Newsrooms are used to getting news releases sent to their inboxes from local police, fire and other public service offices. But more of those agencies are now turning to Facebook to distribute public information.
It’s easy to understand why. By using Facebook, they can reach the public and the media at the same time, while also bypassing the media. They can do everything with a single post.
But for the media, this can cause frustration.
As I’ve mentioned many times, Facebook doesn’t show you everything. If you follow a local police department, it doesn’t mean you’ll see all of their posts in your feed.
The good news is that you can fix that by changing the settings on the page you’re following to get notifications when they post anything. This, of course, means that you get notified of all posts, including the irrelevant missing puppy posts, and that you get notifications on your personal Facebook account, meaning you’ll get them even when you’re not on duty.Unfortunately, there appears to be no stopping this trend.
Do your local public safety agencies do this? How do you work with it? Are there more upsides that I’m not noticing?
