Peter Bakke in his blog makes a suggestion we’ve made in our seminars at TCU–that all community papers set up Google alerts for news tips and story ideas. Basically, all you need to do is to go to Google at http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ and click on Alerts. You tell Google that any time certain words or combinations of words show up on the Web that you want them to send you an email. Simple as that. You can set up alerts for the name of your community, for indivituals or organizations in town, etc. Here at the Center, we have an elert for “community journalism” (it needs to be in quotes, otherwise Google would alert us for all mentions of community and journalism). So every time any publication, or any obscure we-never-heard-of-it-before blog uses the phrase “community journalism,” we get an email. Google groups all mentions in a single email and sends it once a day. What Bakke suggests, and we haven’t considered before, is that ad reps use Google too — to find news of the primary industries you sell to, or news about your biggest clients. Bakke’s blog has an online tutorial about effective use of Google alerts.
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