It used to be that journalists interviewed sources or otherwise gathered statements from sources and then worked those quotes into a story. With the advent of social media such as Twitter, there’s a new way to let communities know what sources have to say: just retweet them.
That’s what Ken Ward Jr., environmental reporter at The Charleston (W.V.) Gazette has been doing. Ward, one of the country’s top reporters on the coal beat, found out recently that a couple of coal company executives (Don Blankenship of Massey Energy and Gene Kitts of International Coal Group) started tweeting.
So Ward started using Twitter to try to engage the executives in public discussion. Intriguingly, he also started retweeting some of their tweets:
- June 26: RT @DonBlankenship Massey CEO on #ACES “Only pompous pols could think of such a bill” (Note: #ACES is the hashtag for the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, the major climate bill that recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives)
- July 1: RT @DonBlankenship Coal is America’s Energy. Oil is Iran’s Energy. Which do you want to depend on?
Ward also is using Twitter to publicly ask Massey for hard information:
- July 1: @DonBlankenship What were Massey’s profits on $756.3M in export coal revenue last year? (Cont.) 10K says that was 30 percent of coal revenues … what share of profits was it?
- July 2: Still wondering … @DonBlankenship What were Massey’s profits on $756.3M in export coal revenue last year?
When, on June 30, Gene Kitts tweeted: “Reading Patrick Michael’s Climate of Extremes — recommend for anyone who hasn’t surrendered their ability to think independently,” Ward retweeted that and responded: “@gkitts — What about Patrick Michaels funding?” (Cont.) “Michaels has ‘published little, if anything, of distinction’ in scientific literature on climate change http://tinyurl.com/386rf9” [PDF].
Kitts briefly responded to Ward: “Kenwardjr says Michaels has ‘published little of distinction’ but still he refers to Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’?” Ward rebutted this: “@gkitts — Where exactly did I refer to ‘Inconvenient Truth?’ And by the way, Gore won a Nobel Prize. How many of those do you have?”
Ward blogged about his experience retweeting the coal executives and expanded it into an intriguing exploration of the role of social media, citizen journalism, public relations and transparency in shaping public understanding of coal issues. It’s worth reading.
In a comment to his blog post, I asked Ward to say more about why he’s chosen to retweet the coal executives, and whether he plans to do the same for environmental activists, government officials and other key players in the coal industry. He replied:
“I have retweeted Blankenship and Kitts mostly to get the fact that they are tweeting out to a larger audience — and in some ways less to spread the particular comments or message they posted.
“On the other hand, I have found that there are different discussions going on concerning coal and climate change, and the two sides rarely talk to each other — Blankenship and his followers talk to each other; the enviros talk to each other.
“It seems to me they need to talk to each other, and LISTEN to each other more, and perhaps if I retweeted the coal guys’ comments, enviros (and environmental journalists) who follow me would engage them in discussion online.”
I think Ward’s example is worth emulating. If you’re on Twitter and haven’t yet experimented with this approach, give it a try. And be sure to use relevant hashtags to reach an even wider interested audience.
Oh, and as Ward noted regarding an Associated Press story mentioning that Blankenship had started tweeting: “If you’re writing about someone’s Twitter feed, give us their screen name.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated Gene Kitts’ title. It also incorrectly stated that Ward had not heard back from Blankenship when in reality he had.
