@Future of Journalism: the benefits of Twitter

At the Guardian 's "Future of Journalism" conference, Twitter was mentioned as an innovative and revolutionary service that has helped journalists worldwide cover events more immediately, such as the earthquake in China, mayoral elections or soccer games. In his blog, Ron Sylvester says the podcast is "fascinating" and "thought-provoking."

Dave Hill, a reporter for the Guardian, covered the mayoral elections on Twitter, which gave people the opportunity to see raw journalism. He claims that news-making of this nature has "the immediacy of reporting by the seat of your pants."

Another Guardian employee, Anna Pickard, enjoys the "simultaneous" element that the Internet provides, referring back to the time she began blogging TV shows only to have people watch TV and respond to her blogs at the same time.

NPR's Andy Carvin mentions that community is vital to the Internet and that "the technology has got ridiculously simple." In his opinion, Twitter is like " a conversation in your pocket."

"You can express things in a different way, with greater brevity, economy or humour - and there are infinite ways of covering the same event," Hill said.

Some say that Twitter is competing with traditional media, a thought that may be "misleading". Twitter does not offer quality reporting with in-depth analysis and full coverage, like traditional media does.

Twitter is fast at communicating events and according to ReadWriteWeb, it will "never outshine the mainstream press as long as reporters continue to do what they do best -- get on the ground, talk to the right people, find out what's really going on."

Source: Technolo-J