Tweets Smell of Excess? How Newsrooms Adapt to Twitter

By: Joe Strupp So when did Twitter become a major factor for newspapers? Was it when The New York Times' main Twitter account reached 884,000 followers? When the Los Angeles Times added its 144th account? Or was it when both The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post were forced to issue new staff guidelines for this social media in a span of two days?

Try all of the above, and more. In just the past few weeks, newspapers are finding that Twitter is not to be ignored, even if some are not quite sure how to handle it. For most, the 140-character "tweets" are both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that reporters and editors can promote links to Web stories and get news out in a matter of seconds, from the most remote locations. Even faster than a typical blogger on a laptop, Twitter zaps the quick messages out to the tens of thousands of "followers" that many newspapers have acquired in recent months.

"We have some people who use it to great effect and have lots of followers," says Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, who in May issued a new set of guidelines for his staff just days after E&P inquired about them. Some of his reporters discover stories via Twitter, he added, that they might not have found otherwise.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is the online phenomenon that allows anyone to sign up for a free account and post "tweets" ? blurbs of information of up to 140 characters, as well as links to other sites, photos or fellow "twits." Each user can follow other users' accounts. When a Twitter user logs on, he or she can see all the "tweets" of people they are following, each listed according to the time they were posted.

Like most newspapers using Twitter, the Post has a main account that tweets headlines and links; it boasts more than 13,000 followers. In all, the newspaper has eight official Twitter feeds, including one for "Post Mortem," its obituary blog. The paper also offers such highly popular staff twitterers as Media Writer Howard Kurtz and White House blogger Chris Cillizza. The latter's account, tied to "The Fix" politics blog, has more than 10,000 followers.

"I am trying to reach people who consume news in a lot of ways," says Cillizza, who adds that he averages eight to 10 tweets a day, on topics ranging from his new baby to links to his blog items. "I have a lot of random thoughts, not political in nature," he adds.

The Post blogger and others stress the use of Twitter also as a sourcing tool. People in the know and even public officials have joined Twitter in droves and often reveal news tips via their tweets, sometimes accidentally.

Cillizza points to Mark Shurtleff, Utah's attorney general, who let it slip that he was running for the U.S. Senate via Twitter. Cillizza ran with the tip, and broke the story. "If you only use it to promote, you are not taking the whole approach," he says. Other examples of "breaking" stories abound, such as witnesses reporting the January miracle landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in New York's Hudson River.

"A guy who was on a ferry boat took a photo and put it on Twitter. That's how we got it," says Steve Gunn, editor for innovation at The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, in the state where the plane was headed. "There were other witnesses who were twittering and we sent them messages asking them to be interviewed. We also learned things like where people were going to the hospital."

Internet Editor Robert Quigley of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman says he gets three to five tips a week via Twitter. In May, the paper learned of a drive-by shooting when a friend of a police officer on the scene tweeted about the incident. "We ended up getting a story on it," he recalls.

Most newspapers are not requiring reporters to use Twitter, but several are taking full advantage of it. The American-Statesman has six official accounts that post links to stories automatically, while some 40 staffers use their own feeds to promote and find stories. But the leader in newspaper Twitter accounts appears to be the Los Angeles Times, with 144 in late May. Andrew Nystrom, senior producer for social and emerging media, says each tweeter "does it in a different way. But for the most part, it is straight reporting from news staffs at events."

Nystrom recalls an October 2008 wildfire in San Bernardino that the paper learned of when fire officials and some off-duty firefighters were tweeting about it. "We found out about it before the fire department reported it officially," he says. The paper's Twitter accounts range from the "Best of the L.A. Times," with more than 19,000 followers, to an "American Idol" account.

On the night of May 18, a 4.7 magnitude earthquake rocked Los Angeles. About an hour later, when the L.A. Times first assured readers that there was no major damage, its source was a Twitter feed from an individual at the U.S. Geological Survey.

However, no newspaper appears to be gathering fans like The New York Times, which as of mid-May boasted some 850,000 followers to its main Twitter account. It updates with most of the paper's stories as they are posted. Other individual accounts include media columnist David Carr, Sunday business editor Tim O'Brien, and even Executive Editor Bill Keller, who joined on May 5.

While Keller's own tweets simply promote Web items on the paper's site, some others have sparked controversy in the newsroom. In mid-May, several staffers were singled out after they tweeted information from an internal meeting about the future of the Times' Web site. Keller was prompted to remind staffers to maintain what he called a "zone of trust."

The Times even offers workshops on how best to use the social medium in reporting. Twitter "can be an early warning system for breaking news," says Brian Stelter, who covers television news and has led some of the workshops. "In some ways, it has replaced blog reading for me." Stelter says he reads the Times Sunday business section somewhat less these days because O'Brien's tweets are so informative.

Stelter says he made use of Twitter as a sourcing tool last summer when the Summer Olympics began and the opening ceremonies were not aired live in the United States, as they were in most other countries. He recalls angry TV viewers tweeting about the delay, and even offering links to pirate Web sites that were showing the live feed. "I ended up watching the opening ceremonies at noon on an illegal German Web site," he recalls.

The Ottawa Citizen in Ontario was able to take advantage of a historic ruling of sorts on May 4 when Superior Court Judge J. Douglas Cunningham ruled to allow Twittering from the bribery trial of Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien. (In Canada, cameras and recording devices are banned in all courtrooms.) The Citizen's Glen McGregor tweets live updates to followers throughout the day. "We are still publishing on our site and the next day in the paper," Executive Editor Graham Green told E&P in late May. "But this gives people who can't spend all day in the courtroom a way to follow it and get a sense of what is happening."

At the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, Managing Editor Dennis Anderson recalls a recent Mother's Day story that focused on first-time moms. A tweet asking for new mothers to be interviewed brought numerous responses.

There is also the Journal-World's daily Web poll on topical events, which gets at least 20 or more responses via a Twitter alert before the poll question even gets posted online, according to Anderson. "I mix personal [matters] and business," he says of his own Twitter account. "It gives the community a chance to see that we show some transparency."

Other major metro editors have waded into the Twitter pool with personal accounts. Along with Keller, Jim Willse of The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.; Charlotte Hall of The Orlando Sentinel; and Gerould Kern of the Chicago Tribune are tweeting under their own names. Items range from Kern touting a Tribune story on elevator safety to Willse tweeting where he had dinner.

Others admit they are just figuring it out. "We still view this as pretty experimental," says Michael Manning, director of product development for The Boston Globe, which has 10 official Twitter accounts. "We are just starting to get the newsroom engaged."

This story first appeared in E&P's June issue. Follow Joe Strupp's Twitter feedhere.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that the Los Angeles Times' Russ Stanton had a Twitter account. He does not.