Posted December 21, 2007

Social Networking Can Be Valuable Reporting Tool

By Julio Ojeda-Zapata

As a 21st-century reporter, I live on the Internet. When I'm researching stories on my consumer technology beat, the Net is typically where I go looking for people to interview. I'll cast a wide net into cyberspace--and hope I get at least a few nibbles.

But where to throw my net? That's varied over time. I have long trusted ProfNet, a PRNewswire service that takes journalists' queries and coughs up sources from academia, public relations companies, governmental agencies, the blogosphere and elsewhere. I find this service so valuable to my work that I have the words "All hail ProfNet" affixed to my filing cabinet. But lately, I've also relied on Twitter.

The online social networking service, where people chit-chat about this and that, is elegant in its simplicity. You can post to the service only in snippets of no more than 140 characters. So users sling pithy "tweets" back and forth about what they are doing, what is on their minds, what is irritating or amusing them, and so on.

This is one-to-many communication: Your posts on Twitter are seen by all your "followers" who have added you to the list of Twitter users they're actively tracking. Likewise, you can "follow" dozens or hundreds of Twitter-ers who share your interests and see what they publish. Feverish group chats often ensue, in bite-size pieces.

Twitter paid off when I was working on a feature story based on the question: "Do laptop users take their machines on vacation to keep up on their e-mail or sneak in a little work?"

I had no one to interview about this subject, so I posed that question on Twitter. Here's what I posted for my Minnesota followers to see (note that all tweets begin with the author's Twitter username): jojeda: Hey guys, urgent press inquiry for possible article: Looking for folks who have taken their laptops on vacation and otherwise did work stuff.

Within minutes, I had several responses, such as: coreydonovan: @jojeda: My CEO is on vacation right now, but definitely working. I just sent you an email with details.

(Note this other bit of Twitter protocol: Usernames in the body of a tweet are typically preceded by the "@" symbol, which hyperlinks them and allows others to access those users' postings with a click.)

One Twitter user ended up in the lead of my article: "What are you doing online? I thought you were on vacation!" was the reaction Garrick Van Buren received from a business associate in the fall when the Twin Cities tech entrepreneur sent some work-related e-mail and instant messages during his family vacation in Brussels, Belgium. Van Buren, of St. Anthony Village, didn't think twice about cracking open his laptop for some work during his R&R. And he's far from alone."

Twitter saved me on this assignment. All but one of the people quoted came to me via the "microblogging" service. The one exception came via ProfNet.

Dwight Silverman, my tech writer counterpart at the Houston Chronicle, had a similar Twitter experience not long ago.

When he heard a local Blackberry devotee complain about interrupted service, he poked around on Twitter and confirmed that other Blackberry users were having problems. This turned out to be a major national Blackberry outage, and Silverman was one of first to have the story, based on his carefully selected Twitter sources in the Houston area and the tech industry. For a reporter, "Twitter is what you make of it," Silverman says. "If you junk it up (by following too many people), it becomes a big chat room. I'm surgical. I pick and choose who I follow. Some people I know tend to talk too much about their stopped-up toilets and doing laundry on weekends. I'm not interested in that." Twitter gained prominence just after a freeway bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis on Aug. 1.

Twitter users immediately used the service to reassure friends and relatives that they were all right--and journalists seized on this development to write about Twitter as the latest communication tool for Netizens during a major disaster. At least two reporters--Minnesota Public Radio's Jon Gordon and yours truly -- developed stories about "citizen journalists" using online communication services like Twitter to get out bridge-collapse information.

For everyday reporting, "Twitter is not that much different from an (offline) network of people you know and trust," says Gordon, who hosts the daily "Future Tense" tech program. "I would call Twitter useful, perhaps not incredibly useful, but it certainly rises above annoying. If I were more diligent about using it more, being on it more, it would likely grow in utility. It's kind of a care-and-feeding thing."

New media expert Steve Outing says his initial reaction to Twitter was, "Oh, gee, this is kind of frivolous." But Outing, a longtime columnist for Editor & Publisher magazine, now believes Twitter can be vital for beat reporters who take the time to follow people related to their reporting.

But a bit of caution is in order. I never quote Twitter users or otherwise rely on information they provide unless I happen to already know the people behind the tweets, or at least have reached out to them outside the Twittersphere to verify their identities by phone or in person.

When I was researching this piece, I naturally mentioned it on Twitter. I got this interesting response from Jason DeRusha, a general assignment TV reporter at CBS affiliate WCCO in Minneapolis, and a fellow journo Twitteraholic:

DeRushaJ @jojeda Local journo here -- I've had good luck using twitter to find sources quickly...get instant feedback on stories.

See what I mean?

Julio Ojeda-Zapata is personal technology reporter and columnist at the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, part of MediaNews Group. Find his stuff at www.yourtechweblog.com and www.twincities.com/techtestdrive.