« Michael Stein Provides Some Good Tips on Email Strategy | Main | Special Bulletins on Environmental Enforcement »
divide exists between what PR people think journalists want and what journalists expect to find in online newsrooms
Green Media Toolshed has been working with Vocus since August of 2000. We are working to customize tools and deliver service to the environmental community and have watched our needs and discoveries also get reflected in the survey work Vocus does every year. This year is no different.
Yet with all of the discussion on the topic of online content, a perplexing divide exists between what PR people think journalists want and what journalists expect to find in online newsrooms. In nearly every category of information, journalists placed a higher value on online availability than did the PR professionals surveyed.For example, while 93 percent of journalists rated media kits as valuable, only 71 percent of PR professionals thought they were important. Similarly, 91 percent of journalists placed a high value on executive team bios, compared to just 58 percent of the PR community surveyed. But the greatest gaps came in the areas of past media coverage, upcoming events, awards and speeches. Journalists valued all such details highly, while PR professionals surveyed did not consider this information important to the media.
It's essential that organizations understand what the media wants and provide that information. Better access to information means better exposure for your organization and enhanced relations with the media. Yet, PR people have reported it tough to create and keep online newsrooms up to date.
It is important to recognize that being a journalists and a communications officer are different jobs. While a journalists would love to see all the information in a press room including past media stories it may not be the best for PR people to provide the information in the pressroom. The goal of the pressroom is to make moving your message of the day easy for journalists to access and understand. You want to meet the journalists needs and let them know they are valuable visitors to your web site. You really want to make it as easy as possible for them to cover your issues.
Kudos to Vocus for publishing the study
September 3, 2004 in Online Press Rooms | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341e2ddc53ef00d8353cf6e969e2
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference divide exists between what PR people think journalists want and what journalists expect to find in online newsrooms: