Fort Hood Shootings: News Orgs Put Twitter Lists to the Test

Earlier this week, we wrote about how news organizations are already using Twitter Lists. Today, they’re getting their first major test, by way of a tragic breaking news event – a deadly shooting at Fort Hood in Texas.

Details are still coming in about the event, but Lists being created by major news brands are providing some of the best coverage, as they offer a real-time view of what multiple sources – both local and national – are reporting. Here’s a look at what a few news organizations are doing:

The New York Times: Their Fort Hood Shootings list has updates from news organizations throughout Texas, the US Army, as well as what look to be several citizen journalists on the ground.

The Today Show: Similarly, The Today Show has found local news organizations and people in the area for their Fort Hood list. They are also included feeds from several NBC properties like MSNBC and the local NBC affiliates.

Dallas Morning News: Reporter Scott Goldstein has taken it upon himself to setup a list of news sources.

The Huffington Post: The popular news blog is putting its real-time curation to the test with a three column display of Twitter lists on its site – Fort Hood Locals, Breaking News, and Central TX News.

What’s really interesting here from a media perspective is that we’re seeing news organizations that compete vigorously for breaking news turning to real-time curation to help tell the story. And the result is certainly a win for media consumers – rather than searching far and wide for local news from Fort Hood, it’s all being aggregated for us by news organizations we trust. It certainly might be a glimpse of what’s to come from the Twitter Lists feature.

Meanwhile, if you’ve seen some useful Fort Hood lists that we’ve missed, please share them in the comments and we’ll keep our post updated with the latest.