Breaking News in your Inbox

June 6th, 2008 Heather Kovar Posted in Heather Kovar | 2 Comments »

Nearly an hour before the 5:00pm Newscast, I received an email from ABC 7 alerting me of breaking news. 

The headline: NYC crane official arrested. 

The body of the email reads: New York City’s assistant chief of cranes and derricks has been arrested on charges of receiving bribes. It closes with a link to ABC’s website to read more.

Not only is the service keeping you up to date, but it serves as a great advertisement to both the website and the 5:00 pm news. (It is 4:37 as I write this. I’m hurrying so I can go sit in front of the TV soon.)

Viewers can sign up for breaking news alerts from nearly all the stations. I sign up for all of them- gotta know what the competition is doing, and how they are handling it, right? I also get emails from the papers. Even I use email and social networking sites to promote the posts I write here for the Press Club. I post them on Twitter, which automatically post on my Facebook page and personal blog, all in hopes of getting an extra eyeball or two, maybe even a comment!

Anyway, even if you snooped in my inbox, you wouldn’t learn that much about me. Not even who I’m going to vote for. Oh, ah ha! You might think I was a Hillary Clinton supporter. I think I received an email from her campaign every day. But wait, look. Just today, about one minute before the ABC email, there is an email from Barack Obama. You would have to go into yesterday’s mail to find the latest from John McCain. It was a statement from Joe Lieberman.

While most of the emails I receive from their campaigns are seeking donations, they also usually include links to what the candidates are doing that week. I find it a quick and easy way to keep up with what is going on. Even when I don’t finish my work in time to turn on the 5:00 pm newscast.