Sky News, an increasingly forward thinking news organisation, have appointed a Twitter correspondent whose sole responsibility is to track breaking news on the service.
The news was discovered by Mike Butcher at Techcrunch UK via a “leaked” memo which can be read at the foot of this post. The journalist appointed to the illustrious position is Ruth Barnett, Sky’s multi media producer.
I simply don’t see the interest nor the surprise that a news organisation looking to score points for their own “breaking” news stories have appointed someone specifically to discover them, via a service known to be a great source.
However, I do share Jemima Kiss’ standpoint:
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Twitter should be a tool that any forward-thinking journalist tries out, learns and then incorporates into their news gathering.
In many respects I feel that anyone involved in the news sharing business – whether it be a professional blogger, a microblogger or a journalist – is a Twitter correspondent. We’re all on Twitter to monitor our relevant fields for stories we would be interested in, or believe others would be and therefore we reshare them.
The reason why this appears to be news is that Barnett is lucky enough to be paid to do just one thing…break and dish out the news/dirt to be found on Twitter. Good luck to her.
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