Tweeting Gettysburg
What would George Meade, Robert E. Lee, Henry Burgwyn, Alonzo Cushing, Joshua Chamberlain, and the other heroes of Gettysburg have done with Twitter accounts?
At Gettysburg, tweeting the news and battle data
By Amy Worden
The Philadelphia Inquirer
July 7, 2012
Deliver the breaking news of the Battle of Gettysburg to the world in 140 characters or fewer.That’s the goal of the first live team-tweeting effort by journalists covering this weekend’s annual reenactment of the epic Civil War battle – or at least one pivotal skirmish.
Four tweeters, armed with smartphones and recruited from two area newspapers, will deliver minute-by-minute coverage of the reenactment Saturday of the fighting at Devil’s Den as part of the battle’s 149th-anniversary event.
One reporter will file from the Confederate side and another from the Union perspective, said organizer Marc Charisse, editor of the Hanover Evening Sun.
“We thought it would enhance people’s understanding of what happened there,” said Charisse, also a Civil War historian, who will be providing color commentary @esmcharisse.
York Daily Record editor James McClure will tweet the “big picture,” Charisse said, an overview of the battle as the reenacted violence at Devil’s Den unfolds.
There’s no question that a few liberties are taken with the battle during the annual reenactment, which has attracted thousands of people to Gettysburg for decades. It is not fought on the actual battlefield (it’s staged on a farm about seven miles away); it is often, as this year, not held on the battle’s actual dates (July 1 to 3); and visitors pay $54 to watch the action over three days as an announcer provides the play-by-play.
Twitter, however, adds a new dimension of social media and instant communication for about 2,000 reenactors, who go to great lengths to replicate 19th-century warfare.
Full story can be found here.
(Hat tip to Chris Stowe.)
Don’t know if it has anything to do with this, but Tweety’s pose here looks awful familiar . . .
