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A quick guide to covering breaking news

By Steffen Leidel

Whether catastrophe in Japan, the Arab Spring or Osama Bin Laden’s demise, recent events have shown even hard-nosed skeptics that there’s no way to escape social media as a news source for journalists. But undiluted tweets and wall posts on Facebook don’t necessarily carry news value in and of themselves. You need the right filters and a clear search strategy to extract the most relevant content from the excess of information. As Clay Shirky put it, "It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.”^{Photo credit: g23armstrong / Flickr}

How to stay on top of the latest, breaking news? How to filter the non-stop flow of information? How to discern relevant, credible sources? How to verify the information you find? Here are some steps you can take to cope with international breaking news.

1. Be prepared. Create your own social circle for breaking news.

Breaking news happens without warning. So you should be prepared by setting up your own personal news circle. Twitter is an ideal medium for staying on top of the latest because it allows you to create your own customized news ticker. It’s a good idea to follow the breaking news accounts of major media outlets, such as CNN, Spiegel, BBC, Al Jazeera. Also a good choice is an account called Breaking News, which combines hundreds of news sources from around the world.