Journalism and Mass Communications, College of
@Twitter Is Where J-School Students Need to Be
Date of this Version
3-2-2011
Abstract
When I told students in my beginning editing class they would be required to create and use Twitter accounts, many were skeptical.
Like most 20-somethings, they were huge Facebook fans. But skeptics didn’t see the merit in 140-character tweets, the short blasts of text permitted on Twitter, a real-time micro-blogging service. They saw Twitter as streams of narcissism – patter about what people were eating or drinking – with no journalistic value.
But I had become a Twitter fan, seeing an increasing number of journalists use it to share news, find sources and connect with readers. Tweets often employ good editing techniques: finding the focus of a story and summarizing it concisely in a headline to entice others to read it.
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Published in Nieman Reports | Professor's Corner, March 2, 2011