Media intellectuals Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen, Howard Owens and Howard Weaver sold me on Twitter because of their skills putting it to serious purpose. They’re masters of blogging and longer forms, but I found them just as provocative in 140 characters.
Then The Wichita Eagle’s Ron Sylvester demonstrated the news value of the form, with his adroit Kansas.com Twitter reports on trials in progress.
It all came together for me last night in a blessedly smoke-free barroom in downtown Wichita, where folks whose employers include newspapers, branding agencies, non-profits, a church and a university came together for a Wichita Tweetup. It evolved organically around a long, noisy table as we got acquainted and exchanged tales of the D life, as L. Kelly reports here.
Ron Sylvester courtroom tweet
I said Twittering from the courtroom would get even more interesting when five or six people — not all of them professional journalists — are covering the same trial and you can read their posts as one continuous stream. Ron Sylvester, who has been getting national attention for his Tweets, said it will get even more interesting when family members of the defendant and victim join the Twitterers.
I don’t fear the day when Ron and other professional journalists are fully part of a democratic stream of information, reporting on the same events. I think the journalists work will continue to be closely followed by those who search for the truth; I think the journalists will benefit from access to multiple contemporaneous perspectives on what’s unfolding in front of them.
Bring it on!
