I’ve been thinking about different ways I can approach my newsroom about Twitter. I decided the best way is to approach each reporter individually, and tailor my spiel to each reporter and their interests. Luckily, I have a small newsroom so this probably wouldn’t fly in the larger ones.

Short of a directive from on high, my reporters are still not showing much interest after me previously mentioned flurry of messages about it. I have had some minor successes with one of the photographers who gamely jumped in feet first and did his first proper tweets today. I’m so proud :) After the emails I’d been sending, he came to me wanting to know more. So we got him set up, and I showed him some other photogs I knew of who Twittered (one of them being a friend of his who used to work for us and now works for another paper) and I think that helped. I had some Twitterati give him some encouragement, and got him set up to use his cell and all that good stuff. And I think he will be the one to take advantage of it. Just need to keep up the encouragement and hope that he is able to break a story on it.

Our senior writer also approached me to find some time this week where I can show him how to use Twitter. With him, I will have to approach him a little differently. He has blogged off and on the past couple of years, but I believe he has trouble letting go of his instinct to write for the paper and not for the web. He tends to turn his posts into masterpieces of column-length proportions. This made him regard blogging as another column he had to write, and so gave it up. He has trouble understanding the informal nature of a blog, and that even a blurb is ok to post. I’m hoping that getting him to Twitter will reinforce that informalness (yes I just made up a word/. I can do that online :) ), and I think as I’m showing him Twitter, I will work that in. He has a tendency to make simple things much harder than they need to be. I need him to see that Twittering and blogging should be simple and quick.

After I tackle that, I will contemplate how to get the rest on board. I’m sort of hoping that if they see the two using Twitter, it will have a domino effect. Perhaps they’ll talk about it, or tweet in the office so the others can see it’s as easy as sending a text message and not really an extra load of work at all.

Fingers crossed.

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