Tweeting the news

1. Tweeting the news

2. Breaking news • Hudson River plane crash • Fort Hood shooting • Hurricane Irene • Aurora theater shooting

3. Twitter use • More than 175 million users. • Up from 58 million in 2009. • Adding 370,000 a day!

4. Twitter as a news source • News travels fast. • Osama bin Laden’s death: 12.4 million tweets an hour. • Sense of immediacy.

5. How journalists use it • Provide real time news. • Engage audiences, create community. • Connect with people, sources. • Develop personal brands. • Link to their work. • Crowd source content. • Get questions answered.

8. More ways to use Twitter • Interviews – “Man on street” • Newspapers – Use Twitter to link to stories • NYTimes on Twitter • Curate with Storify – Neil Armstrong + Hurricane Irene • Humor/news – Top 17 D.C. quake tweets+ Pizza in newsrooms

9. Understand Twitter terms • RT – Retweet (Repost someone else’s message) • Automatic retweets cannot modify the message • MT – you have retweeted a tweet but modified it. • DM – Direct Message (Private message sent to a specific person) • # - Hashtag Precedes a keyword and makes it easier to search for particular topics

10. Understand Twitter terms • @Reply -- a tweet sent in direct response to another tweet. (@ followed by their Twitter name) • Your @reply message will only show up in your followers tweet timelines if they also are following the person to whom you sent the reply. • If they are following you, but not following the person you replied to, they won't see your reply tweet.

11. Understand Twitter terms • How to get all of your followers to see?

12. Understand Twitter terms • Place a period before @username. • Or post a direct tweet, but use the @username somewhere other than the beginning. • Be judicious with @reply tweets.

13. Using hashtags • Automatically groups tweets identified with that hashtag, making topic search easy. • Great way to share information at conferences, events and during breaking news. • Find out if an event has an official hashtag; if not, you can create one. • You can save searches, to make it easy to review.

14. Some hashtag examples • Twitterfall • Hootsuite

15. What to live tweet • Twitter works well for breaking news and for the blow-by-blow account of an event. • government meetings • public forums • press conferences • speeches • sporting events

18. Live tweeting tips • Consider your live twitter stream a story – it needs a beginning, middle and end. • The first tweet should announce to your followers that you’ll be live tweeting. Describe briefly what you’ll be covering.

19. Live tweeting tips

20. Live tweeting tips • Once the event begins, be sure you have an opening tweet that sets the stage – location, what is happening, what is expected, etc.

21. Live tweeting tips • Cover the event on Twitter just as you would a story. • You wouldn’t write a story that includes everything that was said at a meeting or event. • Be discerning – use your reporting instincts to decide what is relevant and pertinent. You only want to report the highlights.

22. Live tweeting tips • Be a careful observer and have an eye open for novel and important information that might be relevant to your audience.

23. Live tweeting tips • Each tweet should cover one point at a time. • Think subjects, verbs (like headlines). • You can drop articles for space. • Strive to make each an understandable, self-contained message.

24. Live tweeting tips • Use good grammar. • Punctuate for clarity. • Don’t over-abbreviate – if message too long consider using a follow-up tweet to clarify

25. Live tweeting tips • Be useful – provide information or insight. • Be judicious about your links.

26. Live tweeting tips • Always be professional. • Avoid using exclamation points, emoticons, jargon and slang (including LOL)

27. Live tweeting tips • Try to be consistent and concise in how you use attribution.

30. Don’t be afraid to use color in tweets to help readers feel like they are there. This one could have indicated the person was angry and shouted.

31. Live tweeting tips • Visuals – either photos or videos are always good to include if they contribute to the story.

32. Does this one contribute?

33. Does this one?

34. Live tweeting tips • End with a wrap-up tweet – indicate to your followers that the event is over. • Then tweet to tell readers to look for an upcoming web story on the event.

35. Encourage the conversation • Let your followers know ahead of time that you’ll be live tweeting.

36. Hashtags • Also send tweets to interested hashtags know ahead of time that you’ll be live tweeting – search for those that might not be obvious by topic. • #LNK • #UNL • #OMA • #immigration

37. Hashtags

38. Encourage the conversation • But be courteous when using others hashtags and don’t flood them with tweets. • They consider it “spam” when you over tweet on their “line” or “frequency.”

39. Encourage the conversation Good idea several times during the course of your live feed to repeat a summary tweet that tells new followers who havejoined what you are covering live. In that tweet, you could also include other hashtags that might be interested.

40. Encourage the conversation • Try to watch for responses or direct messages to get reader comments and questions. • Retweet or respond when it’s appropriate.

41. Using hashtags • When selecting a hashtag for a live event, try to keep it short and relevant. • But be sure to explain it well in any promotional tweets and when you begin the live tweet. • And be sure to use it in every single tweet.

42. Using hashtags

43. Hashtag confusion

44. Nuts and bolts • Correcting tweets:  • If notice a typo, delete and retweet. • If a factual error, correct with new tweet and delete the original.

45. Nuts and bolts • If using a phone, make sure your battery is fully charged; take charger in case. • Arrive early to scope out best location – locate power supply. • Be sure to check out Wi-Fi access beforehand.

46. Do your prep work • Find out before the event as much as you can. • Interview people, if necessary, to get background info. • If it’s a speech, can you get an advanced digital copy?

47. Be Cautious • Source of breaking news but be cautious.

48. Ethics still apply • Verify before you Tweet. • Admit what you don’t know. • Credit what you’re using. • Remember it’s public. • Tweets can be libelous.

49. Your ideas for live tweeting?

50. Your assignment • Live tweeting practice assignment due in your Dropbox folder Sept. 4. Once you have tweeted, you will need to copy and paste your tweets into a Word document in Dropbox, but also bring in a printout to class. • http://unlnnn.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/live-tweet-examples.pdf