Warning: slightly disturbing content.
The Globe and Mail had reporters live-tweeting from the trial of Colonel Russell Williams on Monday.
We followed it for a while in our journalism class this morning, and I've been hooked on it since, which has kind of surprised me.
I'm not usually a fan of live-tweeting, or tweeting at all. But when it comes to something as interesting of such magnitude as this case, I want to know everything.
And live-tweeting is the best way to do it (as the events cannot be broadcast on TV).
I'm also interested in the kinds of tweets that are being published. Some are purely facts about the case.
12:47 - Greg McArthur: The Crown shows a photo of Col. Williams wearing pink underwear, and asks the judge to take note of the time and the colour of Col. Williams pants and shirt: It's 5 pm, and the colour is blue. The Crown says, it's impossible to say with certainty, but it looks like he's wearing the girl's panties underneath his military uniform while at work.
Others set the scene.
2:48 - TimothyAppleby: The mood in here this afternoon could hardly be more grim. Hardened police officers and crime reporters stare blankly as the horrifying photos are shown on the video screen. It is all reminiscent of the 1995 Paul Bernardo murder trial.
Others are more editorial.
12:57 Greg McArthur: A thought: when did this man ever sleep? Between the plotting of the break-ins, and the actual break-ins themselves, and running Canada's largest air force base, there certainly couldn't have been much time.
Others are even broader, surrounding the case.
2:33 TimothyAppleby: During the lunch hour, a television station reported that Col. Williams's wife, Mary-Elizabeth Harriman, was in the courthouse listening to her husband's horrifying life of crime. Not so says the Belleville police officer in charge of security.
With all of these details provided every 3-5 minutes throughout the whole day, will I need to read the story that actually gets published on the Globe website at the end of the day's proceedings? No. I've heard everything. But will I read it? Yes. I'm interested to see how the reporter takes the days events (and tweets) and condenses all the information into a so-many-word story. A good journalist can maximize the important details that readers want to know from a full day of information overload.
I think studying how the good ones carefully select their content and present it in an informative, interesting and encompassing manner, along with practicing it myself, is the best way to learn.
Attending the event a reporter is covering and reading the story later is the best way to do it.
But if you can't be there? Well, I guess live-tweeeting isn't so bad.
(Images: top: the Blackberry Globe and Mail application, from theglobeandmail.com; bottom: Colonel Russell Williams, from pysih.com)
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