Hi @potentialinterviewee, I’m a j-school student…
Requesting interviews over Twitter: embracing #modernity or a big #fauxpas? Dan Reimold, journalism professor at Tampa University, offers some tips for when you should and should not use Twitter to gather interview subjects.
The ubiquity of social media makes it easy to find celebrities, experts, other journalists, and all kinds of interesting, relevant people on Twitter. Does that mean it's okay to "tweet greet" them, requesting an interview for a story? Not necessarily, writes journalism professor Dan Reimold.
"Are these types of public, quick-hit requests a positive for the campus press — enabling students to show initiative and innovation in reaching out to lots of sources who they might otherwise not have a shot at interviewing? Or is it a devolution of the journalist-source relationship? Simply put, is there an element of rudeness embedded within these opening tweets?"
I'm guilty of tweet greeting, but I only do so when I've searched all over the Internet for the email address of the person I'd like to interview. Reimold says students shouldn't be lazy when contacting sources.
[node:ad]"Whenever possible, use Twitter as a search engine for sources, not as the first point of contact. Use the information gleaned from a person's tweets or Twitter profile to click on a personal website or blog — or follow up with a search on Google or Facebook to get an actual email address," he writes.
Read Reimold's full commentary (complete with "10 Rules for Tweet Greet Etiquette") here.
