Presently, local breaking news comes across Twitter in a sporadic fashion. Official sources seem to ebb and flow based on whether there is a PIO on duty or not. Most major agencies only seem to tweet quickly during the workweek.
There are many private parties who tweet breaking news on a regular basis. The timeliness is typically very quick as the information is taken from scanners as units are dispatched. Private parties cover various areas and topics, and have limited availability. In the Boston MA area, the crime reporter from Lowell will tweet incidents quickly. The major media organizations seem to be speeding up and tweeting within 5 to 10 minutes of the more major incidents (large fires, multiple shootings, etc). It is possible to search Twitter at any time to see if any specific word has been tweeted. Searches for "fire, crash, police, location name, etc" can be fruitful. It is also possible to see who follows which Tweeters, and to develop a base of dependable news sources. TV and media people tend to put their Twitter accounts into use as a "play by play" at major stories resulting in large flows of tweets at random times. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "massfire" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/massfire. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
