Twitter helps Chicago Tribune break story

Cory Bergman August 15th, 2008

Twitter is getting more and more interesting when it comes to breaking news. Poynter has the story of a bomb threat at Daley Center in Chicago that made it from Twitter to the Tribune in a matter of minutes.

5 Comments Add your own

  • 1. TR @ WSB  |  August 16th, 2008 at 2:56 am

    Read that at the Poynter site earlier today, er, yesterday, and wondered … don’t they have scanners at newspaper desks like TV newsrooms - certainly somebody should have known about the bomb threat before it went through those layers of tweeting. Otherwise, I appreciate it in concept. Side note, as far as I can tell, none of the Seattle TV news departments have a Twitter presence. (Not even the Tribune one — what would the Colonel think of that?) The only major citywide news org that really uses it is the P-I (although it’s a one-way feed out, at this point).

  • 2. Charles  |  August 16th, 2008 at 7:50 am

    If there were TV crews already on site, then the Tribune would already be behind the ball, Twitter or no Twitter.

  • 3. Correct  |  August 16th, 2008 at 9:12 am

    You can bet the Trib city desk knew about it, etc - its impossible for the Daley Center to be evacuated and newsrooms not to - but bomb threats aren’t news unless they turn into bomb-reality or create some other problem, right?

    So why would the web desk/social media team know about it? The city editor was probably keeping an eye on it and if it grew any more, she/he would have published some content about it - at which point the Colonel and his troops could have spread it out over the web.

    This is a poor example of a good concept, that’s all I’m trying to say - I think the Huff Po people and the Pointy Heads all got some smoke blown at them and wrote two puff pieces.

  • 4. HavingFun  |  August 16th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Thanks to MajorHappyPants for the tip…

  • 5. Anonymous  |  August 17th, 2008 at 4:13 am

    The poster shoulda ben ebl to check spalling because he could’ve used teh and balanced that missing t.

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