My colleague, Jon Glass, sent me a note last week that one of our alums had just gotten a big new job. I congratulated the alum, via email, and he emailed back that we were among the first to know. In fact, we knew before some of his colleagues.
That’s because Jon has been using a web alert program called newsle that sends you an email whenever one of your contacts is in the news. It’s now my new favorite app for keeping up with people I know.
But what a great opportunity for journalists. Here’s another way to find stories and keep up with what newsmakers are doing.
You allow newle to see your contacts in your email and/or facebook and/or LinkedIn. It scans those names regularly and when it finds a news article about one of them, it sends you an email.
The first time you run it newsle screens back several months. So it sent me an interesting interview with a Zimbabwe journalist who won a free speech award here a few years back. I was delighted just to know he is safe and still working. Here is what newsle forwarded me:
You can go to newsle.com to read what it pulls up and it will email you whenever it finds a news story with one of your contacts.
I’m interested in how journalists have been using it, so leave me a note below if you’ve found it helpful.