m not sure how people listening to the same press conferences as we all were and restating it (140 characters or less!!) were doing anything constructive.
What’s equally notable (to the false labeling as journalism) is the fact that many of the users spent an inordinate percentage of their time imploring others to digg them, use their photos pleasepleaseplease, and crowing about how high on the list #bozexplod was — this is journalism?

By: Michael Becker

Michael Becker — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:45:14 +0000

Yes, that is journalism. The breaking news was brought to the public as it happened, in real time. Yes, it repeated a lot of the news coming out of other sources, but those sources, themselves, repeat each other. Think about how it sounds to sit and watch a breaking news story unfold all day on CNN. I'll bet the kind of chatter you get there -- unconfirmed reports, eyewitness testimony, facts as they come in -- would be very similar to what you saw on Twitter yesterday.

As a professional writer, blogger, media expert and credentialed (yes, credentialed) member of the Bozeman press corps, I'm impressed with the speed and quality of the information that came out of Twitter yesterday.

I'm willing to be that for every person who found it boring and unnecessary, like yourself, there were probably 20 or 50 people who found it to be a vital source of information about an uncertain situation. That is what journalism and reporting are all about.

As for those people who used it to promote their own interests, I agree with you. That was in poor taste, but Twitter is an equal-opportunity sounding board, and the majority of those posting to #bozexplod yesterday were helpful and honest.

Thanks for reading!

By: John

John — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:57:51 +0000

By: disquiet

disquiet — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:10:10 +0000

By: Philip Downer

Philip Downer — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 02:23:07 +0000

A lot of the credit goes to you to be honest. By starting the hashtag for #bozexplod you helped keep people informed.

We did our best to keep the photos rolling in one place, and the user community came together to help identify effected location on the Google Map.

Here’s the link...
http://manifestbozeman.com/blog/2009/03/05/boze...