Journalists Gaining a Stronger Reputation by Using Twitter

Jane Mayer (New Yorker)


The war in Iraq has ended!
8:30pm June 25, 2010


The BP Oil Spill in the Gulf is clean
5:30 am July 19, 2010




Picture yourself looking at something above. Now, can journalists gain a stronger reputation by tweeting reports? I happen to think they can. If they promote their twitter pages enough whether on the air or in a newspaper they can definitely succeed in something like this. When you promote it you got to encourage your audience that it is breaking news like- first to hear it, on the minute. I think the people who watch and read the news would be followers of these now, online journalists. If you are a follower and you have a cell phone you can get these messages right to your phone even faster than waiting for an article to get written about later on. The journalist can tweet what is going on and get into more details throughout the day on the issue that's at hand. Twitter also allows you to share photos and videos (twixxer). That would also be beneficial. With the way our digital culture is going I wouldn't be surprised to see more journalists becoming online journalists and twittering what is going on in the world. As a news consumer, if you like a particular journalist in a newspaper or whatever and the rest of the journalists are horrible you don't have to look through the whole newspaper for them. You can simply follow them on Twitter all day long. I think this will only create a stronger reputation for the journalist because


• They would be keeping up with the digital culture world which is changing constantly
• Inviting participation
• Perform their personal interviews
• You get 140 characters. That's more than enough to relay a message and a little detail- GETTING TO THE POINT
• When it comes to Q&A, quality assurance can be guaranteed
• Increases brand awareness
• You can attract a new audience. In a USA Today article ( http://content.usatoday.com/communities/socialmedia/post/2010/03/11-benefits-for-journalists-to-use-twitter/1) they say that in addition to those individuals who discover your personal brand via Twitter Search and re-tweets, there are users who stumble across your content on your media property via search (not via Twitter), RSS, shared links, etc. This is an opportunity to complement that feature with a Twitter widget, so that this audience can become aware of your Twitter presence.