Comments on: A different way of approaching meeting coverage – UPDATED

By: Ronald Dupont Jr.

Ronald Dupont Jr. — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:01:12 +0000

I’ve seen this idea brought up before, most notably by Steve Outing. But as a person who has been covering city commission meetings since 1980, I can tell you that covering a city commission meeting twitter by twitter would be a tad bit ridiculous.

Practically speaking, a reporter would be so worried about sending the next short “fact twitter” that great quotes and details would be missed. You can argue that a good journalist would know when to take notes and when to twitter. But that defeats the purpose of timeline twittering if there is a post very 5 minutes and then there is a 1-hour gap.

And how do you explain an in-depth ordinance that, for example, defines the difference between a tax and a fee? You can’t twitter that.

I do think that twitter could work in a high profile court case where there is a back-and-forth to it. And if I sent somebody to twitter, I would make that their only assignment — nothing else.

But in the short term, I don’t see any real, practical use for most of what we do as journalists.

By: Yoni Greenbaum

Yoni Greenbaum — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:22:26 +0000

@newsgal – Valid point and a topic for a forthcoming post. At the same time though at many newspapers laptops are being underutilized and reporters equipped with Treos or Blackberrys are only using them to check their personal email.

By: newsgal

newsgal — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:42:45 +0000

Great idea — now where are all those laptops paper’s promised their reporters?

By: matt king

matt king — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 03:58:13 +0000

I think more traditional live blogging is a better option because there are some facts and developments that need more than 140 characters and I think it’s a bad idea to reduce meeting coverage to to what are essentially text messages. I think Twitter’s for some kinds of breaking news, especially traffic updates and such.

Also, reporters should be encouraged to put down the notebook at meetings and just listen at times, absorb the big picture, take notes judiciously. Blogging or tweeting can definitely help with that.