Tweeting -- Some Examples

Unfortunately, many of the Tweet streams from my last JRN 200 class are long gone. But here are some tips for tweeting from last semester:

>>> If you go waaaay beyond 12 tweets, 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.

>>> You can supplement your tweets with links to a photo uploading site, like yFrog, which can help tell the story beyond the 140 characters allowed in a tweet, and beyond simple words.

>>> You can also link to anything on the Web with the aid of a URL shortener, like bit.ly. What the service does is take a URL and replace it with a much shorter one. Using a bit.ly link here gives you more room to write text without the URL taking up so much space.

>>> Ideally, the best 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 reverse 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.

So really, tweets are just a way of applying old journalistic skills in a new way.