Have Twitter. Will keep politicians on their toes.

Pioneer Press 5/26/09
By Julio Ojeda-Zapata jojeda@pioneerpress.com
Updated: 05/26/2009 10:21:49 AM CDT

Minnesota politicos, be warned: The Twitter throngs are watching you and influencing how the media cover you.

Twitter, the popular microblogging service for swapping online-text posts, has become a conduit for politics junkies to compare notes in a water-cooler fashion on what politicians are saying.

Many watched live video of this year's legislative session and went into tweeting frenzies when a politician uttered something juicy.

The local Twitterverse flared when former Gov. Arne Carlson was deemed Republican politician non grata at one point in the proceedings and when former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer incorrectly called Minnesota the only state to allow one voter to vouch for another at the polls (Iowa also permits this).

These citizen observers are godsends for The Uptake, a St. Paul-based independent journalism group that specializes in video-based coverage.

While The UpTake set up live streaming video of session activity, the thinly staffed organization couldn't catch every important utterance.

So it invited its Twitter followers to serve as session spotters and tweet about them.

As a result, roughly half the edited video pieces at theuptake.org were from Twitter-based tips. UpTake executive producer Mike McIntee said editors easily could match the tweet timestamps to those on the corresponding videos.

Twitter is a good "gauge of how interesting something is for an audience" and therefore a great way to craft edited videos that will draw decent Web traffic, McIntee said.

Twitter rose to political prominence in the Twin Cities during last year's Republican National Convention, when everyone from mainstream and independent journalists to political junkies and protest organizers used the service to communicate. The UpTake, for instance, used Twitter to coordinate staffers' street movements amid mass arrests and clouds of tear gas.

This year, Twitter users chronicled the U.S. Senate race recount in all its intricacy and documented each twist and turn of the legislative session. As a result, the service emerged locally as a form of media coverage all its own.
"You really do get the play-by-play, which is a pretty fascinating and positive thing, especially for those monitoring the news mainly via Twitter," said Eric Ostermeier, author of the Smart Politics blog at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs (and who tweets as "SmartPolitics").

"You could take any five top Twitter accounts" focused on local politics, "and I can't imagine you could find a more complete picture of what went on at the Minnesota Legislature," said the UpTake's Chuck Olsen ("chuckumentary" on Twitter).

Olsen cited his group's "uptakemn" account, along with Minnesota Public Radio's "tomscheck," the Pioneer Press' "PolAnimal," "PoliticsMN" and "radiofreenation" as notable local political Twitter feeds.

Dozens of local feeds span the ideological spectrum — from "DavidStrom," the conservative pundit and radio host, and the Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life's "MCCL_org" feed, to St. Paul's "wellstoneaction" and the Norm Coleman-needling "GiveItupNorm."

However, Twitter is hardly a substitute for long-form journalism via newspaper articles and thoughtful blog posts, said Aaron Landry, a local blogger and political observer who tweets as "s4xton."

"Twitter is horrible for reading political analysis," Landry said. "But it's invaluable for finding out what's happening right now. It's the go-to place for breaking information."

Julio Ojeda-Zapata can be reached at 651-228-5467.