With hackgate consuming the news cycle for the last couple of weeks, I am sure your twitter timelines have been an avalanche of information. Rumour and conjecture run free in twitter and it can be hard to be sure of the information you are getting.
Here’s a little guide to who are providing excellent coverage of he whole affair:
Breaking News
@fieldproducer A freelance journalist at Sky News, Neal Mann’s twitter feed can seem like a news channel of its own. Updates on breaking news are accompanied by retweets from a wide range of sources to provide a reliable and informative feed. If you add one person to your twitter feed, it should be this man!
@journodave Another reliable feed of updates, but with a bit more comment on what is happening. He also provides a good number of links to tit-bits around the internet.
@BBCLauraK The BBC’s chief political correspondent (though soon to move to ITV News) is unsurprisingly a solid source of what is breaking. Her excellent access allows her to pick out interesting bits of news.
Comment
@michaelsavage Part of the Times political team. Good summary of what is going on, and highlights key points of events that have just happened.
@iankatz1000 Deputy Editor of the Guardian, Ian Katz is obviously pretty close to this story. His twitter feed is an excellent feed of comment, retweets summaries.
@arusbridger Rusbridger is the Editor in Chief at the Guardian, and at times has been part of the story. His twitter timeline, however, is an excellent source of articles written about the issue. Articles from the Guardian, obviously, and the New York Times feature prominently.
@TimMontgomorie The editor of Conservative Home has not held back during this story, providing an excellent balance to some of the more excitable (left leaning?) coverage that has dominated.
@christopherhope The Telegraphs Whitehall editor, is a fan of retweets, but they provide a wealth of commentary on what is happening right now
@tom_watson The MP at the centre of the story, years of dogged work in Parliament brought this story to the fore. His tweets look at what is going on in Parliament as well as interacting with lots of his followers. He also notifies his followers of what is playing in his office every day (The Doors feature quite often)
@ravisomaiya Journalist at the New York Times’ London office, Ravi provides excellent links to coverage from the States.
@glinner Famous for writing Father Ted and the IT Crowd, Linehan seems to have a part-time job as a content management service for breaking news on twitter. An excellent stream of links and tweets interspersed with tweets of his own.
@bynickdavies The journalist who broke it all. Mostly links to his and other journalists writing – almost all of which is worth a read.
@davelee Another freelance journalist, Lee provides good comment on what is breaking, mostly looking at the media angle of the story.
Entertaining
@gilescoren looking for some outspoken defiance of the ‘twitter-norm’? step forward Giles Coren, As a writer for the Times, he has obviously been touched by some of the attacks on News International. Moments after Rebekah Brooks resigned, he declared on twitter, “I like Rebekah Brooks. She;s a good person, and I’m sad that she’s gone. And I don’t give a flying fuck what Twitter thinks.”
@prodnose – Danny Baker has been providing irreverant, and at times completely surreal, commentary on the hacking story. Worth a follow, but at times you might not really know what he is talking about.
@robbiereviews Until recently Robbie Collin was the film critic for the News of the World. An innocent victim of the various political moves, he is now killing time by tweeting entertaining commentary of his days.
#Hackgate has dominated the agenda for the last fortnight, and it looks like the news channels will be leading with this for some time to come. Hopefully this will be a good guide to who to follow all the breaking news with on twitter.
Follow all of these people on my hackgate list here