Do you regularly try to track news stories on key issues in your state? Do you try to “watch dog” a local politician or spokesperson for the opposition? Wouldn’t it be nice if every time your opposition popped into the news you could get an email alert?
You have got to love Google Newsalerts. It is not a free clipping service but with the right strategy, advocacy groups can use of the newsalert tool for many of the projects we are working on.
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Encourage volunteers and staff to enter email address at Google news and key areas of interest into the newsalert system. (or offer a link (see below) The first job of the volunteer is to “filter” news from noise. Google newsalert drops an email that notify users a new clip or finding "Clean air - Maryland" which is your volunteers area of interest. No one has looked at the article yet. Step one of the process is to help filter important stories from nonsense. Is the article (Link,text, story text etc.) really related to clean air issues in the State of Maryland? If yes what outlet is it from? Who wrote it? The volunteer can then forward key articles to your group. (Respond, say Thanks)
You now have 1. a stream of articles popping into your mailbox. 2. volunteers interacting with your organization. 3. more informed volunteers 4. a list of volunteers that might be willing to do letters to the editor to respond to articles in the news.
Free…Distributed…valuable.
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Now try it with some friends who care about an issue and your favorite listserve. No need for a centralized organization to push back on the media.
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Future complexity could include forwarding the messages between volunteers. (if only we had a distributed media database that the progressive movement could share we could build a complete rapid response system (see my day job)
Dear Virtual Volunteer,"Another voluteer has tolds us that the following article in (OUTLET NAme) by (REPORTER NAMe) is on the Issue of Clean Air. (Is this Correct?) Are there problems with the articles? What are they? Would you saw the article is biased how? (other Move-on areas of ranking and interest)(Can you paste in clips form the article that you find offensive our wrong) (why?)
Third volunteer...
"Two other volunteers have been working on this article (all Article details generated by volunteers) is this right? Scale the problems with the article? Other comments? Should we send it to a few more volunteers to elevate it toward the media "Hall of Shame"?"
Final Touch...
Send all the volunteers that “touched the story” a final report for additional comments. (Track by subject line). The trick to encourage volunteers to grab the contact information for the reporters. The final all volunteer article report could then be made available to a final group of activists that like calling reporters on sloppy coverage. The final volunteers get an email that was generated much like a chain letter . This reporter at (OUTLET() can be reached at ....Please give them a call....tell them why the story was wrong and ask them to do a follow up...Tell them to call these groups that work on the issue...etc.
Please Comment with Feedback and implementation tips.
(I watch the news on the Inner Purple Line Project in Maryland..I even offer it as a link on the Inner Purple Line Blog)
http://www.google.com/newsalerts?q=Maryland+bus+purple+line
I am just kind of cranking this out so feel free to offer feedback on the idea, technical or management issues and level of value that this might provide?
