Twitter as News Source

I’ve spent roughly the last two hours following the breaking news from China of a 7.5 magnitude earthquake, not on CNN, or Fox News, but Twitter. I’ve skimmed the news stories from the NY Times and CNN.com, but mostly I’ve been following the links being intermediated by Robert Scoble (@scobolizer.)

I believe the main reason I’ve stayed tuned to Twitter, instead of the traditional news outlets, has been the immediacy of the information, along with some first had accounts from people inside China. Typically news of this kind takes a little while to hit the airwaves anyhow, and this being an international story, that can further delay the dissemination of the information as well. Watching the links Scoble has provided has led me to first person accounts, the first posts on the USGS site, the stories as they broke on the media outlets, the first pictures, and so on.

To me this is where Twitter really shines. We can sit around and talk all day about what movies we saw, the cheese sandwich we ate, who’s posts are flooding the timeline, but when real stories are breaking, it is hard to beat this medium with its immediacy. The fact that Robert Scoble has over 20,000 followers, and attempts to follow each one back, makes him uniquely qualified to mediate this information.

I’m sure this is where we could have the discussion about whether or not this is “professional,” but in this day and age I’m caring less and less how polished my information is. I much prefer this immediate unfiltered access to information. I understand there is the danger for misinformation and outright lies from unverified news, but I think that is a fair trade-off for the chance at getting information before it goes through the broadcast news filter. Along with that, you can get a much more humanistic feel, following people that are tweeting from the scene.

I’d be surprised if being a Twitter news anchor is a job Robert Scobel would want to hold down full time, but his roll in doling out the information certainly shows that there is room for a reputable news personality to do the same. If a journalist wants to take on the task of following thousands of conversations at once, when these stories break, they would be on the front lines of the “broadcasting” process. I’m just glad Robert was up late tonight to do some trailblazing.