Clip: Record crowds eat through the OC Fair

Link: Record crowds eat through the OC Fair

Link: Storify wrap-up of #OCFair tweets

In a regular story, wrapping up the last day of the Orange County Fair, I was able to use social media to add valuable information to my story.

The first big help was in finding a person to talk to about this year’s fair. Rather than going to the fair and wandering around aimlessly looking for an interesting person, I looked up the OC Fair Foursquare mayor. I asked her via Twitter if I could interview her for my story and she agreed. She turned out to be a fair employee, a bartender, who attended all but one day of this year’s fair. She’s also been to the fair every year since she was a small girl. One hour later, I had a story with great insight provided by the fair’s “mayor.”

I also used Storify to bring in some interesting details from the fair’s last two days. The tweet quotes show the human side of the fair’s final weekend – as told by its attendees.