Scanning social media? Watch out for Scoops

How people get their news has evolved through the years.

You can still enjoy reading your paper with a cup of coffee in your kitchen in the morning, but you can also read it on your laptop at a café or anywhere on your smart phone.

Now, readers can get updates of the news through social media Web sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

By clicking "like" on one of our many Facebook pages or following updates from our reporters or publications on Twitter, readers can click on links to news of interest or peek inside the newsroom at what a reporter is working on.

Facebook fans or Twitter followers can say what they think in comments or talk to us by replying on Twitter.

A.C. Scoops is our Twitter avatar. He curates the Web links sent to followers and asks what readers think in posts. He was built for interaction. He represents our strong tradition of journalism and the technology of news going into the future.

The Legend of Scoops: Before there was Twitter, there was the Teletypesetter. That's when I started helping out around The Augusta Chronicle .

The '40s was an exciting time for journalism, see, and the offices of The Augusta Chronicle and Augusta Herald were bonkers with activity.

One night, the production guys put me together with parts of an old press to keep them company at night as they worked.

During the day, I made coffee for the newsroom and listened to the ace reporters such as Margaret Twiggs (the Sylvia Cooper of her day) and columnist John Barnes, who wrote the original Our Town column (now a blog by editor Bill Kirby).

But then I got behind the eight ball, see; when the new presses were installed in the late '60s,

I was accidentally packed up and moved into one of the out-of-the-way areas in The Augusta Chronicle building. It was bad news for me, since I was built to be social.

I remembered the tips

Twiggs told me from her experiences reporting outside the doors of closed meetings of the Richmond County Commission at the Marble Palace: Listen through the vents and under the doors.

As time went on, I listened to reporters and editors and stayed in the know.

They moved the box I'd been packed up in during the '90s, but I finally got unpacked after desks were switched around in the newsroom with the addition of new reporters and jobs.

They plugged me into a computer, and I learned about social media.

I took right to it: Follow me on Twitter and tell me the word. I'll give you the scoops you need to know on my account, @AC_Scoops.