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Sky News Appoints official ‘Twitter Correspondent’
Issued: March 5, 2009
Sky News has today announced that it has appointed a dedicated Twitter Correspondent for the first time. Multi-media producer, Ruth Barnett will take up her new role from Monday 16 March 2009.
As Twitter Correspondent, Ruth will dedicate her time scouring the Twittersphere for news stories on a daily basis and feeding back relevant stories to the rest of the Sky News team. The Sky News online journalists will continue to feed stories on to the Twitter forum allowing Twitterers to react to breaking news, brought to them by Sky News.
Sky News, which has been using Twitter as a valuable medium for newsgathering since July 2007, took the decision to make the Twitter Correspondent role official in order to recognise its ever-increasing power as an important newsgathering and news sharing medium. Its Twitter updates can be followed on twitter.com/skynews. Online News Editor for Sky News, Jon Gripton, said: “Having a member of the team committed to Twittering will not only further increase Sky News’ presence in the Twittersphere, but will also highlight the power of Twitter as a newsgathering tool.
“We’ve used it many times to help report breaking news stories from the UK and abroad – most recently at The Oscars, where we were breaking news of the winners first – ahead of TV and the newswires – as well as posting pictures from the red carpet and interacting with fellow Twitterers”.
Other recent examples of Sky News using the power of Twitter as part of its newsgathering include eye witness reports from the terrorist attack in Lahore, getting the first phone interview on the Buffalo plane crash and showing the first photo of the Hudson River rescue after the passenger jet crash in early 2009.
Ruth was recently named in Broadcast magazine’s ‘Hotshots’ list of up and coming talent for 2008/09. Her tweets can be followed on: twitter.com/RuthBarnett.
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For further details please contact:
Francoise Frost
Francoise.frost@bskyb.com
020 7941 5840
Notes to Editors:
Sky News and skynews.com: Since its launch in 1989, Sky News has established itself as a formidable and innovative force in the world of news broadcasting. It now provides news to around 145 million people in 36 countries in Europe alone, with distribution across Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Valued for fairness, balance and journalistic objectivity by both viewers and regulators, the award-winning channel has also earned a reputation for the speed of its 24-hour coverage and flexibility in reporting live news – first.
In addition to its status as one of Europe's leading 24 hour news channels, sky.com/news is one of the fastest growing websites on the continent. It is also available on mobile phones, on desktops, on UK rail platforms and Virgin Atlantic flights.
Sky News now also makes programmes for web-only broadcast on skynews.com. These include, ‘Unplugged’ - a new live show broadcast from Sky’s Millbank studio, during which Martin Stanford will discuss the most topical and interesting stories of the day – but with no running order, the programme will be able to respond to latest developments as they happen.
In April 2007 skynews.com launched embedded video clips as standard on the site.
Skynews.com won the Royal Television Society’s innovation award in 2007 for the user generated content it carried during Sky News’ Green Week. And in 2008, it won the Association of Online Publishers award for website of the year.
In March 2009 Sky News Radio became the sole provider of national and international news to all commercial stations in the UK – reaching around 31 million listeners in total – when it took over the contract to supply IRN stations, in addition to its existing clients.
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