Journalists are even on Twitter

By Nicole Salvino

Social media users can be anyone really, but since there has been such a recent jump in popularity with social media journalists are jumping on the band wagon of social media networks. Journalists are using social media networks as a way to produce content about their writings, beliefs, or even just publicity to become recognized. I have analyzed three different journalists twitter pages and have found some very interesting information about what they are using social media for based upon tweets and information found on their pages.

The first journalist that I followed on Twitter was a man by the name of Chris Cillizza. Cillizza works at the Washington Post as a writer and reporter, as well as an avid blogger. His forte is politics and his Twitter page is a great example of his work. Most of the tweets on Chris Cillizza’s page are about politics, whether it be about recent news about a party in general or a specific member of a political party. Cillizza’s page is updated quiet frequently about two tweets every hour or so which keeps you updated with the latest and a continuous flow of political breaking news. Cillizza does not just tweet about political news however; he also interacts with followers of his page by re-tweeting to many of his followers in response to comments or questions. Although Cillizza himself only follows 471 people, he has 42,465 followers.

The second journalist that I chose to follow on Twitter was a Time magazine columnist named James Poniewozik, who writes the tuned in column for the magazine. In comparison with Cillizza, Poniewozik only has 11,235 followers; however he follows around the same number of people as Cillizza, which is 382. Most of his tweets are about topics involving the television and what’s going on with celebrities in the media. Although he does not tweet as often as Cillizza he still produces a tweet about every hour or so. Most of his tweets are re-tweets to other followers about certain topics. He does produce his own comment with providing multiple links with his tweets, but a lot of his tweets are directed toward a specific follower.

The third and last journalist that I followed was a woman by the name of Mary Pilon who is a journalist for the Wall Street Journal. Like Cillizza she tweets all about political news and what are the latest happenings in the political world. Many of her tweets include links to full stories about political news as Poniewozik’s do. Pilon does not tweet as often as either of the men do, Cillizza or Poniewozik, she only tweets about once every few hours. Unlike her fellow journalist professionals that I followed she had the least amount of followers which was 2,452 yet followed 307 people. There were less re-tweets on her page than there were on the other two journalists I followed. I found this interesting because normally it is women who are conversing through social media networks more than men.

All in all the three journalists I followed were very different in the fact that they all tweeted about different topics based upon their professional skill. However they were all very similar in the fact that they stuck to tweeting about one topic and also would re-tweet to followers to engage in some type of interaction rather than just producing content. Journalists as a whole should use Twitter as a resource to get themselves and their work out there and it is a great way for them to produce content to a mass amount of people who are interested in what they have to say, or even what is the latest news in their respected topics of concentration and knowledge.