*This post is about Twitter, a microblogging tool. If you don’t know what Twitter is, click here for an explanation.

Twitter is no longer an exclusively techie/dork medium. Real estate agents, TV stations, newspapers, and even Britney Spears are using Twitter. Depending on your social media savyness, it can take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks to really get the hang of Twitter. And from what I can tell, media outlets, at least locally, are a little slower to harness the power of the Twitterverse.

I’m not trying to be critical, because I applaud them for even using Twitter. We can only hope that the “how” to effectively use Twitter will come soon.

In Roanoke, Va., the 70th ranked TV market in the country, only three of the four major network affiliates have Twitter accounts. WSLS, the NBC affiliate, only recently created an account, but has done an admirable job of posting timely and regular news updates. WSET, the ABC affiliate has been posting for much longer, but I have a beef about how they use Twitter, but I’ll get to that a little later. WDBJ7, which is my preferred local news source even though I used to anchor and report for WSLS, has a Twitter account, but has only posted one update. Lastly (in almost ever sense of the word), the WFXR, the Fox affiliate, does not have Twitter, much less its own news department - they pay the NBC station to produce the Fox 10 p.m. newscast.

Oh, and my favorite local news anchor (sorry Jay!) Natasha Ryan has a Twitter account. From what I can tell, only her and WSET reporter and weekend anchor Margaret Clevenstine are the only local on-air personalities with active Twitter accounts. Both are relatively new to Twitter. Natasha just started hers and Maggie has been on since July, but hasn’t posted a new update since Sept. 7. Booo!

Look, there’s not one right way to use Twitter and I suppose that certain Twitter patterns appeal to different people. But, the way I see it - Twitter is a “what’s happening now” service. And in that regard, WSET fails in my opinion. See the picture below which is a screen shot of what appears on my Twitter home page, which displays all of the Tweets from the Tweeple I follow. This is not what I want to see.

Clearly it appears that they have some automated system, probably something akin to TwitterFeed (or some poor intern) that blasts all of their news stories at one time. Uh, no. If I want all of your news at once at a predicable time, I would WATCH your news. I’m looking for you to post news AS it happens. That is the point of using Twitter.

Now, I worked in TV for a number of years and for the most part, there are still a lot of zealots running the show, so the transition and adoption of new means of communcations are slow to make their way to the newsroom. Which, is really mind boggling considering that these tools such as blog and microblogs are completely free and can be used with Mobile devices. If you can send and receive text messages, you can post and receive Tweets. It just takes some time to educate your staff and management - something I would be HAPPY to do for WSET and any other company that wants to learn more about Twitter.

Yes, I know, I can sign up for text alerts from virtually any news outlet and that’s cool, but I only get those after the stories have been filed and someone has posted them to the Web site which then triggers the alert to come to my phone. But imagine if a reporter is on the scene of major event, but is waiting for the live truck and the news director can’t be reached to authorize a break-in-programming live event? How cool would it be to read a reporter’s accounts of the news event as it happens?

For example: Let’s say we have a standoff (which I have covered as a photo journalist), but the reporter is just standing there while the photog (videographer) is rolling endless minutes of tape waiting for something to happen.

@tv-reporter: Camera is rolling and the SWAT team is getting into position, but police won’t say if or when they will go in.

@tv-reporter: Gunman is yelling out of his window. Wants the police to back off. Threatening to shoot anyone that comes in.

@tv-reporter: Lots of activity. Feels like something is about to happen - stay tuned!

@tv-reporter: They’re going in! Camera is still rolling! Loud explosion from the flash-bang grenade. No shots - suspect in custody!

Now, this brings up a whole other issue, but one that the media has dealt with before: what if the bad guys are Twittering, too? Highly doubtful, at least now it is. Who knows in 5-10 years?

The bottom line is, this is a free tool that media outlets should be taking advantage of. Every reporter should have a Twitter account and giving viewers and readers behind the scenes information about the news they are covering, especially TV because we only get :30 to :90 worth of news per story and that’s not enough to tell the whole story.

The age of media convergeance is upon us. Newspapers like the Roanoke Times send reporters out in the field with video cameras to post video and interviews on the Web site. TV stations are having their anchors write print-style news for the station’s Web site, though they should really be using blogs at this point - especially Twitter.