Real Tweets About Fake Schroon Lake Disaster Under Review

The Syracuse University journalism class assignment, where graduate students reported from a press conference with real time Tweets about a fake hotel collapse at Schroon Lake, is under review.

Last week we reported how the Twitter world that follows Schroon Lake was buzzing when several tweets described a devastating storm that caused a  “Lakeside Hotel” to collapse leaving four people and a baby trapped, and 10,000 people without power.

Jon Glass, the Collaborative Media Room General Manager who taught the class, told Schroon Laker that Schroon Lake has been used as the real town in this exercise for more than ten years.

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Disaster Strikes Schroon Lake: A Baby’s Cries Saves Four?

A hotel collapse in Schroon Lake?  Four people and a baby injured? 10,000 without power? That was the buzz on Twitter on Tuesday, as several Tweets gave graphic descriptions of the doom and gloom Schroon was dealing with after a “severe storm” ravaged our lakeside hamlet.

Except there was no hotel collapse or power outage or any injuries we know of that day (maybe a bad case of sun burn, perhaps)

Turns out the “Schroon Lake Disaster” was a lesson for graduate journalism students at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University. The students attended a faux news conference and using the power of the social media site Twitter, used 140 characters to get the news out.

 “This was part of a class exercise for graduate students in our summer news reporting class,” teacher Jon Glass told us in a Tweet yesterday.

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