Every Friday, Twitter users (or "tweeters," if you want to be colloquial) suggest feeds for other users to follow. It's called "Follow Friday." In Madison, an active community of bloggers, journalists, marketing professionals and others has sprung up, communicating with 140 characters or less.
Each week, we'll use this space to interview someone we think is worth following on Twitter.
David Douglas
Description (140 characters)
WISC-TV reporter. Originally from South Carolina, in Madison since May 2008. Worth following for breaking news, solid journalism and humor.
Recent Tweets
I've been offered an interview with Lamb Chop. As in the puppet. My career is taking off!
3yrs today since the I-35W bridge fell in Minneapolis. News 3 Investigates Badger State Bridges. Safety of our Spans -- Tonight at 10.
Some high school kids are touring the station--looking bored out of their minds. I've been in TV a while, but this place still looks cool.
Among local television reporters, Douglas' Twitter feed stands out for its timely updates, often as he's working on a story during the day. It's a nice balance of professional and personal tweets, reflecting a savviness about what his viewers want out of the social media experience.
But he also uses Twitter to gather information, both as a reporter and a media consumer.
"Twitter is like a personal wire service where you can self-select the information you want to follow and really quickly get a snapshot of what's going on around you," he says. "You can see what's going on in Madison, or even just in your neighborhood."
For his own tweeting purposes, David uses the TweetDeck application on his iPhone. This allows him to update his Twitter feed while he's in the field reporting. He's aware of the bad rap reporters get for pushing to be first on Twitter, often at the expense of being right.
"If I'm going to say that the police were called to the scene, I make sure they were actually called to the scene before I tweet it," he says. "You still need to confirm your facts."
He also uses the tool to interact with people who watch him on the news every night. Communicating with his audience in a more casual way creates which has led to viewers sharing what's important about their lives with him. It's an experience he finds unique to Twitter, even among other social media tools.
"People thought it was just 140 character Facebook with no pictures, but it's so much more than that," he says. "It's insight and ideas."
Find David Douglas' Twitter feed at twitter.com/News3David
