For this assignment, I tweeted the ASUW president/vice president debate. The two candidate duos that ran were Wilkins/Houghton and Conard/St. Marie. The debate was in the Union Senate Chambers on April 10th. Questions were submitted by University of Wyoming students prior to the event.
Check out my Twitter page below or at the link to get a better understanding of what happened at the event.
I used a journalistic approach in tweeting the ASUW debate. I chose this approach because the ASUW presidential debate was a very political event and I didn’t see how I would be able to effectively tweet it unless I used a journalistic tone. Another reason I used the journalistic approach is because that is what I want to do for my career. Thus, I stuck to what I assumed would be more helpful in the long run.
This assignment pushed me out of my comfort zone – there is no question about that. To start, I did not enjoy being uncomfortable, but that’s just a fact of life. More specifically, I did not enjoy being on my phone during the entire debate. When I first got there, I told the candidates that I was tweeting the event so that they would know I was not just texting or looking at Facebook. Yet, I still felt rude because my face was in my phone a majority of the debate.
On the other hand, I enjoyed reporting on an event live because it meant that when I left the event, I was done. After leaving, I kept thinking I needed to get the candidate’s numbers for possible follow-up questions, or arrange a longer interview with a spectator, but I didn’t have to! While I enjoy the long-form work of writing a journalistic story, it was a relief to leave the event being done with the report. I also enjoyed writing concise statements and picking out the highlights to share with the public.
I was surprised at how much I actually enjoyed doing the assignment. This is the blog post I was most apprehensive about, but I turned out liking it because of the practice in picking out important quotes and relaying them to the public immediately. It was also surprising how much more relaxed it felt than writing a hard news story, especially because I thought it would be very stressful for me.
If I were to live-tweet again (which will most likely happen), I would get an interview from someone before the event starts. Both of my interviews were after the event. While they were effective, I think I could have gotten a different perspective from a pre-interview individual, such as the moderator for the debate. With this, I acknowledge it is important to show up fairly early.
In this assignment I learned that as a journalist, I will most likely need to know how to tweet. Before doing it, I was beyond nervous to take on a Twitter voice because I didn’t even have a Twitter before the assignment. I was resisting the fact that Twitter is a valuable media platform, but just by doing the assignment I learned its importance. In order to reach a different audience, and do a quick-report on something I may not have time to write a full story on, I can surely use Twitter.
To say something I never thought I would, Twitter is important for journalists and I see myself utilizing it in my future career!
Mary's Media 