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The Lincoln County Journal joins Twitter
Jeremy Ide
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The Lincoln County Journal is trying something new. For the first time our weekly paper will be going daily. If that wasn't enough we will be going hourly. For the first time the readers of The Lincoln County Journal will be able to get their Lincoln County news minute-by-minute.
In these days of a tightening economy, the first question that must be asking is: how is this possible. As an answer I will provide you with this...
www.twitter.com/LincolnCounty.
For those of you who don't know, the staff of The Lincoln County Journal sends the paper up to the printing press at noon on Friday. The papers get printed off and sent back here to the Journal's offices on Saturday morning. The carriers pick them up and deliver them to your doors, yards, boxes and driveways usually anytime from Saturday to the Tuesday date that is on every paper.
This naturally leaves you with a gap of news. All of the news that happens after that noon deadline must wait up to eleven days to get out in the next Tuesday's paper. We have had our Web site (
www.lincolncountyjournal.com) up allowing us to post breaking news information but how will you know when we put a breaking news story on the site? What about non-breaking news that needs to go out before the next Tuesday? Take our first post on our Twitter site as an example. Last week the Trojans baseball team competed in the Trojan Classic. After winning their game on Thursday afternoon, I sent out a "tweet" telling our followers when the Trojans next game would be. The next game was the following day (Friday) at 1:30 p.m. If I would have included that information in the paper that was sent up to press just an hour and a half before the game began, by the time people received their papers (Saturday at the earliest) it would have already been too late to root on and support their community's team.
If you already have Twitter then please, go to
www.twitter.com/LincolnCounty and click on the button that says, "follow." Then follow the instructions to set up your mobile alerts.
If you are new to Twitter and want to get started then just follow these instructions. Go to
www.twitter.com/LincolnCounty (the capital letters are not necessary). From there you can see all of the updates that we have put on our Twitter site. Click on the green box at the top of the page that says, "Join Today!" Enter your first and last name in the first box and then your preferred username in the second box. Next you have to enter a password so that no one else can post to your Twitter site. Then you need to enter your email address so that Twitter can send you information when people you are following update their status. The next step will ask you to see if any of your email contacts are using Twitter, you can also skip this and go to the next step by clicking the "Skip this step" link at the bottom of the page. The next page will show you some of the most popular profiles on Twitter, you can go through them and decide if you want to follow any or click the "Skip this step" link at the bottom of the page. Once you do that you will officially be a member of Twitter and will already be following The Lincoln County Journal's Twitter feed. Whenever you log onto Twitter or refresh to your Twitter homepage you will be able to see the newest posts and the latest updates about your community from the Lincoln County Journal's Twitter feed.
One of the main reasons that The Lincoln County Journal got a Twitter page was so that our readers could also follow our updates on their mobile phones. To set up your mobile phone updates: sign into Twitter using your account and then click on settings right under where your name appears on your Twitter page. Click on the tab that reads "devices" and then follow the instructions to set up your phone. The Twitter Web site then states to add your phone number, with country code first (+1 is the US country code; a US phone number would look like this: +14153368687), then wait for the verification code to pop up. To complete the registration you must text the verification code to Twitter using the number 40404. Twitter encourages users to be sure to check with your mobile service provider to make sure text messages are covered in your phone's service plan. Twitter will not charge you but your carrier might, so make sure you check to avoid a big bill. Once you have set up your phone send a text message to 40404 that reads "FOLLOW LincolnCounty." From that point on, when we update our status Twitter will send you a text message with our new update.
If you have any questions about Twitter, go to
www.twitter.com. They have a video on the site explaining their site. If you are having trouble setting up your account or with anything else with Twitter, you can go to help.twitter.com. For questions about The Lincoln County Journal's Twitter page, call Jeremy Ide at the Journal's office (636-528-9550) or email me at lcjreporter1@lcs.net.
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