Yesterday, Monday 18th May, an earthquake measuring 5 on the richter scale struck California.
I first heard about the quake from John Grey (@[jg_rat][]), the editor of couriermail.com.au. He posted the following:
RT @bartman6: FLASH: Quake hits LA http://bit.ly/jtA6M
The Courier Mail site published a small teaser with a few paragraphs of text and a map of the areas affected. The site also included a reference to this content at the top of their homepage.
As the story unfolded, the article was expanded to include more information.
The article was the first mention in Australian press of the earthquake. John’s team beat the other major news sites, including ABC.com.au, SMH.com.au and even their parent site, news.com.au. At the time of posting, even CNN had not updated their site with news of the earthquake.
I asked John why his team got the news out so early:
@[jg_rat][]: @gmwils The answer is Twitter. And a fast, smart, connected news team.
LA Times was also quick to respond to the story. Their first post, in addition to their own copy, included a link to a Twitter search for earthquake.
Twitter is adding a lot of value to the breaking news gathering and publishing processes.