It’s the first thing many of us learn in our first journalism class. Your intense news writing professor sits you down and tells you, “write objectively. Keep your opinions out. Report on just the facts.” So you follow their instructions, write all your articles and scripts as such. Then your third year of college rolls around, you become disillusioned to the “wonderful world” of journalism and realize… that’s not possible.

Just me?

I’m writing an article right now for medium.com, analyzing if objectivity is even plausible. And even if it is, should it really be something we’re striving for?

You’ll have to wait a little longer for the article. But below, check out some mock social media posts promoting the article. 

Instagram

I’ve been going with this kind of retro surrealist vibe here on my blog, so I wanted some consistency with the posts. This is an image of Walter Cronkite. If you’re not aware, he’s an extremely famous newscaster from the 60’s and 70’s. I talk more about him in the article. The red lettering makes the image pop, and I think is just vague enough to pull the reader in. 

I kept the caption pretty short, just raising a question and pushing to the article for answers. I also included some relevant hashtags for engagement.

I went with Instagram as a platform because it appeals to younger generations. I want this article to reach a 20-something demographic, because they’re the future of journalism. 

X

I picked a similar graphic to the Instagram post, because I feel these two sites have similar audiences. I just made some adjustments for the aspect ratio. 

My caption is much more declarative here. X is seen as a more news heavy site. I didn’t think asking a bunch of questions that I don’t immediately answer in the post would really draw anyone in. But making a statement that some may find controversial… that’ll get the x users going.

As for why I chose this platform… It was this or threads and I’ve never touched threads. I use X professionally, so I thought it would be a good site for this kind of post.

LinkedIn

This post is much more professional, and kind of boringly corporate. I think that’s the vibe on LinkedIn. The graphic is actually just a stylized version of the clustering I did to prepare for this article. I think it can kind of show viewers where my head’s at before they get into the actual article.

My caption is a little longer than the other two. I really like that quote by Jay Rosen, and I think it encapsulates at least one part of my argument really well. Additionally, I encouraged colleagues and news enjoyers to interact as well. I wanted to encourage an open discussion in the comments based off my article.

Stick around till next week for my full article.