Tweetdeck Infiltrates the News Room
Posted in News, News Corp., Online News, Twitter | Posted on 01-08-2010 | 164 views
Sky News — a 24-hour UK news site owned by News Corp. — is changing up their entire newsroom to focus more on Twitter.
The organization is installing Tweetdeck on staff computers to stimulate news gathering via social media, according to reports from a UK blog.
The Tweetdeck rollout to staff is scheduled to be completed within the month. While journalists using Twitter is pretty commonplace, an organization-wide rollout is significant. The decision signals a change in ideology around conventional news gathering, and points to the need for journalists to use Twitter to keep pace with the flow of news.
Julian March, executive producer of Sky News Online, made the following statement to Journalism.co.um on the Tweetdeck rollout:
“The big change for us in 2010 is evolving how social media plays a role in our journalism. We no longer ghettoise it to one person, but are in the process of embedding throughout the whole team.”
For those of you who work in more traditional work environments, you can appreciate the significance of software installs on company machines, typically regulated to lock down or limit employee downloads. The vetting of Tweetdeck as an application worthy of a serious news organization is one that should not be overlooked.