Newspapers catching the "viral craze du jour"

The Newspaper Association of America's girl in the know, Beth Lawton, has done a look at newspapers with a presence on Twitter.

Just a handful of newspapers are using Twitter, including knoxnews.com. I have a list of the ones I know about.

Lawton has a good overview of Twitter, some of the Web applications being built around Twitter, and how it's being used. Good place to start if you're trying to figure out this whole Twitter phenom. But don't expect to understand it without participating in it a bit.

Why are newspapers publishing anything called Tweets?

I’d played around with Twitter a bit on my own and thought it could have some interesting applications, especially given that you can get Twitter updates pushed to your mobile phone. Getting, say, traffic alerts on your phone could be pretty useful.

-- Mark Friesen, online editor, The Oregonian.

Twitter is another item to add to the newspaper’s portfolio of products and a new, interesting way to give readers “different ways to access our content when and where they want it.”

-- Damon Kiesow, managing editor of online for the Nashua (N.H,) Telegraph

And, oh yeah, add me to your Twitter friends.

Tags: twitter | newspapers