Rocky Mountain News: “It’s strange to cover your own funeral”
The Rocky Mountain News is tweeting its last day of production, and it’s a must-read for anyone who cares about newspapers. It’s also a lesson in the power of realtime narrative journalism. Twitter and live-blogging won’t save journalism; they wouldn’t have saved the Rocky Mountain News. (The paper has dozens of its reporters on Twitter, but most haven’t updated their accounts in months.) Still, read these tweets and tell me that Twitter isn’t a critical tool of our craft.
My boss Josh Benton gave a talk on this subject at last year’s Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference, which you can listen to here and read about here. But for now, just take in the tweets, highlights of which I’ve compiled below. At 12:07 p.m., Mountain Time, the feed made a dramatic transition from its typical role as a news ticker — “Cops nab 4, hunt for 5 who fled from van on I-70,” “Stocks advance as investors bet on banks” — into a chronicle of the newspaper’s final hours:
Lots of people have argued that newspapers should get away from using their Twitter feeds simply as conduits to link to their own stories, and that a more personal, human approach can lead to a bigger and more engaged audience of followers. Obviously, today is an unusual case, but it’s worth noting that the Rocky’s Twitter account has gone from around 60 followers to over 400 in the past few hours.
RMN reporter Daniel Chacon is now tweeting the Scripps press conference on his own account. It occurs to me that I don’t know which reporter is handling the @RMN_Newsroom feed, but I’ll try to find out and update here. In the meantime, all our best to the fine reporters in Denver.
UPDATE, 8:22 p.m.: The most recent tweet from @RMN_Newsroom is signed, “Mike Noe,” who is the paper’s interactive editor.
Twittering newsroom are journalist talking to themselves. Seriously, the 60 followers (that grew to 400 followers) all newspaper people. How much audience true audience growth is that?
A fair point, Beth, but I think the Rocky’s tweets are merely evidence of how realtime reporting can match the power of traditional narrative journalism. There’s definitely a demand for tweeting newsrooms, though. @ColonelTribune has 6,278 followers. I’m sure many are journalists, but most are readers of The Chicago Tribune who want to connect with the newspaper on Twitter. —Zach
Newsroom twittering is just the “talent” puffing themselves to feel more relevant and important. Get off your phone and do some real journalism.
I am saddened by the loss of jobs and feel for employees.
I’m sure someone once said the same thing about newswires.
in the profession … you don’t twitter on the phone.
In any case, I agree that many of the increased followers of RMN likely were journalists. I know I started following the paper on the day it closed.
But that’s not really the point.
The point is that these tweets show the potential of a new tool that could be used for a million journalistic jobs that we haven’t even thought of yet.
Will Twitter save journalism? Of course, not. But what will save journalism is an open attitude toward change, innovation and understanding readers in a way newspapers just haven’t done before. I guess I think that is real journalism.