Twitter’s — and Dave’s — big day

Bob CollinsBob Collins Jun 20, 2012
13

A couple of years ago, I appeared at a Policy and a Pint session with my boss on the subject of ethics and opinion in news coverage.

You can scroll to 36:17 and see the exchange (one sided because someone didn’t wait for the microphone) in which a journalism professor at the University of Minnesota assailed my response to her question of where I turn for news. My answer, of course, is numerous places but one of them is Twitter.

“That’s like saying you get your news from the telephone,” she said. “That’s not a news source.”

Her point was clear. There had to be a journalist — probably a mainstream journalist — using Twitter as a distribution platform, but Twitter itself was not a “source” of news.

By that rationale, I guess, most journalists are using their employers as a distribution platform. But I digress.

This morning, I noted, there was nothing on the front page of the largest newspaper in Minnesota, about the biggest flash flood in Minnesota in 40 years that was occurring last night. On last night’s TV news — at least the one I watched before turning to 30 Rock — there was (legitimate in my opinion) coverage of a storm in Lakeville and South Saint Paul, but nothing about the unfolding disaster in Duluth.

But I knew about the situation in Duluth. Guess how?

Let’s be honest here. Outside of Duluth, mainstream media struggled to play catch-up on a pretty big story and while much of the Twitter “coverage” came from the Duluth News Tribune, which did a fine job with things, a lot of it came from people in Duluth reporting on the situation while ignoring the middle man.

One of them was Dave Chura, who was the author of the original tweet last night, and also provided particulars during the morning to his Twitter followers.

Chura isn’t a journalist by the standard definition. He’s the executive director at the Minnesota Logger Education Program, and a citizen board member of the IRRRB.

Dave had a bigger day than we journalists did. Around midmorning, MPR’s Cathy Wurzer put out the word that she couldn’t get in touch with her dad, who lives in Knife River.

fb_wurzer_dad.jpg

So I put the word out on Twitter…

And guess who lives near Knife River. Dave.

“I checked on the parents and they’re all OK,” Dave reported to me a few minutes ago.

And I got the news on Twitter.