Twitter and I Break Some News

20 May

Another lazy night laying around the house working on web development. I heard rumblings in the news about an infamous criminal here on our local city nicknamed ‘Rambo’. He had shot one man and shot at local law enforcement some twenty years ago. He is on parole living in our community again and was declared ‘on the run’ this week after not checking in with his parole agent. Naturally I looked at his mugshots and kept a close eye in the community.

At around 10 p.m. I was told of 10 squad cars and a flurry of activity surrounding a small tavern about 2 miles away from my home. Bartenders at the tavern recognized the suspect and called 911 right away. Officers were staked out trying to observe the suspect with binoculars as more units got into position. Finally they entered the establishment and it was the suspect, they placed him under arrest with no incident. As soon as they declared ‘suspect in custody’ and he was led out, I immediately jumped on my Twitter with this post:

‘I think Wausau ‘Rambo’ Suspect has been captured – Wausau/EMPD captured him sounds like. @wsaw @waow #wausau’

I @replied it to the local television stations and hash-tagged my city. Within minutes WSAW-TV, the local CBS affiliate here in Wausau @replied me with the following post and this tweet conversation ensued.

These tweets were fed to WSAW-TV over a period of about 15 minutes, yet within 20 minutes of the cuffs going on the suspect. WSAW followed up with local law enforcement authorities and had the story live on their website within an hour of the suspects arrest, all with never leaving their newsroom (I believe).

This all happened a short time after the local 10 p.m. newscast when both television stations had personnel in the newsroom. WAOW-TV has a Twitter account, but why weren’t they monitoring it? This time it cost them the first lead on a fairly large story while their competition severely beat them to the punch, all thanks to Twitter. (WAOW-TV did finally get the story up at 1:31 a.m., two hours behind their competition)

This is another great example of Twitter delivering breaking news faster than any other communications platform. Traditional media must remember the two-way nature of Twitter and monitor their account for viewer interaction and tips on stories like this evening. Twitter is not just a broadcasting platform, at least it should not be used like that. Twitter is a great initial scrape for preliminary information and breaking news. This information though likely first hand from someone is still subject to fundamental journalism like fact checking. The challenge for media outlets will be how to filter and take in vast amounts of this ‘scrape’ and find the golden nuggets while distinguishing genuine information from the potentially bogus. Media outlets can make their Twitter presence even more valuable by increasing buy-in from their viewers. Imagine a live streaming feed directly from 1000′s of your viewers that are on the go 24 hours a day with the ability to pump out tweets in mere seconds? That’s power folks.

Journalism is pitch-forking in two directions. On one side you have the raw unfiltered and unchecked media and information streams like Twitter, Twitpic etc. On the other side you have traditional media where they are counted on for being accurate and providing contextual analysis of the story. The two media pieces are currently feeling out one another trying to find models that work to generate synergy.

Twitter is essential in any newsroom today. This idea is not breaking news I assure you. If your corporate boss disagrees and feels it’s waste of time, I’ll gladly come and provide your media organization with a presentation! This story is another check mark chalked in favor of Twitter distributing breaking news. On Twitter within 60 seconds of the cuffs being slapped on, not bad…

Not bad at all!