Katy Gathright at sister blog Social Times detailed five broad lessons journalists can learn by using Twitter.

Social Times has all of the details, but the five lessons are: how to grab people’s attention; how to gather information; how to cite information; how to incorporate multimedia; and how to be aggressive.

Gathright on the last lesson:

Working as a reporter will quickly teach you that it’s necessary to butt your head in people’s doors to get the answers you need. Sometimes you have to go places where you feel you don’t belong, but if there’s a fact or a source that will make your story, you’ll have to get aggressive. Some might argue that Twitter still lets you hide behind the wall of the Internet, but the site really encourages you to get involved in conversations with strangers. Replying to someone you don’t know or retweeting a source that you have no connection to gets you in the habit of jumping right in. (Internet safety rules apply!)