The Destination Web is losing ground to the Social Web. Fewer people are using home pages and bookmarks to find their news on the Web – instead, news finds them through shared links on Facebook, link-shortened URLs on Twitter, or “like” buttons on scores of social media sites. For the modern journalist, that prized front-page clip or lead story on the 10 p.m. news may escape the notice of the growing legions of readers who get their news primarily online.
So, how can journalism students make sure their work gets noticed on the Web? By mastering the art of the “push post.” I require my Digital Journalism students to push news stories out on social media sites or comment forums once per week, which counts for 10 percent of their overall grade. With each push post, students build their personal brands by promoting their own journalistic work or that of their classmates.
My push post assignment aims to fulfill two of the learning outcomes of my Digital Journalism course syllabus:
- Harness social media to get your work noticed on the Web.
- Build a savvy social media presence that highlights your talents and personality (and won’t make your mom blush or cost you a job).
Web 2.0 is all about interactivity – and that means sharing through social media. In a journalistic context, this means that news organizations and individual journalists need to do everything we can to “push” unique news content out into the Web ecosystem, to attract more attention to our work.
The push posts also have been an effective catalyst for my broader efforts to instill a Web-aware journalistic culture at SMU. Just before I created the push post assignment, our in-house student news site, the SMU Daily Mustang (http://www.smudailymustang.com/), drew 3,044 hits from referring sites during the final three months of 2008, according to Google Analytics. A year later during that same three-month period, when all 33 of my Digital Journalism students were filing weekly push posts, that number more than quadrupled to 12,577 hits from referring sites.
But push posts aren’t merely a tool for driving Web traffic, nor are they an empty exercise in narcissism. They are an important part of a 21st-century reporter’s toolbox. Here’s what I tell my students:
- You need to promote and push your work on the Web so people can discover it.
- News is no longer only delivered by trucks carting the morning edition, or beamed over the air at 10 p.m. If you want to fish, you need to go where the fish are. And in today’s news business, the fish are online.*
- In 2009, an extensive survey (http://www.slideshare.net/brannonj/ona-aejmc-state-of-industry09)by AEJMC and the Online News Association and a separate Pew Research study found that U.S. newsrooms “are focusing somewhat less on bringing audiences in and more on pushing content out.” (http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_overview_majortrends.php?cat=1&media=1)
- To develop your personal brand, you have to act as your own PR agent.
* This point was inspired by Dan Gillmor of Arizona State University and Theodore Kim of The Dallas Morning News.
Here is the “push post” assignment in its entirety:
Digital Journalism/Batsell
Push Posts, Spring 2010
(Posted on course blog) (http://smudigitaljournalism.wordpress.com/)
Web 2.0 is all about interactivity – and that means sharing through social media. In a journalistic context, this means that news organizations and individual journalists need to do everything we can to “push” unique news content out into the Web ecosystem, to attract more attention to our work.
Lab assignment: Make your first “push” post
You have 10 required “push” posts this semester. Five posts must be placed in comments sections of blogs or news stories. The other five will be posted on Twitter. No Twitter today, though – today’s lab exercise is a comment push. All posts must have an introduction of some sort. Don’t just post a URL by itself.
COMMENT PUSH POST
Choose a Daily Mustang or Daily Campus story, blog post, photo, video or slideshow that you find interesting. Copy the full permalink URL from the address bar. Find a relevant news story or blog item whose readers are likely to find your link interesting. In the comments section of that story or blog item, briefly introduce your link and then post the URL at the end of your comment. When your comment push has been posted, copy the link and post it on your push post page. Feel free to browse examples (http://delicious.com/jbatsell/pushpost) from past classes.
TWITTER PUSH POST
Follow the same instructions above, but post the link on Twitter. You must have at least 50 Twitter followers to receive full credit. Remember, on Twitter you only have 140 characters, so you’ll want to use a link-shortening service like bit.ly, is.gd, ow.ly or j.mp to allow more room to introduce your link.
How to receive credit for your push posts: Copy the link where your push post appears. Log on to the course blog and call up your push post page. Insert a hyperlink onto either the words “comment push” or “Twitter push.” Click the Update button. Then click “View Page” to make sure your link works.
There are three possible scores for your weekly push posts:
10 points
- Turned in on time
- Contains a working link to timely news content produced by an SMU journalism student
- Includes a brief introduction with context
- Story link is relevant to the forum selected (for comment push posts)
- Meets minimum Twitter follower requirements (for Twitter push posts)
- Turned in on time, but fails to meet one of the other criteria described above
- Missed push post (no makeup posts allowed without advance instructor approval)
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