Using Twitter at the Chicago Tribune

I‘ve been arguing for some time that journalists need to embrace the best elements of social media — going beyond the new media and multimedia elements of the craft developed over the past 15 years to develop a true conversation about the news with members of their communities.

In the past few weeks I’ve begun plying the waters to see who’s begun to take advantage of the new social tools now available to all of us, in preparation for an online course I’ll be giving, along with Paul Gillin and Michele McLellan, at the Poynter Institute’s News U. starting next month about how news organizations can incorporate social media in their news offerings. (The lessons are equally applicable to corporations, government agencies, nonprofits and other institutions.)

Here’s the first of four segments in the series: a 23-minute audio podcast with Chicago Tribune general assignment reporter James Janega about his use of social media tools, particularly Twitter, in his reporting for the paper.

Stream or download the interview (time: 23:28):

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/JDLasicaUsingTwitterattheChicagoTribune_0/Chicago-Tribune.mp3]

Lots of great observations and money quotes during the interview:

• Janega has Twitter on most of the day in the background, the way you might have AM radio on or the way cop reporters used to listen to police band radio.

• During Hurriance Gustav, at a reader’s suggestion, Janega created Gustav reporter as an information source on Twitter.

• His twittering is a bit of a balancing act between the personal and the professional, “and I think I’m beginning to hit on a balance that I like,” he said. His tweets consist of sharing personal remarks, making journalistic observations and offering pointers to Tribune reports, such as when he live-blogged the impeachment proceedings against then-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

• The paper holds regular Tribune tweetups to stay in touch with the community and to attach a face to a Twitter ID.

• “I don’t want to be a robot. The Chicago Tribune can really be the imperial storm troopers of the news world in the Midwest.”

• Janega discusses the Advanced Search feature on Twitter, which lets you search for all tweets within a geographic range — say, within 15 miles of Chicago.

• He uses Twitter and Facebook to contact people for stories. Of social networks, he says, “It’s the phone book for people under 35.”

• “Your responsibilities as a storyteller don’t end with just teling the story. You have to deliver it to your audience.

• Janega says that reporters develop a following on Twitter separate from the newspaper’s. “It’s like a garden that you tend.”

• “There are a lot of voices on Twitter, but you bring expertise as a journalist,” adding background and putting events in context beyond the narrative of the day, and verifying information.

We need more many more James Janegas at newspapers around the country.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.