A former regional daily editor has urged journalists to take up using Twitter to guard themselves against the threat of redundancy.
John Meehan, left, who stepped down as boss of the Hull Daily Mail last summer, says any journalist who ignores the microblogging platform “risks irrelevance.”
Writing for the B2B magazine InPublishing, he said Twitter is now superseding the PA newswire as the main source of breaking news.
He also argued that journalists who develop a “personal brand” on Twitter are “more likely to evade the budget axe.”
John, now running his own media consultancy Meehan Media, set out his views in an article headed Ten Reasons to Tweet.
He wrote: “Many journalists have embraced Twitter with passion, personality and purpose, but some have held back. I don’t understand that – how can any journalist fail to see that Twitter should be their personal news wire?
“Twitter is awash with stories of all kinds and, when news breaks, it invariably breaks first on Twitter.
“My focus is largely on news from East Yorkshire and the Humber region and every day I am struck by how often stories appear in my Twitter timeline before they are published by mainstream media.”
John praised the recently-appointed political editor of the Yorkshire Post, Jack Blanchard, for using Twitter to live blog a Commons debate on the so-called Caravan Tax.
“Jack’s running commentary would have graced any newswire, but it also included asides and insights. It was a textbook example of using new technology to aid rapid-fire story-telling,” said John.
“Journalists should recognise that Twitter is a great personal opportunity. Building your own brand on Twitter makes you more likely to evade the budget axe, more likely to be valued by your employer, and more attractive to others.
“It may seem selfish, but aren’t self-preservation or career progression good enough reasons alone to get into Twitter? In these difficult times for journalism, I’d certainly say so.”
John’s article can be read in full on the InPublishing website here.
His own Twitter feed – a mix of Hull and East Yorkshire news and journalism-related content – can be found here.
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Whether Twitter is your thing or not, it’s difficult to disagree with a lot of what John is saying. Like it or not, Twitter has become a big part of modern journalism. It should never take precedence over other mediums but, if you want to make it as a reporter, you must be able to demonstrate more than just a passing familiarity with social media, especially Twitter. It’s difficult for some people to accept but anyone who dismisses it will end up getting left behind.
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This is ironic considering this man tweets all the time but could not save his own job.
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Couldn’t agree more, Gerald.
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There’s nowt worse than getting a running commentary of guff on your Twitter feed every day. It ruins the fun of what can be an enjoyable medium for interraction. Give me Facebook any day – life’s about more than just passing on information. Twitter is, in my view, sterile and self-serving. It’s just not fun.
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tweeting is not journalism – has not, and never will be.
get back to the basics of reporting on behalf of a community – in the courts, keeping the bastards in public life honest, being the voice of the community – in the newspaper – no one in any great number really bothers with tweet fad.
here in Oz, we have put 1% on sales of our newspapers – because we put that first – not this mad craze of using more and more resources on rubbish like twitter.
I have never had a twitter account, and don’t want one.
This sounds like another failed Uk regional editor clutching at straws.
If he had the backbone to ensure proper resources were available for the core part of the business – the regional daily – the industry wouldn’t be in the mess it is now.
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I joined Twitter because I wanted to see what my wife and kids were saying. Answer: inane guff. So I cut and ran. Likewise Facebook, where you are always just a link or a “friend” away from a porn image or an abusive person you would never talk to in a pub.
So for me, personally, no thanks. I’m not interested in what Stephen Fry or Robbie Savage thinks and I can’t see why people out there would be interested in whether I am going to work today or going fishing. Who cares?
Now for the paper it’s a different matter. We tweet court cases, footie and breaking news, as well as quirky stuff that often doesn’t make the paper, always taking care to point people to the mobile or print offering. Staff have a league table and there’s competition to see who has the most followers.
So yes, as a professional you have to move where the audience is and know what’s going on. Goes without saying. But as an individual, I don’t want to communicate with strangers in cyberspace and share my most boring of thoughts.
Even though, oh dear, I’ve just done exactly that!
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Clear divide from the bitter down-table subs who don’t know how to work a computer and those trying to take the industry forward.
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Some strong reactions here! Twitter is such an obvious news source, it can’t be ignored by journos. However, I prefer the idea of it giving them raw info to follow up and write about in more depth, rather than being a tool for self-promotion or preservation. When that’s the motive, the tweets cd become tedious?
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The negative comments on here are as predictable as they are depressing.
Jeez, it’s the moaners who fail to embrace Twitter and other ways of talking to the readers that are he one’s who should ship out and do something else.
Because you can bet your bottom dollar, it’s only gonna get more important, while newspapers continue to try and play catch-up.
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Pete, Oz – Your post seems to imply that using Twitter and the basics of reporting (“in the courts, keeping the bastards in public life honest, being the voice of the community”) are mutually exclusive, which is nonsense. In fact, you can do those things even more effectively if you embrace Twitter. No one here is saying it replaces the basic skills you need (in any way shape or form) but its a useful resource. To put it bluntly, any journo who wants to have a successful career in journalism today cannot afford to have such a backward view. So much of the snobbery aimed at Twitter appears to come from the generation of hacks who refuse to do things like videos, photographs and the web because of the misguided principle that they weren’t getting paid any extra to do it. Well you know what?Get over it. If you don’t do the web then pretty soon they’ll find someone who will. That’s the reality of journalism today.
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I was advised to put my number of twitter followers (about 1,200) on my CV by my news editor, was told employers are now talking about it in hiring decisions
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I don’t understand how Twitter is the way forward for the local press if you can’t gather news properly in the first place, or don’t have the resources to get the news people want to read. So, by all means, Tweet away, but if you’re tweeting guff it’s not going to save your career.
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Sorry it’s not a refusal to embrace the technology it’s the simple fact that the more you give away for nothing the deeper the cuts imposed by management in the newsroom.
Show me how to make money out of breaking stories on Twitter and I’ll fully embrace it.
Look at the current Facebook situation – millions use it but now, after flotation, it suddenly finds itself in the real world and people are finally waking up to the reality that the electronic media is superb parasite but cannot live without life Twitter – a hell of a lot of newspaper stories are cut and pasted and sent around the Twitterverse.
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Any journalist who thinks Twitter has nothing to offer them is deluded.
We’ve got three page leads – including the splash – in today’s paper that we sourced from Twitter and a fourth story is currently being very effectively distributed for us by our followers.
It’s a patch, just like any other – except it’s also a newsagent, billboard, front office and feedback forum. It’s not something you do instead, it’s something that helps you be better at your job.
But then maybe you don’t want to make new contacts, break news first, or encourage people to read your work. Your call.
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Twitter is a double-edged sword and frankly it can be tricky to tell which edge is accurate and true and which is ragged and full of cracks.
Locally, the amount of wholly untrue rumour, gossip and malicious hoaxing that surrounds even (especially?) the most serious event – murder, rape, fatal crash – is alarming.
It can be useful; when a tweet strikes lucky and “breaks” a story.
But anyone who trusts it as their news source is heading for a seriously good hiding.
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I’m sure it’s good advice. We all have tales to tell about useful leads we’ve had via Twitter but does it trump a great network of contacts? I know they’re not mutually exclusive but I see young reporters tweeting endlessly for no real end product – other than inflate their own ego with the ‘I’ve got more than you’ jibes.
How many minutes out of your working hour should one devote to Twitter? When do reach the point of tweeting for the sake of it – a sort of addiction. eBay’s my own Achilles heel but I didn’t spend my working day endlessly gawping at it – although it has thrown up a few good stories.
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This morning, the Twitterverse told me that Justin Bieber was dead. Just saying…
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Earlier this week it also killed off Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. A number of fairly distinguished national political hacks fell for that one.
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I really don’t understand the hostility here.
While I am skeptical of how useful it is to drive paper sales (has any research ever been conducted into this?), I can’t for the life of me understand the Luddites who say we should ignore it completely.
It IS a source of news – we’ve had several stories from it that we wouldn’t have got elsewhere, like when key people in our patch have used it exclusively to make sudden statements or announcements.
And, yes, it has its fair share of pranksters, but if you’re doing your job properly and checking your facts, it’s as valid a source of news as reading street posters, and looking further into gossip from friends and acquaintances.
Hacks who believed Gorbachev had died weren’t wrong for using Twitter as a source for stories. They were wrong for not checking to see if Gorbachev had died.
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Twitter will not save your job, but being aware of it as an additional source of potential stories may. Ignoring Twitter is like ignoring the telephone – it’s a form of communication – and, like any story you’ve ever written, you don’t rely on it as your only source. You read, interact, research, write, then share. It’s just one more tool of the trade.
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