Rocky Mountain News criticized for intrusiveness, insensitivity…

September 15, 2008— In the wake of the recent hit-and-run tragedy in Boulder, Colorado, which claimed the life of three-year-old Marten Kudlis comes the highly criticized decision by the Rocky Mountain News to cover the child’s funeral using the popular social media networking site, Twitter.

While Twitter has been used to cover speeches and news stories on an as-they-happen basis, this incident marks the first time that the site has been used by the mainstream media to report a funeral in real time.

“Coffin lowered into the ground,” one post, or “tweet” from the Kudlis funeral reads, followed by “family members shovel dirt onto the grave.”

Critics stress that it isn’t the use of the social media networking site by News reporter Berny Morson  that has them upset, but rather what they feel is extreme insensitivity to the Kudlis family and Boulder community as a whole and that any live coverage of a funeral like this would be just as intrusive.

Neither Mr. Morson nor the Rocky Mountain News were available for comment at press time.