The reason I want to highlight this is because I see this as a sort of wake-up call for journalists who are still resistant to plunging into the world of digital journalism. Those who might believe they can’t learn “new tricks” or are just plain resisting change. Grabbing some video or audio and getting it into your stories to enrich and enhance it is easier than you might think. Let me tell you what this guy did.

He was awoken by noises in the street. He looked outside, saw the police gathering outside his neighbour’s home, and so grabbed his camera and began filming (I should stipulate that he did not include footage of the person being arrested, just the police doing their thing and milling about). At first, he was baffled as to why the police needed a full film crew with him. As the day progressed, he followed the story. A couple of hours after the raid on his neighbour, he got a knock on the door. He grabbed his iPhone, fired up Audioboo, and recorded the convo with the police office dropping off anti-drug leaflets. He snapped a pic of the leaflet and wrote the post linked to above, adding all the multimedia elements. Both YouTube and AudioBoo provide easy-to-paste embed code you can drop right into your story.

Later in the day, he found the story about the raid on his local paper’s site and updated his post. And after that, he recorded a report on TV about it as well and added it to the post.

So using just a couple of tools (Kodak ZI6 video camera and iPhone) and nothing but FREE software available to anyone (YouTube, AudioBoo, WordPress), he put together a media rich report on some drug raids taking place throughout his town.

I know he’s not the first to do this sort of thing, and he won’t be the last. But tools and software are becoming easier than ever to operate and share (Flips, Twittelator for iPhone has just integrated audio/video right in the app, Tweetie desktop for Macs let’s you record video right in its app…) and journalists, it’s imperative that you take advantage of these tools.

But I never thought about all the other morbid words we use. This article made me smile. In a morbid way.

These awesome Tweeps really came through for me and I was able to quickly put together a decent response for our corporate people, who may or may not really “get” Social Media tools like Twitter. I wanted to re-post it here because I think a lot of valuable information came from this and maybe it can help another newspaper dealing with the same problem. Huge thanks to everyone who helped me out this morning. I couldn’t have done this without your help.

Below are some articles explaining the use of Twitter by the media and how beneficial it has been, followed by a summary of the uses of Twitter for The Independent.

• Journalists still skeptical of Twitter, Now Hear This
• How We Use Twitter for Journalism
• Journalists still a-Twitter about Social Media
• @Future of Journalism: The benefits of Twitter
• The ROI of Journalists and Magazines Using Twitter
• How to Make the Most of Twitter (Highlight: You can follow Twitter at the website, but that’s inefficient. Smartest moves: get a program for your PC or Mac, Like Twhirl.)
• The Austin Statesman surveyed their Twitter followers and the feedback is here
• Personal statements from other newspapers who use twitter:
  • Robert Quigley (The Austin Statesman) will say his paper gets about 10 tips per week via the @statesman account, and that turns into 3-5 stories/blog posts per week. The return is evident to the broad amount of readers, even if they’re not a part of Twitter.
  • Joe Ruiz, from KSAT News in Texas replies, “We’ve had breaking news tips sent to us that we’ve turned around into stories that might save our viewers/readers from massive traffic jams. We’ve been introduced to human interest stories that we might not otherwise see and we’ve had investigative tips we’re chasing down, all via our Twitter account.”
• Finally, take a look at this chart of Newspapers around the country who are using Twitter:  (Over 1,300 accounts and counting. She is unable to keep up with her list anymore.)

Obviously that’s a lot to read but for the most part, they’re quick reads. And they are just a *small* sample of information on the value of social networking for the media available online. The articles I’ve linked to above were solicited via Twitter and the hundreds of journalists, experts and media professionals that follow my professional Twitter account.

Regarding the use of Twhirl, as noted above, using just the website is inefficient. You have to manually refresh the page to see new updates, if you have a large number of people you follow, you can miss messages to you, and it requires more attention than a light desktop app like Twhirl. A security expert I follow says that our environmental security (firewalls, IDs, anti spam) does the heavy lifting, and that Twhirl is no more a security threat than Outlook. Twhirl runs in the background, auto refreshes, and has special alerts built in when someone sends you a message. Therefore you can have it running, be working on other things, tweet when you have an update, and respond quickly to reader queries.

As the main person sending “tweets” for the Independent, I have learned over time that using automated systems to spit out headlines is undesirable for people using Twitter. When I switched to manual updates, using an informal voice, our follower numbers doubled in less than a week. As of this writing, @theindependent has over 500 followers – this mean 500 people are interested in our newspaper and will click links to stories I tweet, and thereby add traffic to our website. This number grows daily, especially now that Twitter coverage is growing exponentially in the media.

The key to Twitter and to Social media is interaction. The social web is a conversation. That’s why a certain level of our personalities is expected in our tweets. I use my own voice when I tweet for the Independent. It lets followers know a real person is here giving them headlines and answering questions, passing on news tips and it engages them, endears them to us and keeps us in their mind as the best news source to come to – especially if there is breaking news. Twitter allows us to post quick updates as a large story breaks. Look at the recent plane crash in the Hudson River in New York – The news broke on Twitter, and the now-famous photo of the rescued passengers standing on the wing waiting to be picked up was taken with someone’s iPhone and posted to Twitter first. Then the media picked up on it.

Or to bring it to a local level, imagine how the coverage would have been if we’d been able to tweet immediate updates during the shootings at Von Maur.

The Independent is the leading Twitter account in the state of Nebraska. All of our competitors (NTV, KETV, KHAS) are now joining Twitter and using it to report the news. To ask us to give up on it now would be a huge leap backwards for us and it would give our competitors the opportunity to supplant us as the best news source in Central Nebraska. Up until now, they have been playing catch-up with us. I would ask that we be allowed to continue to innovate and try new things that only benefit the company.

Please also check out our successes in the various interviews I have done for media magazines and websites:

• For Graphicdesignr.net
• NE Press Assoc.
• Inland Press Assoc

They’re incredibly strict about that sort of thing.

So I’m being asked to justify my use of Twitter for the the newspaper, the reporters/photographer’s use of Twitter, and the reason why we need an app like Twhirl installed on company computers to run it.

I’ve given our IT person (who is on our side) my spiel about it and I was as impassioned as I could be. But I want to back it up with media examples, links to articles about Twitter use by reporters, and if anyone can speak to the security of it, or apps like Twhirl, I would greatly appreciate it.

I don’t have much time to put this together. I’m searching what I can but I was hoping the hive mind of Twitter could help me put this together faster so I can get this to the people who need their minds opened by the end of the day today.

Thank you for your help.

UPDATE: Comments are best, but apparently my Spam filter isn’t letting people post links. I’ve changed it, but if it doesn’t work, please email me? Thanks!)

Steph