With messages limited to 140 characters, Twitter once drew skepticism, even scorn, from journalists who saw little role for the social-media platform in their work. But as
Alecia Swasy demonstrates in her new book,
How Journalists Use Twitter: The Changing Landscape of U.S. Newsrooms (Lexington Books, 2016), many reporters now embrace Twitter as a means of cultivating sources, promoting stories and building their own "brands"as information providers. Swasy, a veteran business reporter who now teaches at Washington and Lee University, studied Twitter use at four metropolitan newspapers. She discovered that the humble "tweet"has become an integral component of a 24/7 news cycle in which reporters and readers engage in an ongoing conversation.
James Kates is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He has worked as an editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
and other publications