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ALBUQUERQUE — The microblogging service Twitter has been growing in stature as a journalism tool — so much so that media-watchers at Forbes recently described the coverage of the recent Mumbai terror attacks as Twitter’s moment.
But local media have also been using Twitter to reach out to readers, as shown in the flurry of “tweets” that followed the recent appointment of Gov. Bill Richardson to Barack Obama’s cabinet.
A number of New Mexico print and broadcast outlets have jumped on the Twitter wagon. The Albuquerque Journal has a Twitter feed (ABQJournal), as does KOAT, and KRQE has one, though it’s only been updated once since Election Day.
Local radio reporter and blogger Peter St. Cyr began using Twitter as a tool several weeks ago and says the service’s trademark 140-character limit per tweet is anything but limiting.
“Radio reporters are the best writers in the world,” St. Cyr said. In radio, he says, reporters are used to fitting a lot of information in a small amount of space.
He finds several ways to use Twitter, he added: “You can do a headline of a story, or you can do a little part of one story.”
St. Cyr, who Twitters at radio_news, cited as an example the announcement that University of New Mexico football head coach Rocky Long was resigning. A simple tweet at 5:11 p.m. on Nov. 17 said, “Rocky Long quits after 11 years. AD says ‘it’s a sad day.’”
He also uses it to add “color” to certain stories. After the announcement of Bill Richardson as Barack Obama’s choice for secretary of commerce, St. Cyr tweeted:
DJIA up 40pts since start of Richardson news conf
St. Cyr uses Twitterberry on his Blackberry to send tweets from events. In the past, he said, the fastest way to cover breaking news was to call up the radio station and interrupt live programming. Now his breaking news from Twitter appears immediately on his blog, What’s the Word.
But for St. Cyr, tweeting is also a way to get to know people. For instance, he says, he didn’t know John Fleck, science writer for The Albuquerque Journal, was a birdwatcher until he started following Fleck’s Twitter feed.
When not remarking on roadrunners and ruby-crowned kinglets seen in his yard, Fleck (jfleck) uses Twitter to highlight stories he writes for the Journal as well as his blog, Inkstain.
He learned about Twitter when researching “all kinds of social media,” he says, and his interest has endured because of the “minimalism” of the 140-character updates. And, he adds, “it allows you to have the same conversations that you would have in a room — only around the country and the world.”
During the snowstorm last week, New Mexico Twitter users tagged their posts with #NMSnow (I have to admit, I initiated that particular “hashtag,” as it is called) to report on the effects of the blizzard throughout the state. Fleck joined in as did a few others. After the snowstorm that never materialized later in the week, Fleck began the tag #ABQNotSnow.
Of course, those of us in the so-called new media have also been taking advantage of the service. The local progressive blog Democracy for New Mexico has a Twitter account to broadcast its latest posts as well as comments by users on recent developments.
And the New Mexico Independent has a feed to keep readers keyed into its latest stories and blog posts.
Barbara Wold, who writes Democracy for New Mexico, says the service “is great for keeping up to the minute on news from a variety of traditional and new media sources and spotting breaking news as it happens.”
Wold also uses her RSS feed to post headlines and links to her new blog posts on Twitter. But she notes that the service is not just — or perhaps not even primarily — for work.
“Reading the often snarky and clever personal Twitters are the icing on the cake,” Wold says.
