New Website Showcases Twitter as Citizen Journalism

Journalism student Craig Kanalley was just one of the throng that turned out in Chicago’s Grant Park last November to watch Barack Obama deliver his presidential victory speech. And although the banners, lights and cheers were exciting, he noticed something else — the huge number of spectators busy punching out messages and blasting them out to friends via the online social networking site Twitter.

“It was then that I saw the real power of Twitter and what it could do,” said Kanalley, student at DePaul University in Chicago and founder of the website Breaking Tweets (BT). The site compiles news from around the world and posts twittered commentary about it from eyewitnesses on the ground. “As far as I know, Breaking Tweets is the first original news source based 100 percent on Twitter,” he said.

So far more than 5,000 twitterers follow the site, which has racked up more than 100,000 visits since its inception in February. People on Twitter following CNN and the New York Times are also following BT as a credible news source, but Kanalley will only consider the site mainstream when it appears on major news outlets. “Once that happens Breaking Tweets will have come of age.”

The site has covered news as diverse as North Korea’s recent rocket launch and the devastating earthquakes in Italy. Twitterers from these locations added valuable first person accounts to the coverage.

“At first I was just going to maintain the site myself, putting up at least one post a day,” said Kanalley. However, within one week of exponentially increasing hits, he realized he needed to change his game plan and recruited more editors — nearly all of them journalism students from DePaul.

In fact, Bruce Evensen, journalism program director at DePaul, approached Kanalley about incorporating Breaking Tweets into a class syllabus. He will be teaching a class on new media with BT as the core subject. “I think it would be a really great way for the school to show how serious it is about the direction journalism is headed,” Kanalley said.

So, what’s the plan for Breaking Tweets? Kanalley has already launched BT Sports and BT Entertainment. But for now, give the main site a whirl. “We use mainstream sources,” said Kanalley. “But we offer different stories because the web needs alternative content. It gives you something interesting to browse.”

Check out founder, Craig Kanalley, take you through the latest online social network, Twitter.