You can tweet me on that

31 October 2012 01:12:54 PM | by Ben Ready

The news is changing more rapidly than at any time in the last 400 years with the digital revolution reshaping the way news organisations structure their businesses to reach their audience. Underpinning the rapidly changing distribution model is a fundamental change in the way news is being gathered.

The change to the 24/7 newsroom with its constant demand for updates and angles to keep a story fresh and generating new traffic - clicks, views and impressions - needed a new tool to feed the beast. Enter Twitter.

Debate about Twitter's role in the media has been around for a couple of years. Even in its infancy many bloggers viewed it as an emerging media organisation in its own right.

I'm sure the good folk at Twitter designed their technology with many purposes in mind. I'm pretty sure they never anticipated it would fundamentally change the way the media gathers, reports and disseminates the news. What makes Twitter the perfect tool for gathering news?
 

• Access - it's free. Nuff said in today's 'expense constrained' newsroom environment.
• Immediacy - from Warnie's fingers to journalist, to sub, to live in a few minutes.
• Brevity - 140 characters means no verbiage, no massaging, no superfluous guff. The news or not news decision journalists must make is infinitely easier through the prism of a tweet.

Of course the emergence of Twitter as a tool being used by the media, means it has quickly become a tool for feeding the media. Prolific, high profile Twitter users like @kruddmp, @warne888 and Queensland's own @clivefpalmer are increasingly using Twitter as a form of direct communication with the media.
For many of these high profile users Twitter's ability to provide a platform to deal quickly and directly with issues, as well as throwing the odd hand grenade, make it an extremely valuable tool in their communications arsenal.

At CROOK we have developed COPE by CROOK to ensure our clients are part of the Twitter news revolution.