by Amani Channel

The only video I rolled about the Atlanta flood was with my iPhone, and it wasn’t wet.

What a difference a year makes. Last year I had the opportunity to integrate social & mainstream media. As Mario Page and I traveled across the southeast last summer covering T.S. Fay, Hurricane Guvstav, Ike, and T.S. Hanna for HDNews, I was busy posting videos and tweeting from the field. Using hashtags for each storm, I quickly saw my number of followers surge as I provided the community with up to the minute information from the field.

I was able to engage in conversations, ask questions about damage, and was interviewed by social media strategist Wayne Sutton about what I was experiencing.

This time around, I was working in an office at Public Broadcasting Atlanta, monitoring Twitter and the #atlflood hashtag. I used the opportunity to share informative tweets though the @LensonAtlanta account (I’m the community manager for PBA’s social network).

I wasn’t able to monitor how all of the local stations used Twitter, but it seemed that 11Alive News had a strong presence (thanks to Chris Sweigart), and a lot of folks were re-tweeting stories from the AJC, and WSB-TV.

Twitter still isn’t being maximized by local reporters or news organizations during big stories, especially weather. Weather is usually random and wide reaching, which is why Twitter can be so effective for building followers, and engaging in two-way conversations with people who are living through it. If each field reporter tweeted regularly the public would soak it up.

One of my colleagues noticed how hard it was to tell fact from fiction on Twitter. The credibility of news organizations can’t be denied during breaking news. If nothing else, the assignment desk should be able to engage with the Twitter community. The Desk could serve as the gatekeeper and vet the information, and tweet up to the minute news.

I personally like the idea of the reporter tweeting breaking info from the field, but it can be challenging when news is changing rapidly, and the weather isn’t ideal. Reporters must also concentrate on news gathering, and twittering can be a distraction.

If a reporter has a strong Twitter presence, it can be a great way to publicize his/her story of the day or when s/he is going live. Jim Long (@newmediajim), a NBC network photojournalist does a great job of interacting with the public especially before his camera is live.

For this storm, the Twitter/MSM community did a relatively good job of information sharing with a special thanks to Grayson Daughters, Steve Burns, and Tessa Horehled.

MostlyMedia shared these thoughts:

Just as the TV news stations will have “EVEN MORE” coverage throughout the day, online communications gurus will continue to use Twitter throughout this ongoing natural disaster in Georgia.

GlobalValue breaks down the Twitter timeline:

About 6 a.m. Monday, Steve Burns, a freelance journalist near Atlanta, sent out a note on Twitter:

“WSB: Boil water advisory in Douglas County. #atlfloods”

An hour later, Atlanta blogger Grayson Hurst Daughters tweeted from her @spaceyg account:

“Atlanta commuters: use the hashtag #atlflood for Atlanta flood condition notices.”

She followed up quickly with a note to a local TV outlet:

“@11AliveNews, please consider using the hashtag #atlflood in your Tweets! That way all the notices can be indexed/RSS’d. Tx!”

The tag set the tone for an organized, findable stream of aggregated content that helped Atlantans and their friends stay informed as the rain kept falling, killing at least 6 people, swamping interstates and causing major delays at the airport. The Georgia governor declared a state of emergency in 17 counties.Maybe I’ll be in the middle of the action next time.

Although I missed this one, I really didn’t because all of the news was just a tweet away. If the news biz calls me back, maybe I’ll catch the next storm.