Teaching News Terrifically in the 21st Century 2013 | Page 9

Volume 2, 2013

Page 9

Third place, full-time faculty division (tie)

The amazing
Twitter list race
By Michelle Carr Hassler
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

periodically weed out unhelpful sources and replace
them with new ones.

Types of courses the idea could be used in:
newswriting, reporting
Target level: sophomores, juniors, seniors or graduate students in a professional program

How is the assignment innovative? What makes
this idea good for teaching in the 21stcentury or
preparing 21st century journalists?
While students use social media for personal
reasons, they often don’t realize its potential for reporting. By creating a Twitter list of credible sources,
they discover how easy it is to monitor breaking
news, keep track of events and spot trends – all in
one place. With a tsunami of information to sort
through daily, today’s journalists need to know and
use strategic curating techniques.
This assignment gives students a concrete
example of how Twitter can help them as journalists.
Now they can see the potential and may be inspired
to develop other ways to use social media for journalistic purposes.

What is the goal of the assignment or
exercise?
The goal of this assignment is to show students
how curating lists on Twitter can help them discover
news sources, monitor what is happening in their
community and develop story ideas. They complete
the assignment as part of a friendly competition in
which each student tries to develop a Twitter list
with the most news sources.
Students often do not follow local news closely
and struggle to come up with strong story ideas.
This assignment helps them focus by creating one
place where they can keep current on events and be
inspired.
How does the assignment or exercise work?
To prepare students for the assignment, I demonstrate how Twitter lists work and show examples
of how beat reporters use them. I discuss how
students can mine social media for credible sources
in several ways: by using search applications such
Listorius, WeFollow and Twellow; by identifying
valuable sources and examining who they follow; by
monitoring pertinent hashtags to see who tweets to
them; and by “raiding” other people’s Twitter lists. I
also give them examples of viable story ideas that I
culled from my own local news Twitter list.
The assignment requires students to compile in
a Twitter list as many valuable local news sources
as possible. To make it fun, I pitch it as a contest in
which students compete to gather the most sources
by the next class period. To get them thinking about
specific sources, I designate class time to brainstorm
ideas of followers from different facets of the community.
When class reconvenes and they return with
their lists, we compare them and talk about the
quality and helpfulness of sources. We also discuss
the importance of monitoring their lists so they can

How do you overcome pitfalls?
So they don’t simply copy sources they’ve seen
by looking at each other’s lists, I ask them to keep
their Twitter lists private until class time. And
to avoid having students “stack” their lists with
meaningless accounts, I warn them that the quality
of sources will be closely scrutinized by me and the
other students during the class discussion. I suggest
that students be prepared to defend why they added
each source.
What is the impact of the assignment
or exercise?
Students said the lists helped them learn more
about the community and develop better story ideas.
I noticed improvement in a subsequent assignment
that required them to propose three story ideas
gleaned from their Twitter lists.
After the exercise is completed, I encourage
students to share the sources they’ve found so they
can build even better lists. In essence, they develop
“super lists” that they can tap into for future assignments in this class and others. And their new understanding of how to use social media for reporting
and story development will help them someday on
the job.

Michelle Carr Hassler
teaches multimedia and
online journalism at the
University of NebraskaLincoln, where she has
been a faculty member
since 1998. She regularly
teaches the journalism
capstone course and
recently created and
taught U 93