• 2 years - 6 posts - Latest - RSS
• OP: 3 Goods vs 1 No Goods
• Thread: 18 Goods vs 4 No Goods

1. Woodrow
   

   My institution "encourages" us to do "outreach" activities once we publish a paper.

   This usually consists in blog posts submitted to more popular websites linking to the paper (which heightens the Altmetric score etc etc).

   Now I have two drafts for such an "outreach" blog post, and if I re-word it, I may even have a third one. That's a bit boring, and it seems morally questionable, but ... what else shall I do?

   Anyway, what is your experience with this kind of encouraged "outreach"? I guess it doesn't help in any way, except that it satisfies some weird top-down "strategy" which measures success in terms of new indicators (Altmetric). Yawn.

   2 years ago # QUOTE 3 YEA 1 NAY!

2. Gilbert
   

   If applicable, email any reporters who might be interested in your area. A short personal email works better than a BCCed group email. "Name, I am a political scientist at X university. My work covers Y subject matter. I just published this article, "Short summary." The full article is attached. Please let me know if you are interested, or if I can answer any questions."

   Obviously, you need a subject matter of interest to journalists for this to work.

   2 years ago # QUOTE 3 YEA 0 NAY!

3. Gilbert
   

   Journalist outreach is much more effective if it comes before the article or book is officially out. Journalists love embargo dates.

   2 years ago # QUOTE 3 YEA 0 NAY!

4. Dora
   

   If political science was worth anything, journalists would be asking authors for their work, they wouldn’t be cold emailing the Scranton Times.

   2 years ago # QUOTE 4 YEA 2 NAY!

5. Jemima
   

   Subject Line: MONEY INFLUENCES POLITICS —URGENT RESPONSE NEEDED

   Body: POLITICIANS SUPPORT LEGISLATION SUPPORTED BY THEIR DONORS. PUBLISH ASAP AS POSSIBLE. DEEP STATE LOOKING FOR ME.

   Sincerely,

   Dr. Political Scientist

   2 years ago # QUOTE 3 YEA 1 NAY!

6. Ewart
   

   OP: This is frankly the worst advice I have ever heard.

   First, very few political science articles are of interest to journalists, unless the journalist was already going to write a news story on the same topic. In which case, journalists already know how to use google.

   Second, even if, by random chance, you email your ground-breaking LSQ article to a journalists who just happens to be working on a story about the same congressional committees as your article, it's pretty unlikely that you will get tenure from the Scranton Times citing your LSQ piece. Trust me on this one: No one will care.

   If you just want to have media attention for your work, then I would suggest writing some blog posts or pitching your blog posts to Monkey Cage or another political science blog.

   1 year ago # QUOTE 2 YEA 0 NAY!

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