Newspapers on the Live Web (e.g., Twitter)

A twitter pal tipped me (of course) to this exhaustive list of newspapers that have some sort of presence on twitter. The author, Erica Smith, has done a great service in pulling together such a great (and detailed) spreadsheet.

I do kinda wish that she’d separated journalists who are actually present on twitter (the wheat) from all the line items of papers simply funneling headlines into twitter via RSS (the chaff). I’m not suggesting that there’s no value to twitter users in setting up twitterfeed accounts — lots of people like news headlines in their twitter streams, including me. It’s just that twitterfeed is merely another way of doing push distribution.

I learned the hard way that a better strategy is to set up your twitterfeed account for the institution — whether magazine, newspaper, nonprofit, or company — and then teach individuals who work for the institution how to re-tweet headlines when moved to do so.

That’ll drive more traffic to your site — if the individual doing the re-tweeting is putting personal sweat equity into twitter. It’s that ol’ whuffie thing — social capital is the currency of the social web, and there aren’t any short-cuts to building it. (This is without question one of the very best things about the social web — it doesn’t reward bullshit.) For a journalist, the sweat equity might be sharing breaking news really quickly; live-tweeting a newsworthy event; inviting followers to share thoughts and then quoting them in a print piece, responding to queries from others, generally illuminating life as a reporter, on and on like that.

So, while this list does show that awareness of twitter has taken root in the newspaper industry it nonetheless fails to include a LOT of working journalists who are adding real value to the service.

And although these are rather self-evident to me, I can’t disagree with the bottom-line conclusions drawn:

1. Newspapers can and should participate in social media.

2. Participating means not just throwing headlines at your readers, but following them and listening to what’s going on.

3. With Twitter, newspapers can make and break news just as quick — if not quicker — as the competition.

4. Twitter can drive traffic to your site.

September 5, 2008 | Filed Under emerging technologies, journalism, the social web

Comments

Robquig

The institution doesn't have to put out a Twitterfeed, either. Even those can be (and should be) personal. Check out http://twitter.com/statesman http://twitter.com/dallas_news and http://twitter.com/coloneltribune for examples. In fact, I'd argue it's even more important that the institution use social media such as Twitter the right way.
Erica Smith

Thanks, Ian! In August, I started marking which accounts are USING Twitter, and which are pushing RSS feeds. I hope to do a little more with that in coming months.
iwilker

I look forward to it -- I'll be following along.
Peter Panepento

You are dead on with your four takeaways on this issue.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy (@philanthropy) has had tremendous success with Twitter.

We're posting headlines, for sure, but we're also using it to pose questions, find sources, and monitor what's on the mind of folks in the world of philanthropy.

I find that we're connecting with a new audience (554 followers and growing fast) and we're also much better able to find out what is on the minds of folks in our niche.

The key is to make it a two-way conversation tool. We're not just talking to folks. We're listening.
iwilker

Great to hear, Peter. The sense of tribal presence one can experience through Twitter has been revelatory, for me.

The one Achilles heel of twitter for me used to be the scarcity of people other than the early-adopter crowd in the tech industry. That really is no longer the case, at least for fields that relate to media and communications. There are tons of NPO marketers, communications folks, and fundraisers, for example.

p.s. I'm @iwilker :-)
Peter Panepento

Good to put a name to a twitter id. :)