I have never understood newspapers creating their own versions of AP style. I have worked at a couple of newspapers that had crazy rules that went against AP and I worked quickly to get that changed. There's nothing in AP style that impacts our reporting and changes the quality of our writing, so let's just follow the organization that has been setting style policy for all these years. Don't we have bigger things to worry about than if we should or shouldn't go along with AP?

When reporters ask me how their Twitter account should differ from the newspaper’s, I always point to MetroWest Daily News cops and courts reporter Norman Miller as an example of a reporter using Twitter the right way.  

Should newspapers have both a paper-branded Twitter account and accounts for individual newspapers, even at GateHouse Media's smallest newspapers? Simply put, yes!

A newspaper in Texas is placing reporters' Twitter handles underneath bylines in an effort to drive more eyeballs and engagement to the social media site. It's an interesting idea and I see some real value in the move.

For years, newspapers have been moving away from the words "staff reporter" under a reporter's byline, replaced with the reporter's email address.

President Barack Obama's visit to central Illinois was bound to get great coverage. Both the Peoria Journal Star and the Galesburg Register-Mail kept readers apprised throughout the day. Check out their online packages.

The Rockford Register Star regularly covers board meetings via Twitter, following up with traditional stories for print and web. The live Twitter coverage is well recieved, particularly by a younger audience than their traditional print readers, reports Assistant Managing Editor Anna Derocher.

On Monday, Poynter's Jim Romensko provided a list of the Top 10 newspapers by circulation and details on if the editors of those papers are active on Twitter.

From a Harry Potter callout to the use of Twitter in addition to on-the-scene reporting, check out this compilation of the Best of the Day.

Last week, the New York Times announced it would try using editors to post to their main Twitter account, opposed to taking an automatic feed from their website.

Pretty much a no brainer it seems like for a newspaper like the Times. Actually some were pretty surprised to hear that the paper was basically using an RSS feed for its Tweets.

GateHouse Media's Chris Biondi explained in detail today why the Times made the change and encouraged newspapers to be social, in well, social media and that RSS feeds make that challenging.

Jeff Sonderman, a fellow at Poytner, showed some of the more social Tweets that the Times produced during its experiment-week using Storify.

This week, the American Society of News Editors released what has become a somewhat controversial paper on social media best practices for newsrooms.

The trending feature offered by Twitter, called "Trending Topics,” can offer news staffs a real-time report on the hottest topics out there. Trends track the discussions of the moment, not of yesterday or two hours ago. Used correctly, it is an excellent resource for any newsroom. But first, what are trending topics, aka Twitter trends?

Last month's shootings in Arizona that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and a dozen others, as well as killed six, has sparked lots of talk in the media industry about correcting erroneous Twitter posts. NPR reported early in the shootings that Giffords had been killed.

During Saturday's opening session at the Newspaper Association of America's MediaXchange conference, Twitter's co-founder, Biz Stone, talked about his company's first five years and what's next for social media.

There was an incident this week that impacted the Mississippi governor's office, when an aide of the governor resigned for comments he made on his Twitter account about the disaster in Japan.

Last month's shootings in Arizona that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and a dozen others, as well as killed six, has sparked lots of talk in the media industry about correcting erroneous Twitter posts. NPR reported early in the shootings that Giffords had been killed.