One of the main criticisms of Twitter is that the signal to noise ratio isn’t the greatest – for every great insight or celebrity scandal posted, there are a thousand posts which aren’t what you’d describe as amazing literature. That said, the instantly updating nature and access to a large audience does mean that the microblogging phenom is perfectly suited to breaking stories, and this function was utilised to great effect recently by journalist Adam Penenberg.

When Penenberg heard from a defence lawyer that Ford had been charged $131 million following a court case in Laurel Missouri after a Ford Explorer rolled over and killed talented young baseball player Brian Cole, he was amazed to find that there was absolutely no news coverage of it. Rather than simply ruminate on this, however, Penenberg decided to do something about it, and took to the social media sphere.

He posted over 50 Tweets in around two hours, telling the full story in over 1,000 words while also imploring other journalists to get involved in helping tell the story, including one particular Tweet which clearly summed up his feeling on the situation – ‘C’mon reporters. Am I only one who thinks $131 MILLION verdict against FORD in a product liability suit is news??’

There is a large debate at the moment about the future of the news industry. Whether it is going to be online paywalls, phone or MP3 player apps or even some form of social network-based reporting, this story definitely shows that the instantaneous nature of the medium, not to mention the potential to access a very large audience, certainly lends itself to reporting the latest news. How this could be monetised, however, remains to be seen.