A former colleague of mine posted an article on Facebook about NY Times reporter Alessandra Stanley getting her facts wrong about Walter Cronkite. Hey, mistakes happen (although Stanley apparently got it wrong twice).
What really caught my attention was this reply "when newspapers like the NYTs and others all fold into the abyss of the blogosphere and citizen journalism, will we miss these quaint mistakes?" What piqued my attention was the use of the phrases "citizen journalism" and "quaint mistakes." Journalists are human - they make mistakes and a correction is issued. As a former journalist I made every effort to fact check my work before it hit the press. Still, I had a correction or two in my day.
However, who is checking the work of citizen journalists? Are we to assume a citizen journalist won't make a mistake? Take as an example the report of the death of MMA fighter Kim Leopoldo. Blogs, newspapers and even TMZ reported that he had died of a heart attack at age 41. Turns out Leopoldo is alive and kicking (pardon the pun) as he came out of hiding from trying to kick a drug habit.
I am not discounting the value of citizen journalism or bloggers. But like reporters they are human beings and can make mistakes. The difference is citizen journalists do not have an editor looking over their shoulder making sure the reporter's facts are straight. Reporters are trained to be skeptical and question everything.
As I said, mistakes get made and corrections get issued. It happens. When a reporter gets a lead on a story he/she verifies the facts and gathers quotes and information. Do citizen journalists perform the same due diligence? Or do they take the story and run with it as is without checking the facts which leads to the "quaint mistakes?"
Let's say a citizen journalist walks out his/her house one day and sees a neighbor - a prominent city politican - wobbling out of the passenger side of a car appearing inhebriated with a puffy face. The citizen journalist runs inside and posts a story about the politican out on an all night bender where he got into a fight. Did the citizen journalist every think to ask the neighbor why he/she is stumbling out of the car and his face is so puffy? Could it be simply that the neighbor just came back from having wisdom teeth pulled at the dentist? Too late - the story is out there. Will the citizen journalist retract or issue a correction? Will the citizen journalist even bother trying to find out the truth?
I know I am taking a hard stance against citizen journalism but I am not anti-citizen journalist - honestly. But if reporters, with all of their resources and training can make "quaint mistakes" we would be foolish to expect citizen journalists to be mistake-proof.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
The importance of a good corporate media room
I just finished reading "PR 2.0 - New Media, New Tools, New Audiences" written by Deirdre Breakenridge. It was a great read. One section of the book covered the importance of building and maintaining a good media room on a corporate web site. As a former journalist I can attest to the usefulness of a good corporate media room.
In the early 90s when I got my start as an assistant editor at a trade magazine, I remember receiving folders of press kits by US mail stuffed with releases and slides. Trade shows were particularly tough. My media badge was like a magnet and attracted immediate attention from company reps. My briefcase quickly became stuffed with bulky press kits of information. Those days (thankfully) are long gone. Late in 1999 I was in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. I was in the press room and a company rep came up to me and handed me a CD. He told me the company's complete press kit was on the CD as well as information about the new products his firm was introducing at the show. What a relief I thought. My back and shoulders were grateful for the streamlined, lighter communication medium, and my art director was grateful for easy and quick access to photos and graphics stored on the CD.
While CDs were a marked improvement over the paper press kits, they did require a bit more work in accessing the information. You had to open the CD, find what you were looking for and download it to the computer. Further, if you lost the CD or it was damaged you couldn't get a new one faxed over as you could with a paper press release.
Then companies began to use the power of their respective web sites to store information for journalists. Some companies do a better job than other of creating and maintaing their media room. During a meeting with a prominent healthcare writer in NJ, he lamented how healthcare companies tend to be less proficient at creating a useful media room.
The key to any good media room is the information it contains. Sounds simple I know. But a good media room provides more than just current press releases. Here, from a journalist's perspective are some tips and advice on building and maintaining a good media room.
1. Make it easy to find. Don't bury it in your site. Have a clearly marked link to your press room on your home page.
2. Keep the information well organized. Provide easy-to-find links on the media room to releases, photos/graphics, contact information, etc.
3. On the press release page, list the releases in date order and present the entire headline as a link. That way the journalist can find the release he/she wants, click on it and see the entire release. Also, give the journalist a "printer-friendly" version link or the option to save the release as a Word document directly to his/her computer. Make the page searchable by keywords and keyword phrases. It would also be nice to have a search function by where a journalist can type in a word or phrase and have all the releases which contain them appear in the results.
4. Organize graphics by date posted. As with releases, make this page searchable, too, and provide a cutline.
5. Provide detailed and current contact information. This is an important one. An 800 number of generic email address won't do. List direct phone numbers for PR/media relations personnel and direct email addresses.
6. Another useful part of any good media room is a page of experts from your organization. Be sure to detail their particular expertise and on what topics/issues they can comment. You can choose to provide direct contact information to the experts or list the contact information for the company's PR/media relations staff. Which leads me to point 7.
7. Lastly, keep the information current. Post releases and graphics immediately after their are released. Add or delete key media personnel and their contact information. This is critical. Journalists do not have time to hunt down the appropriate person for assistance. If they cannot find you quickly then you cannot be part of the conversation.
A good media room not only helps journalists but it plays a vital role in protecting your brand. It ensures that journalists have easy access to the most current information and news from your company, and it gives journalists a way to contact you when they need you. And helping journalists is what good media relations is all about.
In the early 90s when I got my start as an assistant editor at a trade magazine, I remember receiving folders of press kits by US mail stuffed with releases and slides. Trade shows were particularly tough. My media badge was like a magnet and attracted immediate attention from company reps. My briefcase quickly became stuffed with bulky press kits of information. Those days (thankfully) are long gone. Late in 1999 I was in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. I was in the press room and a company rep came up to me and handed me a CD. He told me the company's complete press kit was on the CD as well as information about the new products his firm was introducing at the show. What a relief I thought. My back and shoulders were grateful for the streamlined, lighter communication medium, and my art director was grateful for easy and quick access to photos and graphics stored on the CD.
While CDs were a marked improvement over the paper press kits, they did require a bit more work in accessing the information. You had to open the CD, find what you were looking for and download it to the computer. Further, if you lost the CD or it was damaged you couldn't get a new one faxed over as you could with a paper press release.
Then companies began to use the power of their respective web sites to store information for journalists. Some companies do a better job than other of creating and maintaing their media room. During a meeting with a prominent healthcare writer in NJ, he lamented how healthcare companies tend to be less proficient at creating a useful media room.
The key to any good media room is the information it contains. Sounds simple I know. But a good media room provides more than just current press releases. Here, from a journalist's perspective are some tips and advice on building and maintaining a good media room.
1. Make it easy to find. Don't bury it in your site. Have a clearly marked link to your press room on your home page.
2. Keep the information well organized. Provide easy-to-find links on the media room to releases, photos/graphics, contact information, etc.
3. On the press release page, list the releases in date order and present the entire headline as a link. That way the journalist can find the release he/she wants, click on it and see the entire release. Also, give the journalist a "printer-friendly" version link or the option to save the release as a Word document directly to his/her computer. Make the page searchable by keywords and keyword phrases. It would also be nice to have a search function by where a journalist can type in a word or phrase and have all the releases which contain them appear in the results.
4. Organize graphics by date posted. As with releases, make this page searchable, too, and provide a cutline.
5. Provide detailed and current contact information. This is an important one. An 800 number of generic email address won't do. List direct phone numbers for PR/media relations personnel and direct email addresses.
6. Another useful part of any good media room is a page of experts from your organization. Be sure to detail their particular expertise and on what topics/issues they can comment. You can choose to provide direct contact information to the experts or list the contact information for the company's PR/media relations staff. Which leads me to point 7.
7. Lastly, keep the information current. Post releases and graphics immediately after their are released. Add or delete key media personnel and their contact information. This is critical. Journalists do not have time to hunt down the appropriate person for assistance. If they cannot find you quickly then you cannot be part of the conversation.
A good media room not only helps journalists but it plays a vital role in protecting your brand. It ensures that journalists have easy access to the most current information and news from your company, and it gives journalists a way to contact you when they need you. And helping journalists is what good media relations is all about.
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