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Twitter and Mainstream Media: Which Dog’s Tail is Wagging ?

June 4th, 2009 Administrator

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Twitter and Mainstream Media

by Andrew McCaskey
Which Dog is Wagging ?

All of the excitement about Twitter raises a question: Is Twitter becoming popular as an alternative to Mainstream Media, or is it becoming popular because of it ? Likewise is the adoption of Twitter a sea change driven by underlying improvements in responsiveness and awareness, or is it simply a cynical way of aligning with what is hopefully a new audience demographic, which has so far escaped ? I bet the latter. Just follow the money.

CNN and NBS have made Twitter a second tier personality in their news operations. NPR has harnessed Twitter as an interactive audience tool for political events. Millions became aware of Twitter through Oprah. From all appearances, there’s a cleaning out of the old guard and rapid alignment with the perceived voice of the people.

For CNN, it’s a two sided win: Connect with a non-news consuming demographic and reduce costs in a major way – all at the same time. What’s not to like ? Instead of having to put a bureau staffer in Sofia, Bulgaria – just pull up a blogger and monitor some tweets from there and hold in reserve. In the event that something of note happens there, your anchor person can pull the blogger connection, read an excerpt and the latest tweets from the area, and then ask for comments, again on Twitter. As slack jawed comments roll in from Little Rock, New York, Moline and Portland, you read them on air, pull up some stock photos and you’ve replaced the on the ground Paid Correspondent with content that is, as they say “close enough for government work”.

Or a Twitter length attention span. {sharethis}

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