This is a pretty basic use of live-tweeting a news event; in this case Saturday's MSU football game. You get basic progression and notable events happening in the game as it happens.
This one follows the CMU-WMU game. It makes nice little observances, like that snow started falling. I couldn't get the hash tag to work right away on this live tweet of a Big Ten soccer playoff (for which I'm simply linking to the Twitter user's account), but again it tracks things as they occur.
A live-tweet of the UM-Illinois game went waaaaay beyond the minimum 12 tweets for this assignment. Looks like you really got into it. And that's okay! If there's something going on that calls for constant updates, then tweet away until you feel the story is adequately told.
And that's the most basic value of Twitter -- it's another way to relay events live and as they happen to an audience who may not be near a TV or radio or whatever. You can essentially "broadcast" live, just using text sent to mobile devices of readers.
Same thing with other updates, like this one:
mmcass143
#MSUFHroadtrip New update on MSU field hockey happenings @ http://www.msuspartans.com/sports/w-fieldh/spec-rel/110310aaa.html
The link takes you to a press release about the field hockey tournament that was the cause of the road trip. It lets readers get waaay beyond 140 characters, right.
An option you had here was to use a URL shortener, like bit.ly. What the service does is take a URL and replace it with a much shorter one. The URL we just looked at was pretty long. So I went to bit.ly and pasted the URL into the site, and it converted it into this:
http://bit.ly/birDuE
Using a bit.ly link here would have given me more room to write text without the URL taking up so much space.
Ideally, the bet tweet streams can be put in reverse order and read just like an inverted-pyramid news story, with (timewise) your first tweet summing up what happened, and the following tweets filling in details and offering a chronology as something unfolds.
Here -- again, in recerese order, with the tweets in order of when they were posted -- is the State News' sports Tweet stream just before and from the press conference announcing Coach Dantonio's heart attack:
Report: Football head coach Mark Dantonio suffered a heart attack but is OK.
There is a "important football-related press conference" scheduled for 1 p.m. It is unclear if it is related to reports of Dantonio's health
MSU: Dantonio will remain at the hospital for a few days for monitoring. Return to sidelines at a later date.
MSU: Offensive coordinator Don Treadwell will manage day-to-day responsibilities of head coach.
MSU: Dantonio had "symptoms consistent with a heart attack."
MSU: Dantonio had a cardiac catheterization procedure early Sunday morning.
AD Mark Hollis said Dantonio will not be on the sidelines for the Northern Colorado game Saturday.
Hollis: "This is a time for the Spartan nation to come together, to rally."
Dr. D'Haem of Sparrow Hospital said a full recover is expected.
Dr. D'Haem said procedure is very routine and happens often. Also said he expects no long-term negative impact. Return yet to be determined.
Dr. D'Haem said Dantonio began feeling symptoms around 12:30 a.m. Sunday.
Dr. D'Haem: Heart attacks are never good...but I would classify this as a rather small heart attack.
Hollis said he spent the night at the hospital until about 5:30, the returned to hospital this morning at 8.
Dr. D'Haem: "Stress doesn't cause coronary heart disease, but very stressful events can be a trigger."
Coach Treadwell on players' reaction: "They're handling it as well as they can. They love their head coach."
Hollis: "(Dantonio's) thoughts went immediately to his family and then to the football program."
Treadwell said the fact staff has been together for a number of years will make this process easier from a football point of view.
Dr. D'Haem said timetable for Dantonio's return will be taken week-by-week.
There's a lede. There's a nut graf. There's supporting details. There are quotes. There is background. It collectively qualifies as a journalistic story. And you did it within the confines of social media.
This is exactly how The Associated Press wire service has always filed breaking news stories as a story is breaking: line-by-line, with the idea the lines can be pasted together into a story. It allows the writer to push out a story (and an editor to edit copy) much faster than if he or she waited to have a mass of information combined into a story, and yet a reader still ends up with all the information they need to consider the package in its totality.
There is a "important football-related press conference" scheduled for 1 p.m. It is unclear if it is related to reports of Dantonio's health
MSU: Dantonio will remain at the hospital for a few days for monitoring. Return to sidelines at a later date.
MSU: Offensive coordinator Don Treadwell will manage day-to-day responsibilities of head coach.
MSU: Dantonio had "symptoms consistent with a heart attack."
MSU: Dantonio had a cardiac catheterization procedure early Sunday morning.
AD Mark Hollis said Dantonio will not be on the sidelines for the Northern Colorado game Saturday.
Hollis: "This is a time for the Spartan nation to come together, to rally."
Dr. D'Haem of Sparrow Hospital said a full recover is expected.
Dr. D'Haem said procedure is very routine and happens often. Also said he expects no long-term negative impact. Return yet to be determined.
Dr. D'Haem said Dantonio began feeling symptoms around 12:30 a.m. Sunday.
Dr. D'Haem: Heart attacks are never good...but I would classify this as a rather small heart attack.
Hollis said he spent the night at the hospital until about 5:30, the returned to hospital this morning at 8.
Dr. D'Haem: "Stress doesn't cause coronary heart disease, but very stressful events can be a trigger."
Coach Treadwell on players' reaction: "They're handling it as well as they can. They love their head coach."
Hollis: "(Dantonio's) thoughts went immediately to his family and then to the football program."
Treadwell said the fact staff has been together for a number of years will make this process easier from a football point of view.
Dr. D'Haem said timetable for Dantonio's return will be taken week-by-week.
There's a lede. There's a nut graf. There's supporting details. There are quotes. There is background. It collectively qualifies as a journalistic story. And you did it within the confines of social media.
This is exactly how The Associated Press wire service has always filed breaking news stories as a story is breaking: line-by-line, with the idea the lines can be pasted together into a story. It allows the writer to push out a story (and an editor to edit copy) much faster than if he or she waited to have a mass of information combined into a story, and yet a reader still ends up with all the information they need to consider the package in its totality.
So really, tweets are just a way of applying old journalistic skills in a new way.
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