Twitter as wire service

April 4, 2007

Sometimes I take my day job for granted. That was brought to my attention by my friend and social media genius Chris Abraham. He and Twitter friend Kim Bayne were pretty impressed by the AP (Associated Press wire service for you non-newsies) style tweets I’d been dispatching from The Ridenhour Prizes luncheon being held at the National Press Club. For those of you unfamiliar with Ron Ridenhour, he was the ORIGINAL citizen journalist It was his courage to tell the truth about My Lai, that brought the massacre to the attention of the world.

The luminaries in the room were an impressive list indeed. Names like President Jimmy Carter and Ted Koppel were among the VIP’s celebrating “the spirit and courage of truth”.

So I decided to multi-task. Having FINALLY activated my phone for Twittering (I’d resisted for the longest time because I thought it would be disruptive), I sent a series of tweets from the event, much like a wire service reporter. While unlinke polished AP reports, my tweets were laced with opinion and spelling errors which I attribute to a Motorola Q keyboard that at times betrays me and that quarrelsome “auto complete”. I had to hold the phone in my teeth while I shot video. Here’s a look at what I filed:

Not terribly thorough in a journalistic point of view, but it gives a flavor of the event and its context.

So while Kim mentions “media outlet news feed” as a Twitter business app in this post, I think Twitter as wire service drills down a little deeper. It also makes your thumbs sore!

Today’s Ridenhour Prize recipients were President Jimmy Carter, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, and Donald Vance.

Share This

Posted in Twitter, disruptive media, journalism, live blogging, new media, old media, social media