My friend Craig Kanalley realized that Tweets were as chaotic as RL (real life) when he was in grad school, and he started Breaking Tweets. He worked with other students to take on the reporting task of following Tweets from specific geographic areas. Working as reporters, they identified consistent Twitterers and contacted them and established relationships. The idea was to follow the trusted Twitters when news was breaking on a story. Breaking Tweets would supply a reliable set of tweets around a news story. Ask Craig what happened when the news media and reporters were banned during the election and subsequent demonstrations in Iran. Breaking Tweets was contacted by BBC and the Guardian because it had news fresh from Iran. Flash forward. Craig is working for Huffington Post as a trend tracker. He is an example of someone who came to the news business with a fresh outlook.

Mark Briggs of Journalism 2.0, Lisa Williams who started Placeblogger, and Yeon Oh, the founder of Ohmynews.com are others who think outside the box, and who have taken advantage of the digital environment. Now USA Today is doing the same thing.

…the company won’t be able to take advantage of mobile and tablet opportunities unless offerings are designed and edited to match the unique characteristics and markets in both booming new-media device categories.

In addition, USA Today has eliminated several managing editor jobs and will be organizing around “15 distinct content areas,” Hunke said, like travel, personal finance and personal technology. Each will have its own top editor and a dedicated general manager to develop so-called “vertical” advertising and other revenue opportunities.

via Poynter Online – The Biz Blog.