I consider myself a news junkie—following local, national and topical news via traditional news sources. I have a Google Reader full of top newspapers, cable news networks and mainstream blogs, but yesterday Twitter was my go to news source.
Stories of Swine Flu began to trickle through traditional media on Friday. These stories were tweeted, re-tweeted, posted to Facebook, bookmarked and digged, until Swine Flu became the top story for Monday morning. Instead of combing through the hundreds of articles in my Google Reader, I decided to turn to Twitter to monitor the story.
Through my network, I was able to see that the topic was developing in real time on Twitter. Using www.search.twitter.com and the hash tag #swineflu I had access to thousands of tweets a minute from other twitters who were interested in the topic. Instead of me reading each one of the traditional media stories about Swine Flu, I was able to focus most up-to-date articles that were being reviewed by my peers and then re-tweeted for others to access. The tweets also pointed me towards credible twitters on the subject, such as @cdcemergency, which provided up to the minute tweets about press conferences, action plans and tips.
It was while watching the Swine Flu story develop that I learned Mexico experienced a 6.0 magnitude earthquake 150 miles south of Mexico City. After seeing the first tweet on the earthquake come through, I began searching traditional news outlets for confirmation. It was not until 6 minutes later that the first news story went up online.
Yesterday, I learned first hand what a valuable tool Twitter can be, but Twitter is only a tool and at this time cannot take the place of traditional journalism where facts and sources are checked. With that being said, when the next big story breaks you will know where to find me #news.