It’s alive! What NPR learned from turning its @nprnews Twitter account from a bot into a human

My student journalists tell me they learn a lot from assignments that involve livetweeting events. It’s encouraging when students ramp up the social media work on their own, outside of classroom assignments, as part of their work for The Setonian Online. This article offers a helpful reminder that even the pros have to experiment in order to discover current best practices (which change rapidly, with the technology).

But no matter how individual NPR staffers tweet, having a human being control the main NPR Twitter account created an opportunity for more interaction with the account’s followers to potentially allow them to engage with NPR content. Katz and Kramer said the feedback they received — both positive and negative — was helpful in figuring out how to best serve their Twitter followers. —Nieman Journalism Lab.