We didn’t have much time to promote our event in advance because the event we initially planned to cover was canceled at the last minute. However, we did everything we could to promote the public hearing in the 48 hours prior to the event. On Thursday, May 12, Tierney created a Facebook page describing the hearing and promoting the Changing New York site where we would be live blogging and streaming the event. We invited CUNY journalism students to this event page, which can be viewed in the screen shot below, or at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=117344308344245#!/event.php?eid=225418234139092
A few hours before the hearing, Shannon searched Twitter for hash tags already in use for the event. News organizations such as Patch, NBC, Fox had tweeted about the event and planned to cover it, so Shannon tweeted at them to tell them to check out our coverage of the event. She also tweeted at parents and local education groups who had tweeted about the event. Shannon did her own tweets about the hearing three times in the hours leading up to the event and once during the event. An example of the tweet can be viewed below or at http://twitter.com/#!/new_girl_friday/status/69121180837220352
Patrick emailed the PTO from P.S. 9 and the media contact at Brooklyn East Collegiate about our coverage of the hearing and they sent our information out to their listserv about the event and a listserv for public school parents.
Geoff told Gotham Schools, a nonprofit education news outlet, about our coverage of the event. They retweeted it, and several of their followers retweeted it also. Overall, we had 27 retweets. See below for an example, or view at http://twitter.com/#!/RJIcollab