How One Reporter Uses Twitter to Find Stories

Very interesting interview on NPR's On The Media with Julio Ojeda Zapata of the St. Paul Pioneer Press about how he uses Twitter in his job. You can read the transcript or listen here.
Zapata says he uses Twitter to find sources for stories, sort of like putting out a query to hundreds of people. He told NPR's Bob Garfield:

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Garfield: Give me an example of a story that you were able to flesh out with the help of contacts made via Twitter.

Zapata: Well, one story that comes to mind was about people that sort of can't leave their work at the office. They go on vacation, they take their laptops and they continue working. Twitter users tend to be kind of workaholic techie, social media, Internet addict types.

So this was tailor made for that kind of an audience. So I put it out there and, you know, literally within minutes was getting responses from people who, in fact, happened to be on vacation with their laptops and saw my Tweet and responded. So I thought that was kind of funny.

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So here's the tip: if you're a tech PR person, get on Twitter and start following Zapata's tweets. If you're in another industry, look up your key media contacts and see if they are on Twitter and if so, start following their tweets as well.