Etan Horowitz, tech reporter and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, uses social media to connect with users and make his job easier.

Last week, Horowitz was tipped off by a long-time reader of his column and blog about Bright House’s digital cable service being down in the Orlando area. Before social media, Horowitz would have had a much more difficult time ascertaining how widespread this issue was. But with tools like Twitter and his popular blog, Horowitz was able to ask people if their cable was down and where they were located in the Orlando area.

Using search.twitter.com, Horowitz can monitor chatter about specific topics, like Bright House. He also has an RSS feed of search.twitter.com results that helps him stay on top of what people are saying about the company. Horowitz said that this is even more powerful than Google Alerts, because you can specify a geographic location with your searches.

“If you do that, you’re not spending that much time on twitter,” Horowitz said about using search.twitter.com. “You’re not reading back dozens of messages. You’re saying, ‘only alert me when it is something that I care about.’”

We have a lot more information about how Horowitz was able to take that tip from a reader and provide his readers with a service in this previous post. Horowitz continuously updated this blog post about the status of the service and was able to give his readers information that they couldn’t get themselves because the Bright House Web site went down and their phone lines were jammed. 

Horowitz understands that if you want to use social media, you have to be social on it. He finds sources and gets tips on Twitter. During the whole Bright House fiasco, he responded to users of the service who were wondering what was going on.

Horowitz said that social media can help humanize reporters. This, of course, is predicated on journalists acting human on social networks. But for Horowitz, it has made him much more accessible to people, and they are more likely to contact him now.

“People know that I’m out there; they appreciate that they can find me on Twitter and that I’m accessible,” he said about his use of social media. ”It’s informal, and they don’t necessarily have to e-mail me or call me. It doesn’t feel like as much that you’re contacting the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. It’s just like, ‘hey you’re talking to me on Twitter.’”

Part of being human on Twitter for Horowitz is talking about more than just work. No he doesn’t talk about politics, but he does talk about his life outside of work.

“Mine is sort of a mix of personal stuff,” he said about mixing in personal and professional tweets. “I just got married, and I talked about that. I think people appreciate that. I know I do.”

Some other topics discussed:

• Horowitz discusses in depth how he reported on the cable outage.
• Why should journalists join social media?
• Why does social media make journalists more efficient?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.