Here’s what you do next time a BIG story hits: As you send your reporters out to cover the story, get them to post short bits of news (limited to 140 characters) to a Twitter feed that either you’ve set up for this story, or that you keep ready for significant breaking news. With reporters filing short bits from their cell phones, you’ll be able to offer your audience new information even faster than you could with a breaking-news blog. “Rescue crews just pulled a body out from under the 12th Street Bridge.” “Police are chasing an apparent suspect on foot near the downtown library.”

Feed this to your site and to subscribed cell phone alerts. Urge your readers to “follow” your breaking-news Twitter stream from their own Twitter accounts.

Here’s what you do next time a BIG story hits: As you send your reporters out to cover the story, get them to post short bits of news (limited to 140 characters) to a Twitter feed that either you’ve set up for this story, or that you keep ready for significant breaking news. With reporters filing short bits from their cell phones, you’ll be able to offer your audience new information even faster than you could with a breaking-news blog. “Rescue crews just pulled a body out from under the 12th Street Bridge.” “Police are chasing an apparent suspect on foot near the downtown library.”

Feed this to your site and to subscribed cell phone alerts. Urge your readers to “follow” your breaking-news Twitter stream from their own Twitter accounts.

This post was submitted by jon.

BBC News has reorganized its news division into a “multimedia newsroom” that combines radio, TV and online.

Peter Horrocks, the head of the new integrated news operation, writes:

Until today the editorial decisions have been taken separately in three different departments – Radio News, News Interactive and TV News. Now those proud departments are no more. Instead we have a new system that allows the great strengths of each of our editorial areas to create an even stronger editorial proposition. We have re-organised into two main departments responsible for our audience-facing services:

• The multimedia newsroom comprises the BBC News website, the radio summaries and bulletins (except for Radio 1), BBC World Service news, BBC News 24, BBC World, BBC Breakfast and the bulletins on BBC One at 1, 6 and 10, among others.

• The multimedia programmes departments contains Five Live, the Today programme, World at One, Newsbeat, Newshour, Newsnight, Panorama, the Andrew Marr Show, Hardtalk and a wide range of other diverse programmes.

This new structure will help us to be more efficient and so save money to invest in improvements to BBC News. We will be putting more into on-demand news – for instance developing content for new platforms such as mobile and IPTV; increasing personalisation and providing purpose-made audio/video for the web.

The new organisation also allows for our journalism to be used more dynamically across our three main existing platforms – web, radio and TV. But I’d like to know how far we should go with this. So for web users such as you I’d like to know if you mainly look to BBC News for an in-depth approach on the day’s most significant stories, or do you value more diversity in the range of subjects we cover?

If we drive our stories more across platforms you will see greater consistency within BBC News – with similar editorial judgments being made across different services. We could concentrate resources on developing the most significant and original stories in greater depth. However the downside could be a narrowing of the range of stories we cover, with less coverage that is distinctive and tailored for each medium.

He says:

Maybe a beat reporter could do a way better job if there was a “live” social network connected to the beat, made up of people who know the territory the beat covers, and want the reporting on that beat to be better.

Jay Rosen has initiated an interesting experiment in which he’s recruited 12 news organizations to particpate in a social network beat reporting experiment.

He says:

Maybe a beat reporter could do a way better job if there was a “live” social network connected to the beat, made up of people who know the territory the beat covers, and want the reporting on that beat to be better.

Houston Chronicle, with Eric Berger doing a reported blog about science.

Star-Ledger of Newark, with Ed Silverman news blogging on the pharmaceutical industry .

Wired.com, with Eliot Van Buskirk, reporter, beat blogger and columnist on digital music.

Dallas Morning News, with Kent Fischer on the Dallas public schools beat, joined by Tawnell Hobbs

Cincinnati Enquirer, with Keith Reed reporting on Procter & Gamble.

ESPN.com, with Henry Abbott covering NBA basketball, blog-style.

Education Week’s Digital Directions, with Michelle Davis on technology in the K-12 classroom.

News-Press of Ft. Myers, Florida, with a statewide child welfare beat by a reporter yet to be named.

San Jose Mercury News with Matt Nauman on energy and “green” tech.

The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, PA with Daniel Victor covering the town of Hershey, PA.

MTV News with Stephen Totilo on video games and their makers.

Chronicle of Higher Education with Brad Wolverton on the business of college sports, nationwide.

Seattle Times with Brier Dudley covering Northwest technology companies.

Click here for more detailed explanations of these projects.

You can follow their progress over the coming year at beatblogging.org, a compendium site that launched today.

“The Internet moves very fast,” says Gary “Numa Numa” Brolsma. “Your video has to be funny, or get to the point, very quickly. People are clicking all the time. If you don’t hook people in the first 15 seconds, they’ll move on.”

Update: After reports Tuesday that Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the News Corporation, says he expects to make access to The Wall Street Journal’s Web site free, a top Dow Jones executive told Editor and Publisher the comments were premature.

Making the site free would mean giving up $50 million a year in subscriber fees with the hopes of growing the site’s traffic enough to earn even more in ad revenue.

In response to complaints that information in old New York Times articles that is wrong, incomplete or embarrassing is getting attention in search engine results, The Times has adjusted its policy.

New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt reports that under the new policy, if The Times wrote that someone was accused of a crime but never reported the outcome, a note will be put in the archive if there was an acquittal or the charges were dropped, as long as the person has documentary evidence.

Hoyt says:

I think the change is good but not enough. Editors are determined not to remove material from the archive, in effect sanitizing history, and I agree with that. But I think other steps could be taken. For one, the software that pushes material higher in Web searches can be used selectively, so that it doesn’t affect some articles.

Bill Keller, the executive editor, said he found that option “a little creepy. It’s going to exist, but we’re going to hide it?” That, he said, “seems contrary to the vision of journalism.” But I’m not sure what journalistic value is served by highlighting forever the nine-year-old arrest of a 22-year-old for possession of marijuana, as The Times does.

I think The Times hasn’t heard the last of this issue.