Boston Globe Creates a Twitter Board For the Newsroom

There once was a time (cue the piano music, sepia tones, and Ken Burns effect) when one of the major components of newsrooms was the Teletype machine, a novel technology that delivered dispatches from the tiniest reaches of the United States and the farthest corners of the globe.

Newsrooms outgrew the technology, or at least grew into newer, faster technologies, like Twitter. Which could explain why the Boston Globe newsroom now has a funky bank of monitors that displays Tweets throughout the day, as well as headlines from their websites (more on that in second).

They’re calling it the Information Radiator. The name may sound a little super-villain-y, but it’s accurate: Goal One of the experimental installation is to increase the dissemination of information. Goal Two is to increase familiarity with the new world order at the Globe, which this fall will split into two online entities, the free Boston.com and the subscriber-focused BostonGlobe.com. Goal Three is to encourage more Globe staffers to get active on Twitter.