Twitter

Some people give twitter a bad name. They feel compelled to tell the world every minor detail of their life (as if we could care less!). However don’t let that put you off – twitter can be a useful tool for keeping up to date with news. Long before I started sharing my opinions (actually not too long – after all, I’ve been involved in politics since I was a teenager – and the sort of person who has stood for councils; Parliament and the European Parliament, is rarely slow to share their “insights/prejudices etc” with everyone else!!!!) I used Twitter to gather information.

The first step, if you haven’t done so already, is to set up a twitter account. Then “follow” the tweets of those that will provide the information. Use the search facility on the right hand side of the top of the screen.

I follow

For UK

o UK Parliament
o House of Lords
o Hansard Society
o BBCWestminHour
o BBC Parliament/DL
o PA Westminster
o HuffPostUKPolitics
o BBC Radio 4 Today
o DailySunday Politics (BBC)
o Sky News
o Guardian Politics
o Laura Kuenssberg (ITV)
o Carolyn Quinn (BBC)
o Norman Smith (BBC)
o Sean Curran (BBC)
o Toby Helm (Observer)
o Andrew Sparrow (Guardian)
o Ann Treneman (Times)
o Alex_Stevenson (politics.co.uk)
o Jon Snow

For USA

o Roll Call
o The Hill
o Politico
o National Journal
o Slate
o Nancy Pelosi (House Minority Leader)
o Steny Hoyer (House Minority Whip)
o Senator Harry Reid (Senate Majority Leader)

For France

o Le Monde
o Francois Hollande
o Axelle Lemaire (Depute in Assemblee nationale representing Europe du Nord)
o Parti Socialiste

For the European Union

o European Voice
o European Parliament

Catching up on the News

With the internet, there has been an explosion of sources of news - long gone are the days when we have to rely on what the limited number of permitted radio and TV stations and newspapers report. Of course there is a downside. On the first phrases taught when learning about computers was "GIGO - Garbage in, garbage out". Readers need to be discerning!

How can anyone manage the deluge of information? Once signing up for emails from a favoured news source was a useful way of getting news - but the time that could be spent opening and reading all the emails would take a significant bite out of anyone's day!

I found it useful to set up a twitter account (WM Alert) - which subscribes to tweets from news sources that I respect and trust - for example -

News Organisations (UK)
- BBC Politics
- Guardian Politics
- Indy Politics (The Independent)

News Organisations (US)
- New York Times Politics
- (Washington) Post Politics
- NPR Politics
- CNN Politics
- MSNBC Politics

Parliamentary Specialists
- UK Parliament
- ePolitix
- LobbyDog

Congressional Specialists
- Roll Call
- The Hill
- Politico
- C-SPAN

In addition I subscribe to feeds from various reporters on the Hill

Academic/Think Tanks
- APSA
- IPSA
- Brookings
- Hansard Society
- Chatham House

and many more, including (the full list is available on the WM_Alert page on twitter). I use WM_Alert for my personal use, but also retweet stories of interest. You are very welcome to subscribe