J'ai interrogé James Janega quelques jours plus tard sur cette opération. Je pensais au départ en faire un billet plus complet, sur Twitter et l'évolution de la pratique du reportage, mais je n'en ai plus le temps et je ne veux pas que cette interview passe à la trappe (c'est le cas de beaucoup de mes billets en ce moment), la voici donc telle quelle, parlons-en en commentaire si vous êtes d'accord ;-)



Je lui ai tout d'abord demandé comment cette idée lui était venue :

A colleague of mine here at the Chicago Tribune who had made a hobby out of social media mentioned the mysteriously interesting twitter during a conversation we had about facebook and digg. She noted that perhaps one day, sometimes, in some unique way, twitter might also be important to journalists, if for no other reason than to keep tabs on our sources.

I joined and made hundreds of overtures to follow people based on the word "Chicago" in their name, or conversations that mentioned the word. (I'm a metropolitan reporter for the Tribune; that's why it interested me.) I later refined how and who I would follow. At first, it provided only marginal results -- a couple of story ideas from new friends, on discussion about a topic that we ended up covering, and little more.

We'd recently had an earthquake in southern Illinois that was felt in Chicago. The Tribune's coverage of that was compelling because a lot of readers noted on our website when and where they were when they felt it, what they were doing, what they could see. Suddenly, a reader of the Tribune could feel like they were everywhere, experiencing everything at once.

As I grew familiar with twitter, it seemed like a useful tool when you would want to recreate that reporting experience -- to have reports from everywhere at once. Hurricane Gustav was the first big news event that fit the bill, and as I prepared to cover it for the paper, I also suggested we experiment with employing twitter to supplement our reporting, and build interest in our other authoritative coverage. I ended up also writing two stories on twitterers in the process which highlight the rewards and risks of this kind of reporting:


Je lui ai ensuite demandé quelle importance avait eu Twitter dans la pratique de son métier, et s'il pensait que le tweet pouvait devenir une nouvelle source journalistique :

Bottom line, the thing I took away is that this is a really effective tool -- IF the person employing it is very conscientious about monitoring the feeds for bad (inaccurate) information. It can be done well, but that involves a lot of supervision. Any less, and it might be counterproductive, allowing false rumors to be amplified, attention hogs to take over, or attention to be diverted from an organic storyline and useful exchange of reliable information.

Dans un article publié le 1er septembre (Twittering in a Huricane), James Janega était revenu sur ce risque lié à la diffusion d'informations non-vérifiées via Twitter. Il avait d'ailleurs tenté, une fois sur place, et armé de son téléphone portable, d'en combattre quelques unes (Vérifier l'information ? un "vrai job pour les journalistes", dixit Narvic) :

The upside of citizen eyewitnesses reporting on Hurricane Gustav with online social networking tools such as Twitter is the unfiltered, unedited real-time information they pipe directly to the cellphones and Web browsers of anyone interested in receiving first-person accounts of the storm. The downside is that a few of those unfiltered, unedited reports turned out to be hysterical or the stuff that produces rumors.

At least during Gustav, the newly widespread informal network of anonymous online communities proved to be a potent conduit of information for the isolated and helpless and also a powerful megaphone for false reports.

Enfin, à la question suivante "Do you think Twitter is becoming a news wire service?", il avait répondu :

Twitter is NOT something as a reporter that I see being useful all the time, on every story. One reason is that the people who use it are a self-selected segment of society. They reflect one group of people in a community, but not necessarily the entire community. Still, perhaps it does offer a useful and accurate glimpse into a larger population in significant, unique cases like approaching hurricanes, earthquakes, political conventions, public demonstrations, victory parades, championship sporting events, etc. But twitter IS one more reporting tool that reporters can have at their disposal to get tips and spread awareness of interesting, immediate, compelling elements of their coverage.

Follow him on twitter