Blogs and online publications have long been a thorn in the side of traditional print publications because of the speed with which they can break news. But now, online publications have an annoyance of their own in the form of Twitter.
From a personal perspective, Twitter is now where I go when I hear word of an important event taking place. Reuters knows a lot of Tweeters do the same thing, and they recently addressed it.
From Mashable: (full article)
Last night, Reuters released their social media policy, which includes instructing journalists to avoid exposing bias online and tells them specifically not to “scoop the wire” by breaking stories on Twitter.
The strict instruction makes it clear that even though news continually breaks on Twitter first — especially in disaster scenarios — Reuters journalists are to break their stories first via the wire and not on Twitter.
Twitter has gained relevance astonishingly quickly. Considering a tweet can hold only 140 characters it’s ironic that Twitter is the most versatile social networking site in the world. It’s a powerful platform, and one that is becoming more and more difficult to ignore. Reuters is taking a bit of a gamble with its new policy, and it will be interesting to see if more news outlets follow their lead or turn in the other direction.