The water’s fine

Rachael Oehring, a DTH writer for Diversions, asked me to respond to some questions about Twittering for a story she’s writing for a features class. I’ve already posted about my experience Tweeting this weekend during the presidential debate and at an Obama/Biden rally, but I thought I’d include my responses here:

Q: You live-tweeted the Obama rally the other day, and I was just wondering how you got the idea for that? Were there other people in the press area doing the same thing? How was the experience of being at the rally in the first place, and what was it like sitting there texting while Obama was speaking?

A: I decided before the rally that I wanted to live-Tweet it. Until this weekend, I’ve chiefly used Twitter socially vs. journalistically. I wanted to try live-Tweeting an event to see what would work and what wouldn’t. I live-Tweeted the presidential debate with the DTH’s State & National editor, Ariel Zirulnick, on Friday, and learned a lot from that. Our Tweets were too much of a minute-by-minute run down of what was happening, which, with so many people watching the debate, wasn’t needed. In retrospect, we both wished we had included more analysis. I think that my Twittering from the Obama/Biden rally was a good mix of “This is what he said” and crowd reaction. I wish I had brought my laptop, because text-Twittering limited my speed.

I didn’t see anyone else in the press texting, and I kind of felt weird being the only one. Some in the press had laptops and they could have been Twittering, but I didn’t see one way or another. I haven’t seen the result of anyone in the press twittering the rally.

Q: How do you think a technology like Twitter fits in with traditional news outlets? This might be a bit of a stretch, especially since the DTH is pretty open to new technology, but how do you think other papers will utilize this technology? Do you think we’ll reach a point where there will be a bevy of press twittering updates at press conferences and events and such?

A: I would love to see traditional news outlets embrace Twitter more. There’s a balance to strike, because by and large the public hasn’t embraced Twitter, so the audience this form of reporting is directed at is small, but as a story telling form I like it. It’s bite-sized information that I can choose whether to receive or not. Many of the newspapers that have embraced it seem to have embraced it as another way to distribute news as an RSS alternative, but I think robot-Twitter accounts have their limitations. What I enjoy about Twitter is connecting with the other users. At its core, Twitter is simply social networking, and when newspaper’s don’t have that interactive element between their Twitter and their readers, I think readers are more likely to lose interest. I would love to see the press Twitter updates at meetings etc. Its another way of reporting, and then journalists can go back to those “notes” to write the story, which ideally is more nuanced and analytical than Tweet updates.