Austin examples show Twitter is an essential tool in breaking news

A deadly Category 4 hurricane. A mass shooting at the most populous U.S. military base in the world. A disturbed man’s suicide attack on a building housing IRS offices.

All were major news events in the Austin American Statesman’s coverage area in the past two years, and Twitter was essential in covering each one of them.

Using Twitter for breaking news was the focus of CMGd’s first social media webinar, held last week.

Mathilde Piard, CMGd’s manager for social media, opened the webinar with a reminder of some of the ways social media can be valuable to a news organization:

* Allows you to become more familiar to your audience.
* A way to introduce yourself to new people.
* Find sources, get story ideas and do crowdsourcing.
* Helps with marketing and branding.
* Drives traffic to your website, especially during breaking news events.

Mathilde introduced Robert Quigley, social media editor for the Austin American Statesman, a pioneer in using Twitter for breaking news.

Quigley discuseed three major news events: Hurricane Ike in September 2008, the Fort Hood shootings in November 2009, and the IRS building plane crash in February 2010 … plus one would-be scoop that turned out to be mostly rumor (more on that in a bit).

Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike was the Statesman’s first major test case for Twitter.

Because other journalists, including TV crews, were not able to immediately access the damaged and flooded areas surrounding Galveston, the Statesman’s Twitter account became the main source for news on the situation across the nation and world.

Quigley created a separate Twitter account, @trackingike, and had all the reporters file there, asking them to post everything they saw firsthand while Quigley posted links to blogs, photo galleries and more.

The Twitter coverage was so thorough that The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and other major news sites linked to the Statesman’s Twitter account.

As Quigley explained in a MediaBistro interview:

We had four reporters tweeting to one account from Houston. At one point, our reporter was twittering minute-by-minute as they crossed the causeway into Galveston. During that weekend, we received 300,000 page views directly from Twitter onto Statesman.com. I think that was the event that vaulted our social media efforts. Suddenly, Twitter wasn’t something to giggle at – it was a serious journalism tool.

Fort Hood shootings

Like so much of breaking news these days, it was a tweet that first brought the shootings to the attention of the Statesman newsroom.

As reporters scrambled to verify the report, Quigley created a @FtHoodShootings Twitter account and also used Twitter lists, which at that time was a new feature, to corral various sources of news on the event.

As Quigley told PoynterOnline’s E-Media Tidbits blog:

I was posting information from various sources, including from our own reporters, from the Associated Press, from what I was hearing on TV, from tweets from inside Fort Hood that I found on Twitter Search and by retweeting other news sources’ Twitter accounts.

IRS building plane crash

Again, the Statesman newsroom first “heard” about the plane crash on Twitter, seeing a local TV station’s tweet about it.

Twitter also provided this dramatic photo, which was on the Statesman’s homepage nearly the entire day.

Quigley found the photo via an advanced Twitter search. He also got 30 other TwitPics and collected them into a gallery after getting permission from the photographers to use them.

Finally, it was thanks to a tip on Twitter that the Stateman was able to be, as far as Quigley knows, the first site to post the pilot’s suicide screed.

Read more here about how @statesman used Twitter to cover this story.

The Apple Bar

Quigley discussed a big breaking news story that wasn’t: terror at a downtown Austin bar in the spring of 2009. Rumors were flying on Twitter that a man had a gun on the bar’s rooftop and was holding patrons hostage. Here’s just one of the many tweets that night:

9:09 p.m.: @Scottland: Apparently man is holding people hostage at gunpoint at the Apple Bar, reason for cops at 4th and Colorado

Quigley didn’t jump in right away. He refused to simply pass along the rumors as fact, but was in constant contact with the reporter on scene.

10:19 p.m.: @statesman: I see people on Twitter calling this a “hostage situation” at the Apple Bar. We have NOT been told that by police.

Twitter’s newness doesn’t erase basic journalistic standards. And the followers of the @statesman account noticed that and appreciated it:

10:30 p.m.: @MaliceBlackhart: @statesman Truly appreciate the responsible reporting. Thank you for informing us of what you have and HAVE NOT heard.