Tweets: Tweets Are Easy, Part II

Tweeting a breaking news story is easy, as you've learned. Just type what you see, as you see it. But how do you tweet something that isn't breaking? Like a trend story, or something about a topic without a specific time peg or an actual event associated with it?

Actually, that's easy, too!

That was a situation a student in one of my past JRN 200 classes faced. She was doing a story about a rash of concussions among student-athletes. And here's her tweet stream, which I reversed so that you see her first tweet first and her last tweet last; the opposite of how it would appear on Twitter. Here we go:

#concussedathletes Over 300,000 sports related concussions occur each year, according to the Brain Trauma Research Center.

#concussedathletes The NCAA, the nation's largest college athletic association, has no guidelines for treating athletes with head injuries.

#concussedathletes The Big Ten is trying to implement its own regulations to deal with concussed athletes.

#concussedathletes Michigan State University is not pushing for the Big Ten to have the regulations.

#concussedathletes MSU soccer goalkeeper Liz Watza has had five concussions and said "The NCAA should create guidelines."

#concussedathletes Sports Specialist Dr. Homer Linard said the main concern with letting injured athletes back in the game is brain injury.

#concussedathletes Suffering a second concussion shortly after the first one can be deadly, according to the Brain Trauma Research Center.

#concussedathletes Incoming freshmen athletes at MSU are given a specific concussion test, called ImPACT. impacttest.com

#concussedathletes Athletic Clinical Coordinator Brian Bratta said "ImPACT assesses memory, cognitive ability and function of the brain."

#concussedathletes Once a concussion occurs at MSU, the athlete takes ImPACT again to gauge the severity of the injury.

#concussedathletes Despite new technology, the biggest indicator is the presence of symptoms, said Bratta. http://tinyurl.com/6cq9dx

#concussedathletes When a head injury occurs, MSU athletes are immediately given SCAT, the Standardized Concussion Assessment Test.

#concussedathletes SCAT is a checklist of common symptoms and tests balance, said MSU Certified Athletic Trainer Yume Nakamura.

Now, please notice a few things. Look at the first four tweets. Each could be a lede, right? For many of you, in writing a story -- especially trend stories -- you may find that you have more than one good lede option, but you can only choose one lede. But in tweeting the news, each lede option can become its own tweet.

Second, the tweeter took telling quotes and made each a tweet, like that of teh player giving her opinion on the subject. Just like a quote in a story, it's not YOUR opinion; it's what somebody who is a subject of your story thinks.

Third, interesting facts are offered as tweets, like those on what the effects of a concussion can be.

Fourth, a mini-series of tweets are used to explain a nuance of the story, like the half-dozen tweets that in total detail how MSU deals with concussed athletes.

Fifth, hyperlinks are offered via tweet. Notice the tweet that uses a bit.ly link. Bit.ly is a URL shortener that will take a long URL and convert it into a shorter one that better fits on a character-restricted service like Twitter.

Let's take a look at what bit.ly can do for you, via this link.