The Reporter Who Cried BREAKING
There once was a reporter who was looking for ways to make his Twitter account stand out. To draw attention to himself he tweeted, “BREAKING! BREAKING!! Click on this link!”
The Twitterverse quickly clicked on the link to read the BREAKING news. But when they clicked, they found old news.
“Don’t cry ‘BREAKING news'” said the Twitterverse, “when there’s no BREAKING news!”
Later, the reporter saw real BREAKING news. He tweeted as fast as he could, “BREAKING!”
But the Twitterverse thought he was trying to fool them again, so they didn’t click on the link.
When a Word Loses Its Oomph
I’ll stop my version of Aesop’s famous fable there. The moral of the story: We’re facing a growing epidemic on Twitter. The media’s throwing around BREAKING all too often and its overuse is taking away from the intended urgency of the word.
Almost everyone on Twitter has a pet peeve. Some get annoyed by those who use more than 140 characters. Others wonder why some never engage. And then there’s the people that tweet way too much (guilty).
Now I’m taking up the cause to rid the Twitterverse of my biggest pet peeve — the rampant use of BREAKING. I see it multiple times a day in my Twitter stream and as a rough estimate, I’d guess just 20% of those tweets contain actual BREAKING NEWS.
The cable news networks destroyed BREAKING NEWS years ago — that platform’s a lost cause. But maybe we can save Twitter from jumping the BREAKING NEWS shark.
But what makes something worthy of BREAKING? There are no official guidelines or rules, so let’s make some.
First though, let’s play a game I like to call “BREAKING or…not?”
Breaking or Not?
Tweet #1 
Well, that’s a standard piece of information released every month and it’s “essentially unchanged.” So I’m going to go with a not BREAKING.
Tweet #2
It’s tough to call something BREAKING a day after many first found out about it.
Tweet #3
Some could argue this isn’t even news. If it is, it doesn’t deserve a BREAKING NEWS label.
Tweet #4
Ah ha! Now that’s some actual BREAKING NEWS.
A Focus on the Sports World
During the past few weeks, the sports world in particular has been loaded with examples of actual BREAKING NEWS. From the Ramos kidnapping, to the alleged details of Sandusky and Fine, to the sudden death of a New Mexico football player, we’ve seen big stories with new details BREAKING seemingly every day.
But all too often, my stream has included tweets like this:
Good for Tiger, bad for the proper use of BREAKING. Darren Rovell, CNBC’s plugged-in and informative sports business reporter, is a serial BREAKING abuser.
Let’s take a similar example from the AP’s Steve Wilson:
“This just in” is much more appropriate than BREAKING in this case, don’t you think? Michael Phelps will be part of another ad campaign. Ok…next? Just like Tiger’s deal to endorse drops and gels, it’s more of an announcement than proper news. Thank you @stevewilsonap for keeping our Twitter streams BREAKING clean.
A BREAKING Checklist
As I stand up here on my soapbox railing on and on about a problem, I need to suggest a solution. So here are four suggested guidelines for properly using BREAKING in a tweet. Consider it a mental checklist to complete — before hitting the caps lock button.
1. Is it actually news — something that’s new, unexpected and affects a large number of people in your audience?
2. Is it really BREAKING now? On Twitter, if it’s older than an hour, it’s not BREAKING anymore.
3. After it’s BREAKING, will there be more details to follow? If it’s just a one-and-done piece of news, it’s not BREAKING. It’s just news.
4. Could another term fit better? Could you change it up with a “News” or “Developing” or “Just In”?
Together, We Can End BREAKING Abuse
One of Twitter’s great challenges is posting something that matters, that gets retweeted, that makes others see you as knowledgable and influential. BREAKING has become the low-hanging fruit in a 140-character world. It’s the easy way to catch someone’s eye on an attention-deficit platform like Twitter.
Perhaps my campaign to end BREAKING abuse isn’t a big deal. This post probably won’t be up for a Pulitzer or launch me toward the Nobel Peace Prize.
But if we keep overusing BREAKING, its meaning will carry as much weight as it does when scrolling beneath Nancy Grace. And that would be a sad modern day fable.
