Latika Bourke wins journalism award for pioneering use of Twitter

Posted by Carole Wurzelbacher on June 29, 2010 at 3:30 PM

Australian journalist Latika Bourke has recently won the 2010 Walkley Young Australian Journalist of the Year award, reports jouralism.co.uk. She was given the award for her coverage of Tony Abbott's taking over the Liberal leadership from Malcolm Turnbull last year. The board gave special mention to her "pioneering" use of Twitter, saying that "it added an important dimension to her reporting." Bourke, who has over 5,000 followers on Twitter, will be awarded visits to news organizations in New York and London in addition to $5,000 spending money.

Commenting on her use of Twitter and the innumerable sources it provides, Bourke said "suddenly we had this brand new watercooler of instant leads, some of them dud, speculation, rumor and hearsay and sometimes real legitimate fact. So it was an extra challenge of reporting back in this new concept of instant. Working in radio you'd think I would know what instant was, but twitter just changed all of that."

Yet, Bourke pointed out that using the news source to collect stories was not always easy. She noted, "but this also meant you had to be extra cautious about what leads you were following, what sources you were using and what direction you were taking," she said.

Bourke's usage of Twitter comes with a wave of journalistic interest in the social media site. While it may seem that 140 character tweets would be relatively useless for serious journalism, some believe that Twitter could be a valuable tool for journalists to discover breaking stories and promote their own work.

Moreover, considering Twitter's recent decision to become more localized, the site could become an even more powerful tool for journalists in the future. At any rate, Bourke's use of the relatively young media site is certainly very interesting and, as 3AW reported, has "added another dimension to the way Australian politics is covered."

Sources: journalism.co.uk, ABC, ReadWriteWeb, 3AW