I follow the Twitter streams of all five local news stations in my area. (Yes. Five. The Albany area has less than a million people but five local TV stations each with 5+ hours of news coverage a day. Really, not that much interesting stuff happens here. But that’s another post for another day.)

Three of the stations use Twitter solely to send out automated tweets with links to their news stories. Sure, these stations can say they are “on” Twitter, but I don’t think automation like that adds much value.

The two others stations are much more interesting. The local CBS affiliate allows its field reporters all to post to the account, so you often get a sense of how they go about tracking down stories based on watching the feed. They share lots of links but not all are to news stories; some are just interesting tidbits about the area.

The NBC affiliate, WNYT, also does a good job of giving a human voice to its Twitter feed and not just automating the account. I met Chris Rooney, who manages the station’s Twitter account, at Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley and reached out to him to get a better sense of how they go about managing the social media strategy at the station. Here are some excerpts from my e-mail interview with him:

On getting started with Twitter

“Our experience with Twitter started in January, just before the big Twitter boom.  We sent Benita Zahn [6 p.m. anchor] to Washington, D.C. to cover the inauguration and wanted to her to post to our site from the road.  It seemed too cumbersome to expect her to lug around a laptop and login to our CMS in the field.

Our creative services director, Rob Madeo, and I had both dabbled a little with Twitter on our own at the point and we both thought it would be a good solution for Benita.  So I set up and account for her and she tweeted from the inauguration via text messages.

About six weeks later, we sent [sports reporter] Andrew Catalon to Ohio to cover the Siena Saints in the NCAA Tournament and decided we wanted him to tweet from to road too.  So we set up an account for him and likewise I encouraged him to continue tweeting upon his return. Rodger Wyland [sports anchor] appeared interested in all this.  So we gave him an account too.”

On moving away from the “glorified RSS feed” Twitter model

“Shortly after the inauguration, I set up a general WNYT account.  Initially it just regurgitated our local news RSS feed.  But early on we started to not only post original tweets, but to also retweet others and even pass along links to other news outlets, for example an interesting article from the New York Times.  This made our Twitter feed feel like it served more of a purpose than just being a glorified RSS reader.  It just seemed like the proper use for it.  After all, we’re in the information sharing business.”

On using Twitter to cover breaking news

“The Buffalo commuter plane crash and the Binghamton shootings really showed us the power of Twitter for a news outlet.  These were major breaking news events and we were able to quickly and easily pass along rapid updates as the stories developed.  We also passed along relevant links we had dug up, like Google Maps street views of the locations involved or sites were you could listen to police scanner transmissions.

Likewise, Twitter proved an effective way to keep people up to date in real time with the developments during the craziness in the NY State Senate this summer.”

On ditching what doesn’t work

“Early on, in addition to sending out news updates, we used our feed for promotions – telling people what was coming up on the 5 p.m. news or that there was a new episode of 30 Rock on tonight.  But we gave up on that pretty quickly.  I got the sense that our followers wanted to know what was happening right now, not a tease for what was going to happen later on.”

On managing the flow

“Right now I’m pretty much in charge of Twitter at our station with help from a few other people.  I post our tweets and follow numerous other feeds (I use Twhirl mostly) and quickly alert the newsroom when I see something interesting (we’ve picked up a few story tips this way).

I also encourage our reporters and photographers to take pictures in the field and send them to Twitpic.  We’re starting to do more of this, although I wish we were doing it even more often.

I’ve been a little reluctant to pass out our Twitter password to everyone in the newsroom.  That makes tweeting from the field difficult for our reporters.  But now that I’ve figured out how to get around that by using a TwitterMail account I hope to have everyone tweeting on the main WNYT account soon.  For a lot of our staff, it’s still something a little new and foreign to them, but hopefully that will change.”

On single vs. multiple Twitter accounts

“We’ve had an interesting internal debate over the value of individual accounts or having one central one.  For example, you’ll note that Rodger, Andrew and our back-up sports guy Mike Levin all have individual accounts (Mike set his up on his own).  We were going to do that for our weather guys too, but instead decided to create a single “First Warning” account for them all to share.

There are two schools of thought on this.  I guess the thinking is that it’s easier for people to only have to follow one feed and it reinforces the First Warning brand.  Personally, I prefer letting them have individual accounts.  I think it helps personalize our talent and gives people a chance to feel connected to them.  I guess you can make an argument either way.”

On using Facebook, too

“We also maintain a WNYT Facebook page.  I launched that not long before Facebook redesigned the public profiles.  When I created it, I wasn’t really sure what to do with it.  I was mainly just staking our claim in the Facebook world.  As with Twitter, I initially set it up to send a feed of all of our stories to the page.  I was never really pleased with how that worked and started picking and choosing stories to post by hand instead.

Even still though, I was posting a lot – maybe too much, especially when it came to the harder news stories.  It was my wife who actually pointed out to me that people mainly use Facebook for fun, to socialize and escape.  They don’t want to see news about the fatal fire showing up on their start page.  So with that in mind, I started being much more selective, posting the stories I think are mostly likely to spark a conversation or that people will find particularly interesting.

Facebook has also proved helpful during severe weather events, giving people a place to share photos and videos of the hail storm or the flooding or whatever else Mother Nature is dumping on us this summer.  These photos always seem to generate a lot of “likes” and comments.”

Thanks, Chris, for taking the time to share how WNYT is learning and navigating the social media waters.

What are you seeing in your local markets? How are local TV news outlets engaging with you via social media in innovative ways?

(Update Aug. 14 — A few folks have pointed out to me via Twitter that Albany’s local ABC affiliate, WTEN, is also using Twitter beyond just an RSS feed. They post links to stories and also weather reports and updates from certain reporters. Thanks for clarifying).