How twitter breaks the news

Germany was shocked by another shooting incident in a school in Winnenden near Stuttgart. Today morning 17-year-old youth killed 16 people (including 10 pupils and three teachers) in a shooting rampage.

It is interesting to learn how twitter updates of citizen journalists are used by the media. The Observer posts details how journalists of France24, a French TV channel tracked an eyewitness of this incident via twitter updates and broadcast her interview. The Blog of France24 notes:

It's not the first time that Twitter's helped with breaking news (other examples include the Amsterdam plane crash, and the cricket terrorist attack in Pakistan). In the case of this shooting, using the website made the process faster than ever. Just fifty-two minutes between the incident being reported and an account live on the channel. The future of participative journalism looks bright!

Breaking Tweets has more Twitter message roundups.