Executive tweets during search for murder suspect
Shortly after four police officers were killed in Washington, David Boardman (@dlboardman), the executive editor of The Seattle Times started using Twitter.
His account was created 27 days prior to the shooting, and he had tweeted once. After the police slayings, Broadman posted two messages telling people to visit the site. Then, he started really using Twitter.
He provided live updates throughout the day as police tried to find suspect Maurice Clemmons.
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He repeated information from other organizations on Twitter.
He even retweeted and shared a link to a blog from Seattle alt-weekly, The Stranger.
He mistakenly said a school was locked down.
He corrected that mistake.
He stated the facts, even when officials didn’t confirm.
Thirteen hours after his first tweet was sent, he directed followers over to the Times web site and another Twitter account.
I’ve never seen a news executive jump in and use Twitter in this way. Should more executives follow this example? Should they be tweeting on a daily basis, not necessarily about breaking news? What do they have to gain? What do they have to lose? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.
Hat tip to Adam Schweigert (@aschweig) who noted Boardman’s work and Sonya Smith (@sonyanews) who asked for my thoughts.
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:24 pm
What's interesting is that at a future-of-news meet-up back in February, someone erroneously attributed a quote to Boardman while he was in the room and Boardman seemed to take a hint of pleasure in correcting the person and pointing out how fast the misquote spread on Twitter. Of course, anyone who uses Twitter knows that the beauty of it is that it doesn't take 24 hours to publish a correction.
I say this not to charge Mr. Boardman with hypocrisy, but to point out that this is a guy who, not too long ago, seemed a curmudgeonly Old Media type and is now at least showing a willingness to experiment at the forefront of digital publishing.
I applaud the Times for their efforts (and congratulate them—they apparently pulled in record traffic) and I'll add that I think a lot of people here in Seattle were surprised. The Times isn't exactly seen as being at the cutting edge of New Media, but their moves of late seem to indicate that the culture there is changing. I'm really interested and excited to see what they do next.