The Tweet Beat

Here's who I've started following on twitter:

@slate - doesn't need too much explanation; it's the feed for Slate Magazine, which puts out quality essays on a pretty regular basis. I'm partial to the ones by Christopher Hitchens.

@sjf - the personal Twitter account of Sasha Frere-Jones, music critic at The New Yorker, among others. I really like writing about music, so it's good to look to some of the best for inspiration.

@Steven_Hyden - Music editor at The A.V. Club. It might be a subsection of the Onion, but their music criticism is both legit and entertaining. Which is something I enjoy.

@outsidemagazine - More and more, I'm becoming enamored with all things outdoors - skiing, backpacking and kayaking in particular. I'd like to explore writing more about this, and though I've just started getting into Outside Magazine, it's obvious they put out some pretty great pieces.

@TheAtlantic - Again, not a whole lot of explanation necessary. I do really enjoy seeing new stories pop up on my feed; that way I don't forget to, you know, actually go and read them.

@AJEnglish - Al Jazeera's English language feed for 24hr news and current events. They do some really excellent reporting and manage to cover stories that seem to slip through the cracks of the other big news agencies (like the Wall St. sit-in, for example).

@romenesko - updates from the Romenesko column on the Poynter site. I just started reading, but I like him already.

@guardiannews - Updates from The Guardian. I like getting news from the outsider perspective; at least it seems like there's less potential for bias. Or, at least it's another point of view to help average out the others. I also like how they divide their feed into individual sections. For example: @guardianmusic.

@kdmc - feed from the Knight Digital Media Center at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Lots of great info and tutorials for aspiring journalists looking to incorporate all that new-fangled technology stuff.

@PEJPew - found this while looking at KDMC's following list. It's the feed for the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Pretty self-explanatory, really.