If you’ve been anywhere near news this week, you know the big story in Alaska is the towing, evacuation and subsequent grounding of the Shell drilling rig, Kulluk. And it’s likely you’re getting your news and updates on it from @adndotcom whose Twitter feed has been a shining example of thorough steady coverage through twitter.
The tweets are the effort of David Hulen with the assistance of Mark Dent and Kyle Hopkins. The team has been rolling out updates at a steady pace with quotes, updates, photos and links to more comprehensive coverage on the ADN website.
This is a great example of using a team of people to push out steady, useful updates on a major and ongoing story. The coverage and tweets mix up the type of updates. It’s also a great way of bringing in readers to the ADN site where there’s comprehensive coverage.
One thing that would have been nice to see would have been the use of a hashtag a little earlier. It is hard to judge when a situation is going to turn into something worthy of a hashtag– but it’s better to start using one and not really need it than for your early coverage to disappear in the dark corners of Twitter.
What are some takeaways of this type of coverage?
-Multiple people are contributing to the tweets so the burden isn’t on one person
-Tweets that link to ADN’s website are still good chunks of information. You don’t have to click and go to the site to understand what’s just happened. Think of tweets as putting the lede of your story in 140 characters or less.
-It’s a steady mix of quotes, updates, photos, video
-The pace and the timing bring the audience into the process – there are tweets that only say when press briefings are going to happen
Here’s a Storify of their coverage so far.