Laura McQuillan is a Political Reporter Newstalk ZB radio. She is also the Beauty Editor for FishHead Magazine. I have already blogged about Laura here.
Laura has a solid following, and a strong record of Tweeting consistently through the day.
Laura is a great example of how a reporter should use Twitter. Laura lets her personality shine through. This is shown by her reply to my Tweet letting her know to keep an eye on this blog tonight.
The fact she thinks she has photos to worry about is a sign of the sort of relaxed, personality driven account that she runs.
However, what I find most useful from her account are the quotes from press conferences/events just after they happen, Such as:
As well as this, she includes images from these press conferences:
Add in the little observations about what else was going on around her, and it helps make you feel like you are right in the heart of the action.
Laura also does a good line in funny, slighting out of context quotes that help keep the mood on Twitter light, and not too serious.
Laura has been running a couple of campaigns, partially funny, partially serious, on Twitter lately. One of them is about young men in cars making inappropriate comments to her as she walks along the road. She has taken to posting the company name and/or rego number of the cars involved. This is a good use of social media. It helps bring attention to the issue, as well as having the potential that people will know who was involved.
It is great getting an insight into the behind the scenes, hurry up and wait aspect of the work the Press Gallery does.
Over all, Laura has a very good, entertaining balance of fun, light hearted Tweets and more serious journalistic type Tweets. It will be great to watch how she Tweets during the campaign. I look forward to seeing her behind the scenes Tweets/photos/quotes from the campaign.
I will leave the last observation to Laura.
