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I know that all the cool kids are atwitter over Twitter. I want to be a cool kid, too, so I've been checking it out. At this writing, 46 people with a Greensboro, N.C., location come up in a Twitter search, including some online friends.

The potential value of a Twitter network for journalists is clear and striking. The ability to shoot out information to a network -- and to get information from the network-- during hot and heavy breaking news is a powerful incentive.

It will be a simple, even essential, tool for an experiment like this. Surely there are enough people interested in getting immediate, real-time updates on what the state legislators are doing and who would want to be able to talk back. Same with people interested in local government and business.

But given the speed with which new technology is adopted, are we ready yet? Have the Twitter people reached a tipping point, even for experimentation? Of the 46 people from Greensboro, the most recent updates range from an hour ago to 8 months ago. I asked my college-age daughters, who know their way around technology and use their phones for everything, about Twitter, and they looked at me blankly. (I'm used to that look; it is right next to the look of condescension I get when I show my ignorance. Had they known about Twitter that's the look I'd have gotten. The third look, by the way, is the one of shame, like when they discovered I have a Facebook account.)

I know from experience on our blogs that asking for help with a topic or judgment or interview subject gets spotty response at best. But Twitter is certainly more mobile and more immediate than blogging so it could be more successful. I've certainly watched enough people text during driving to know that if so inspired you can read and write anywhere.

More than a year ago, writing about something else, Jeff Jarvis said: The question is not, 'How do we get enough stuff to get people to come to us?' That is their old-media model. I think the question is, 'How do we go to where the people are with what they need and how do we enable them to do what they want to do?'

I believe that's exactly right. What I don't know is whether enough people are gathered at Twitter right now to make it much more than being a cool kid engaging with a cool new thing. Help.

Last week, Howard Owens posted a wonderful list of objectives for today's non-wired journalists. Inspired, our editors pulled together our own challenge to our more-or-less wired journalists. I sent this out yesterday to our staff:

Last week, I sent you all information about Howard Owens' challenge to journalists. We liked Howard's idea so much that we want to offer you a similar challenge that will help you in your career and help us achieve our 2008 top 10 list, which includes:

* Everyone will stretch themselves, improving their work, learning new skills, becoming better.
* We will innovate constantly, experimenting with new forms of journalism and new publishing methods. We will be quick to drop what doesn't work.
* We will publish news digitally -- big and small -- when we verify it and update it as often as necessary to serve the audience. Everyone will get training; everyone will play.

We didn't replicate Howard's challenge entirely. Like Howard, we will give you a $100 gift certificate (to Friendly Shopping Center). Unlike Howard, we only ask that you do eight of the 10, and it is your choice which eight. Also unlike him, we will give it to the first 10 of you who complete and maintain these for three months.

A few of these are geared more to reporters, although we've tried to be inclusive. If you aren't a reporter, go to Howard's list and select from there to fill out your 10. If you're interested in customizing an approach with a few that aren't on either list, let's hear it.

Sound like a lot of work for a small payout? Perhaps, but consider it an investment in your own development. And I'd bet it will be fun. My guess is that your PIP will have some of these as actions, too, so you'll have a head start. Let your editor, Ann and me know you're giving it a shot.

Here they are:

1. If you have a news beat, file at least five updates a week. This isn't hard. If you're working a story, file updates throughout the day. File the briefs you get from news releases. If a story is breaking file every time you have a snippet more of news. Remember, we must publish every chance we get; we are no longer a once-a-day-delivery newspaper. For editors and designers: Learn about types of headlines that grab online readers. Rewrite headlines on our Web site to make them more interesting for online. Do this for at least three stories per week.

2. From Owens: Become a blogger. Start with a favorite topic. For example, if you're a baseball fan, start with baseball. Find all of the baseball-related blogs you can and become a regular reader of five or six of the best of these blogs. Participate -- leave comments; follow links. After three months of blog reading, start your own blog on that topic. Try to post daily for at least six months. For blog topics, avoid anything related to your beat or politics. First, you need to blog about something you are passionate about; second, there are too many political bloggers already (except maybe for local politics, if you see that need in your community and it won't conflict with your day job).

From me: We have plenty of blogs you can contribute to. If you don't want to blog for us, start one on your own.

3. Learn to post and edit online. And do it often enough to keep the skill up-to-date. In addition to stories, learn how to post any type of file -- maps, charts, photos, PDFs. For editors: Post online at least once a week, and edit at least 10 stories per week online (that's only two per shift). For designers: Learn how to create photo galleries. Create at least one per month. Learn how to add extra features. The Mikes can help with training.

4. Use the digital camera. Shoot the neighborhood sign or street when you are doing a story on a rezoning fight. Shoot people you interview. Shoot a crime scene or a new store. Take photos of spot news if you see it or of anything interesting going on around you. Look for ways we can use your work -- an online gallery, blog, etc. The photos will help us online, and they will help you become comfortable shooting for publication. Do it at least once a week; more often is better. The Mikes can upload the photos.

And Owens is worth adding: Buy a small digital camera that can take both stills and video. Open an account with a photo sharing site such as Flickr or Buzznet. Take photos and post them. If necessary, use some online tutorials for digital photography.

5. Use the audio recorder. We want the three-minute interviews that you do more than the 60-minute conversation. A few snippets so that people can hear the interviewee in person will help bring your story to life. Do it twice a month. The Mikes can help with the upload. For non-reporters, learn about audio. Work with a reporter or videographer to see how it's done. Help edit and post at least one audio project.

6. Subscribe:
* To an RSS feed. Use RSS to keep up with the news of the day and the blogs you are now reading every day. Make sure your blog has an RSS feed. Here's Marc Glaser's guide to RSS. (From Owens)
* To our free products: daily news updates via e-mail and breaking news alerts. Text alerts on your phone. Find them on the home page.
* To our competitor's alerts. A decent number of stories that go online each week originated from an e-mail alert from someone else.

7. From Owens: Join a social networking site. Every professional should have a profile on LinkedIn, so make sure you do, also. Facebook has been hot in 2007, but I think you'l get more out of MySpace, which still remains popular with your future readers. You will get more DIY (the backbone of modern media) experience with MySpace, if you take full advantage of the site features (which, admittedly, I have not). Do Facebook, too, but don' neglect MySpace.

8. Understand and learn video. You don' need to shoot it, although it would be a nice complement to your skills. Learn from Andy Dickinson and Mindy McAdams. Learn from other news sites -- not just newspapers -- that feature video. Then hook up with videographer Michael McQueen at least once to create video for a story. For designers: Team up with a reporter and/or videographer to produce an online project. Even better: Think of a project yourself and then do it. For editors: Team up with a reporter, photographer or videographer to edit the script for an online project. Even better: Write the script yourself.

9. From Owens: Learn to twitter. I'm not a big Twitter user myself, but Ryan Sholin and Jack Lail swear by it. I think there is something to be said for learning how this technology may change information dissemination. Another view is Matthew Ingram's.

10. Innovate. Become a beatblogger. Take an issue on your beat and create a give-and-take online with experts. Create a new form of journalism. You're smart enough. Do it.

Rex Hammock refers to the thrill of seeing one's name in print. Actually, he links to the design director of nytimes.com who is thrilled by it.

Newspapers grew up on putting people's names in print. That's why we run honor rolls and achievements and business promotions and the "chicken dinner news." We got away from it in the 70s and 80s when we got drunk on power and thought we were all going to take down a president. We returned to seeing the value of "refrigerator journalism" in the 90's but it may have been too late. In an area our size, it's next to impossible to do it right in print. There's way more community news than we have space for. But we have pushed community stories onto section fronts, often to the dismay of hard-news junkies.

Like so much in media consumption, I think it's generational. I still hear from people in my generation who thrill to see their names in print. But, really, they thrill more by seeing their children's and grandchildren's names.

Yet, as I watch my college-age kids, they are so accustomed to social networking sites, being able to read and be read by thousands or millions of people online, that getting their names on paper doesn't overly jazz them. They glance at it -- even stuff about their friends -- and move on, content in the knowledge that Mom and Dad will clip it and file it away.

The newfound thrill is being linked to. With search, it's easy to find, and it means that you're being noticed. Because it's interactive, it feels electric. You are somebody.

Andy Bechtel noticed the "time stamp" on the elections results on the front page of the paper today. (We published mug shots of the second, third and fourth place finishers with their percentages of the vote totals. Above that the hed says, "Other top finishers, as of 11:53 p.m."

I asked Melissa Umbarger, who designed the front page, about it. She said, "We went with a time stamp because trying to get both the percentage of GOP and Dems precincts reporting was messy and could have been confusing (without a longer explanation) with everything else that was out there. I think it's also because we are reporting, in effect, partial scores, something that sports doesn't do."

In fact, it allows us to tell readers precisely what we knew when we knew it. Because the newspaper slaps onto driveways five or six hours later, it signals to readers that it's possible that the percentages could have changed overnight. (Wish we had done it back on election night in 2000.)

Almost immediate update: Andy writes back: I haven't seen a paper do that before. On the one hand, it's honest, detailed and straightforward, and it /looks/ cool. On the other hand, it exposes how much lag there is between the final touches in the newsroom and delivery to the reader.

I'm guessing most readers understand that.

Inspired by Howard Owens' list for non-wired journalists, I challenged the staff here to become more wired with a list of our own.

There's now a support group/social network that I hope journalists here and elsewhere check out and join: Wired Journalists. Repeat for emphasis: It's not just for professionals; it's for journalists.

I have. (Note to self: Get new photo. That one large makes you look like a big dork.)

Good explanations here and here.

Thanks to Ryan, Howard and Zac for pulling it all together.

I didn't get my first reporting job because I wasn't tech savvy enough. This was back in the 70s and it meant that I wasn't a fast enough typist. True story.

Laugh if you must, but the same holds true today, only the technology has changed.

That's what I told Ryan Thornburg's brown-bag lunch gathering at UNC today. The more students learn blogging, Twitter, social networking, beat blogging, video, programming and the like, the better prepared they'll be to be on the front end of "if the news is important, it will find me" rather than choking on the dust trying to catch up.

When I ask job candidates if they do any of those things and they give me a befuddled look, that tells me something about them.

I don't want to be the smartest one in the room. (I know; no problem there.) I'm more impressed when someone discovers a useful new tool and adapts it to his/her work or tries to. If, say, a job candidate shows me the value of Twitter as a reporting tool, they have a leg up. It tells me that they're keeping up with what's happening in the field.

Innovation is more effective when it comes bottom up than top down.

Beginning in 2005, I was getting a lot of speaking invitations to newspapers, conferences and journalism classes to talk about digital journalism. By far the two most frequently asked questions were:

* How do you find the time?
* Do you pay extra for blogging/video/filing online updates?

Speaking to students Thursday, I realized that the questions are different. I can't remember the last time I was asked either of those questions. I'm interpreting that as meaning that journalists finally understand that their jobs have changed.

On Friday, I was interviewed by a journalism student working for ASNE Reporter, the newspaper that will cover the upcoming American Society of Newspaper Editors' convention in Washington. His story assignment: Will newspapers survive? What can be done to save them?

This assignment saddened me. Are we really still asking that question?

Yes, newspapers will survive, although not flourish or endure. I'm thinking that newspapers are good until the baby boomers start dying out in 30 years. I base this on Phil Meyer's generational research. Who knows what they'll be like, but it's safe to say that papers will be smaller, more focused and more niched. And many of them won't publish every day. Some options here.

But these are really the wrong questions, I told him. (Even though they are being discussed elsewhere by people smarter than I.) The more interesting question the editors should be thinking about is whether and how professional journalism will survive and flourish.

I'm think it will. Part of that is my heart talking, I admit. But I believe it with my head, too. Our challenge is to make sure that what create has value and that we can get it before the eyeballs of those who value it. And there are a lot of innovators working on that.

James Maroney, publisher of the Dallas Morning News: If you are I the newspaper business, you are in the business of managing decline. If you are in the news and information business, then you have a healthy future.

The news business is undergoing a transformation that's occurring faster than many of us thought. Our mistake is thinking of it as a threat rather than as the greatest opportunity journalism has ever had. There will be a living there if we can figure out how to be the discoverers.

Fortunately, the ASNE conference schedule seems to focus on change and digital journalism. Not that I'm going to be there.

The Society of Professional Journalists is conducting a Citizen Journalism Academy June 7 at at Guilford College's Frank Family Science Center. This looks like a good deal -- a lot of valuable learning.

From the release:

Among the topics this daylong workshop will explore:

* Journalism ethics. The new-media landscape is rife with dilemmas for anyone wanting to report accurately, fairly and outside the bounds of special interests.

* The basics of media law. The same longstanding laws concerning libel, slander and access to people and information apply to 21st-century news-gatherers.

* Access to pubic records and meetings. Public information can add substance and value to every news story. But knowing where to look for it can be tough.

* Standard and responsible reporting practices. With media ethics and law in mind, how else should news-gatherers approach sources.

* Tips on smart writing. SPJ instructors want to help ensure your voice is clearly understood.

* The use of technology. We'll show you an array of tools you could start using -- or continue using even more effectively.

The cost to attend the Citizen Journalism Academy is $25, which includes lunch and course materials. For more information about this program or to register, visit SPJ's Citizen Journalism Academy page. Please note, the registration deadline is May 24 and seating is limited.

Mark Binker gets his hand slapped by Clinton press folks for acting like a citizen of the United States -- going to the Clinton fund-raiser along with 700 people yesterday and then writing about it.

I have resisted, until now, pointing out the fact that there were 700 people in that venue, 95 percent of who were toting cell phones with cameras and recorders, a bunch with personal cameras and all, I would think, with decent enough memories to relate the event to friends and neighbors. So since everyone invited to the event was potentially a reporter, that "closed press" thing seemed pretty laughable.

I think it has been suggested before that the Clintons are working under a 20th century media mentality which is no longer operable in the age of citizen journalism. Yesterday was an up-close taste of that.

In the old days, when a tornado spun through the region at midnight or thereabouts, newspapers were a journalistic casualty. Because of deadlines, you can't get much of anything into the next day's paper. Your first real coverage comes 36 hours after the storm strikes. I've lived through those days, and I felt forlorn because of the missed opportunity. Big news happens in your town, and you are dead in the water.

No longer.

Now, the worst timing for a newspaper is the best timing for the newspaper Web site. When the tornado struck Guilford County Friday morning, we didn't get anything in the newspaper, but we posted what we knew until about 2 a.m. Friday and started up again at about 5:45 a.m. Reporters and photographers posted news updates, victims' stories, photos and maps throughout the day and into Friday evening. John Newsom, our main online reporter, Twittered.

Meanwhile, because so much had already been written and posted, we could plan the next day's newspaper with much more information than we usually have. We knew exactly what sort of information and visuals we had. We watched television to determine what people already knew and didn't know. We focused our newspaper coverage on giving them new information, providing perspective on how the storm formed and where it went, and showing photographs.

In the end -- now that we have more than one method of news distribution -- it worked out well for both the newspaper and the Web site. (Putting aside the death and destruction of the storm itself.) Had the storm hit an hour earlier, we would have gotten a story into the Friday newspaper and patted ourselves on the back for our hustle. I wish we could have. But, to be honest, I know it probably would have been out of date the moment it landed on driveways Friday morning.

If there are any journalists left out there who don't understand or appreciate the value of taking your journalism digital -- where people can get it even if the paper isn't scheduled to be delivered for 24 hours -- then our experience Friday should be a lesson to them. Readers seemed to appreciate it, too.

Wendy Warren, once a ConvergeSouth presenter and still a cool person, has been named editor of Philly.com. Wendy was an assistant managing editor at the Philadelphia Daily News. More personally, she is the daughter of my friend, Bill Warren, former managing editor of The Roanoke Times.

More on what Wendy is getting into at Recovering Journalist, Mark Potts' blog. Mark knows what he's doing. Wendy knows what she's doing. I have high hopes for the mix.