WSVN and WPLG in a Twitter Catfight

Update: Someone in the know tells me traffic.com had the turnpike shooting reported 1:20pm, Majic 102.7FM mentioned it about 5 minutes later at around 1:25pm

What started off as a ‘breaking news’ tweets about a shooting on the turnpike turned into a mini catfight between WPLG and WSVN reporter Vanessa Medina. They were actually pretty civil, it didn’t escalate into hair pulling fortunately, or unfortunately for some.

It all started when WSVN’s Vanessa Medina tweeted about a shooting on the turnpike and added ‘you saw it first on seven’ to her message, two minutes later WSVN copied her message on their main twitter account. Shortly after that  JLoCaminas, describing herself as a ‘news deskie at 10’, tweeted from her personal account without replying to anyone in particular – ‘pretty sure it was first on 10!’.

Oh shnap!

A few minutes later, what I’m guessing is just a follower of WPLG on Twitter and not an employee, got in the middle of it. He sent Vanessa Medina a tweet telling her WPLG was indeed the first to break the story, though presumably he meant first on Twitter not on the air. Vanessa replied back at him clarifying that ‘first on seven’ means on the air and adding “… but it’s nor here nor there for me”.

And that was that. Well, until someone replied from WPLG’s main twitter account to Medina that they were first on the air too and also adding “…although it’s here nor there for us as well. Cheers!”.

Then a third guy got involved, either a WPLG follower or friends with guy number one, saying: “@talkto10 should contact @joebutch 2 host talkto10 abt twitter&socialmedia now that Joe’s forced @wsvn 2 clarify posts-Joe+10.”  I’m guessing here he says WPLG should invite his friend over to teach them about social media, since he “forced” WSVN on the defensive. WPLG re-tweeted (copied) his message to their main account and thanked the guy who wrote it.

A reader who dropped by SFLTV to let me know they saw the spat between 7 and 10 as it unfolded, alerted me that Vanessa Medina was actually first to tweet about the turnpike shooting, at 1:49pm, albeit unofficially, whatever that means on Twitter. That first message though, was not copied to WSVN’s main account.

WPLG’s first tweet about the turnpike shooting went out at 1:54pm. At 1:58pm Vanessa Medina sent out a second tweet about the shooting, this one was labeled with breaking news. Two minutes later at 2pm WSVN re-tweeted that message on their main account complete with the ‘first on 7’ bit. Three minutes later at 2:03pm JLoCaminas clarified, from her personal account, and to no one in particular she was ‘pretty sure it was first on 10!’.

As I check out the tweets I noticed @NewsChasers, at least based on a tweet he sent out, may have been first or one of the first with information about the shooting. I also noticed that both Vanessa Medina and the WPLG ‘news deskie’ girl replied to @newschasers minutes before the stations sent out their ‘breaking news’ tweets.

Bruised egoes aside, in the end both outlets probably had the information from the same sources. It was just a matter of which station moved bodies faster to get what they knew out on the air and online.