A news executive at another newspaper chain asked me the other day what I thought the journalistic application of Twitter is. In my email reply, I gave him the most insightful “I dunno” I could muster.
Eric Berlin muses much better than I on that very issue after the question below was posed by “Bloggers Blog” on Twitter (where else?).

Bloggers Blog: Will newspapers/magazines make all the journalists Twitter like they made them blog?

Berlin answered in his blog:

There are a bunch of great and interesting and probing questions that sweep Twitter everyday. I think this one is a little bit tongue-and-cheek but I do think it likely that some journalists will get on board with Twitter before too long. We may see reporters in battle zones giving live on-the-ground snippets, anchors at the desk musing about life on the news set during commercial breaks, and solicitations for questions prior to interviews. Pretty cool stuff in other words, and it all lies ahead.

You can follow Eric Berlin’s twitters here.
One of our online producers had an idea for excellent application for it. That one should happen.
Do others see news and journalism applications for it? If you have some thoughts, here is where I am. Just shoot me a tweet. (I’m not sure I have the nomenclature down. It seems a posting to Twitter can be a tweet, twitter, or twit. The social rules, norms and shared language are rapidly evolving.
Anyway, add me as a friend.
KnoxNews tweets as well.
There are headline feeds on Twitter already for CNN, the New York Times (via Dave Winer) and the BCC. Maybe more. I haven’t figured out how to figure out who’s on it.
And here’s some inspiration for telling a story in 140 characters (well about 115 plus URL)
With the addition of Woot, which is using the Twitter API to steadily feed deals onto its page, we have a glimpse of how Twitter might evolve biz strategy. But that seems far from pressing at the moment. The party’s on. Twitter away.
Tags: journalism | twitter