Twitter is like a stethoscope pressed firmly against the beating heart of a vibrant community. Through this communication tool, it is actually possible to hear the ongoing thoughts of people as they experience content/news for the first, second and third time. You can listen in on a community’s reaction to a story as it unfolds.

Clive Thompson hit the nail on the head when he described the twitter service as “…almost like ESP” in the Wired article How twitter creates a social sixth sense. I’m amazed at the number of awe-inspiring, seasoned newsmen and women have yet to experience this “sixth sense.” And it’s not for lack of trying on their part, either. More often than not I see people give it a serious look and dismiss it as too time consuming before realizing just how mighty a tool it could be.

The previous method of communicating with the community required someone to first become inspired to write a letter to the publication, and then have that letter reviewed by the staff. It continues to this day.

It may be a bit premature to pronounce the “Letters to the Editor” section dead, so instead I’m calling for a quick and painless demise. It’s not that I disagree with the letters to the editor section’s intent — I don’t. Prior to mass Internet publishing, it was the only part of the media people in the community could claim as their own. I’ve heard many seasoned editors shared their opinion about why it is a necessary and integral part of the newspaper. Everyone has a voice and everyone’s voice should be heard.

I agree completely.

That being said, I don’t bother reading the Op-Ed section of any newspaper, magazine, or any other printed form of media. I’m not picking it up to hear about the community’s reaction to content that ran days, weeks or months ago. When I pick something up, I want to consume the content I’ll be talking about later. I want fresh ideas, or recycled ideas that are researched and very well written. But, I don’t want to waste my time searching for it. The community should shape the content, but that does not mean it should take over the content — at least not when I’m turning a page.

With services like Twitter, it is now possible for the community to have a voice without having to recognize a special section as long as the news organization is listening to the beat of the community.

Here’s a few suggestions for utilizing twitter inside your newsroom:

- Decide who your community is and start “following” them. Make sure you set very basic but crucial stipulations for adding someone to your community-wire/twitter account. This means finding everyone in a specific location, anyone with a particular interest or any combination of the two.

- Read the comments/tweets and comment/tweet back when appropriate. It’s difficult when working on a story during a tight deadline to do anything that does not directly involve turning in that assignment and making sure it is accurate and free of careless errors. However, consider who you are writing this for. Look up from the desk and type out a short 140-character note about what you are working on, what you are stumped on, etc. It makes a big difference.

- Send out links to your story via twitter feed as soon as they are published online. Don’t send every story the paper is publishing that day and don’t force more content out there than anyone can reasonably consume while going about their busy day. Sarah Lacy has a great blog post about the difference between spam and link sharing.

- Create discussion when it’s quiet. On quiet days, ask the community/twitter followers questions pertaining to the newspaper or whatever it is you may be working on. Keep the subject of your tweets/messages related to the news organization, but remember to act like a human being an not a robot.

OffTheBus has gotten quite a bit of attention for the work of its citizen journalist contributors. This past week we expanded the definition of the term, at least for us here at OffTheBus, by including among our staff eight citizen-journalism editors! Nearly all of the OpEd posts on OffTheBus this week and last have been edited and proofed by this team, taking turns working day and night shifts from their spots around the country.

The team is diverse and includes filmmakers, journalists, teachers, university students, a former film-industry flack and at least one Army reporter. They have written short posts introducing themselves that we’ll be including tonight in a feature on OffTheBus. All of them to various degrees have been contributors to the OTB project and are interested in seeing the evolution of a new kind of more responsive journalism. As Editor Beth Morrissey put it in her introduction: “I have followed the candidates through battleground states … and what surprised me most was how traditional media chose to cover the exact same stories [about the candidates and the campaigns] in the exact same ways… Some of the most exciting stories this election story have been broken by citizen journalists.”