Breaking Tweets, Blades style

Breaking Tweets is a website I’ve seen a couple of references to in the past day, and started following myself.

Its group of 28 editors compile news events and Tweets about those events into a story with a traditional type of introduction and then a selection of Tweets about the event. They often come from people on the ground (such as at the G20 protests) and provide a unique kind of view about the news. From the Breaking Tweets website:

The site has two main goals: 1. to help people enhance their worldview or perspective of global events; 2. to increase dialogue about international news and make the world smaller through conversation and interaction, both on this site and on Twitter.

So I thought, what would this look like in Saskatoon? In general, since joining Twitter last months (yes, still a newbie!), I’ve found that Saskatonians aren’t all that keen on Twitter yet, in comparison to some larger U.S. cities. This isn’t surprising. But there are enough of them Twittering that my first experiment in Breaking Tweets — Saskatoon style was a moderate success.

Saskatoon Blades lose Game 7

The Saskatoon Blades lost Game 7 of their first-round playoff series to the Lethbridge Hurricanes last night (April 1). It’s a sad ending to a promising season. A few Saskatoon and Lethbridge fans tweeted along to the game.

Here are some of the Tweets. I chose the ones that had a bit more colour to them, rather than a play-by-play feel. (You can read the play-by-play twitter feed at twitter.com/canescast.)

thebatlab (Saskatoon): heading to the Blades game, long line on Idylwyld, should be a packed house!

iluvsmooches (Saskatoon): Saskatoon Blades…down by one…1st period 5:50..dang it

RossRaymond (Lethbridge): Blades pull the goalie at 55 seconds… Canes Ice it and a face off in there zone

Lola1970: The Blades lost the game. My 4 year old accidently through popcorn down the back of the pants of the guy in front of us though. Entertaining

JaniceOwen (Good ole’ Saskabush): is embarassed to be a hockey fan in Saskatoon..not because of the Blades…but because how APATHETIC the fans are here! QUIET arena!

DanaeJ (Saskatoon): blades are done

Value of Breaking Tweets?

I think this is a cute way to add colour to a story. But does that contradict the argument I made earlier about how quoting only from Internet sources (event pages, Facebook, blogs, etc.) is lazy journalism?

To be honest, maybe. But in the example I used of the Earth Hour story (which quoted from nine sources, seven of which were online and two of which were from interviews), that story used online sources in place of interviews. And that’s why I thought it was lazy.

The Breaking Tweets format doesn’t pretend to replace traditional journalism. It’s meant to add value. As the Breaking Tweets website says: “Generally, each story will link to a media outlet of authority for brief background information on the news topic and for those seeking more information.”

I also think that, for mass media, this could be a great way to involve readers and make good use of a social networking site.

Consolidation

Across the pond, British MPs have put forward a motion calling on the government to support local journalism. It’s garnered the support of 100 MPs, the Guardian’s Roy Gleenslade reports, mostly Labour representatives but also a handful of Tories.

The motion is partly in response to the formation of an alliance of regional publishers who want the government to relax merger restrictions to help them get through these difficult times. The motion points out that local journalism has suffered cutbacks and asks that any government action “ensure that state support, either in the form of deregulatory measures or financial help, is given only where firm guarantees on investment in local journalism are secured.”

To further bolster their argument, I would ask those MPs to also take a look at Canada, where two of our largest media organizations, Canwest (which owns my paper, plus 12 other dailies and the Global TV network and a bunch of specialty stations, etc. etc.) and CTVglobemedia (which owns CTV as well as the Globe & Mail and other stations etc. etc.) are floundering in this economy despite their flurry of mergers and cross-media acquisitions.

Both companies have either put smaller (locally focused) TV stations on the block or are in the process of shuttering them (the E! channels for Global and the A channels for CTV). Both companies have slashed jobs and spending. All those mergers didn’t help them and actually made the situation worse because of the debt involved in the initial acquisitions.

In other news…

Gannett Co. is consolidating copy editing and page production for four New Jersey papers. This is also something my parent company has tried (in terms of page production), with direct effects on my department.

It’s yet another example of the dilution of local papers. If you have a copy editor editing copy about a city council meeting who isn’t familiar with the council members, let alone the geography and history of the city, you lose that extra layer of fact-checking. In terms of page design, how much control will be lost at the local level about what gets featured prominently in the pages and what’s shoved to the back? What happens when there’s breaking news and there’s no one around with the authority to make the call about what to move around?

I wish them luck in their transition.