Quick rant:
i’m sick of Twitter users who just post a link to every story or latest blog post on their sites. this is totally different from finding something and linking to it in a “check this out” way. I get that you think it’s important to get your message out there, but this is just endless noise - it adds little to the equation.
one of the many better points of twitter is to have a conversation, and i think that’s how it works best - i would LOVE a news organization to *get* this and tweet about what’s going on in their newsroom, or some background aspect of their news gathering operations - a facet of a story that they struggled with, or a concern they have about some form of breaking news - something productive that they can enter into the conversation. otherwise, it’s just advertising/spam.
take the new york times, sadly an easy whipping post lately. many of their sections are on twitter, just broadcasting links to their latest stories. what a wasted opportunity. Tell us something that didn’t or wouldn’t make it into the story - they could use Twitter to tell us that one of their foreign correspondents is on the streets of Islamabad, giving us insights into the attitudes of a cafe crowd.
Think of your info operation like a tree, with your website as the trunk, the sections as major branches, the stories as smaller branches, and the extra details as leaves.
When news org’s are concerned about their future, one idea might be to make their content better, richer…attractive, enriching and necessary even, so we can drill down into a story the way that the web best supports. You already have the source material, the people on the ground, the contacts, the rich details - quit shaving them down - rethink what you already have - like the Native Americans did - use the whole buffalo.
