Sree Sreenivasan
DNAinfo Contributing Editor
As the full horror of the Haiti earthquake unfolded on TV and on various social networks last week, I awaited the inevitable request from a journalist looking to interview me about "Twitter coming of age." It didn't take long for multiple calls and e-mails to come my way.
It feels like the media — journalists are among the biggest promoters of Twitter, and its biggest detractors — loves to pronounce Twitter has "arrived" with every big crisis.
But as we come up on the fourth anniversary of Twitter in March (see the very first tweet, by co-founder Jack Dorsey: twitter.com/jack/status/20), I've gotta ask: How many times can Twitter come of age?
In stories ranging from the Hudson miracle a year ago (see the first photo tweet of the plane in the water: twitpic.com/135xa) to the Iran "Twitter revolution" to the Mumbai terror attacks to Michael Jackson's death to the 2008 China earthquake, Twitter played a major role in how breaking news was covered and seen around the world. In each case, media analysts did virtually the same story about how Twitter has finally become useful.
I believe Twitter has proven its value as a tool for breaking news coverage, especially for finding sources, confirming or discrediting rumors and pinpointing locations. Doing coming-of-age stories about Twitter is like doing coming-of-age stories about the telephone — people stopped doing them at some point in the first part of the 1900s. Time to stop our version in the 2000s.
Of course, all those examples deal with national and international stories. But as we have learned here at DNAinfo, Twitter can be an essential part of the newsgathering process for local stories as well. In stories like the death of heiress Casey Johnson; the stomach-bug issue at the New York Times cafeteria; and countless bomb and terrorism scares that shut down parts of the city on a regular basis, DNAinfo's reporter-producers and editors have come to rely on Twitter as a listening post. Not the only one, of course, but an essential, reliable one.
As a testament to the increasing importance of social media within a newsroom such as DNAinfo, Molly Bush has been given the title of social media editor and is working with the editorial team to create best practices and good tweeting habits. I hope to share here some of the things she learns in the months ahead.
In my classes at Columbia Journalism School and in newsroom training around the country, I tell journalists that they can't learn how to use Twitter on deadline. When the plane has landed in the river, I like to say, it's too late. Too late to find out how Twitter works and how to use it as an effective communications tool.
Of course, we still need to be cautious. Just ask actor Jeff Goldblum, who is still with us, but was pronounced dead on Twitter last summer.
DNAinfo contributing editor Sree Sreenivasan will share his observations on the intersection of media and technology every Monday.
