So, a while back, Tom Foremski declared the press release dead. Responding in kind, Todd Defren developed what he called the social media news release. The idea was that we would take the press release from its current text-only format to something that could be indexed and viewed by regular people. It was segmented into informational bullets and quotes, and included multimedia.
I adopted parts of it immediately. Todd really did make the press release much better. But, having used a bastardized version of it for a while now, and having talked to others in the biz about their perspective, my feeling is that it amounts to very little as far as the future of the industry goes.
Including multimedia – video, photos, podcasts – with a news release really is a no-brainer now that I’ve done it. It gives reporters, or anyone else that would view the release online another level of context for the news.
Including an constantly updated list of relevant links is also a fantastic idea, regardless of whether they’re hosted on del.icio.us or somewhere else. Keeping these links up-to-date and relevant can be a challenge, but if you’ve got a team behind you, it should be no problem.
As for converting narrative text into bullets, I’ve not yet been able to talk myself into doing this. Maybe it’s because I actually enjoy the process of writing releases, the fact that I work for a company that allows me to be a little creative in our corporate communications, or the fact that somewhere deep down inside, I always wanted to be a poet, but it seems to me that the narrative flow of a release can give reporters as much a sense of a company’s culture as the facts themselves. I once had a reporter call me after sending him a release to say that he wouldn’t be able to cover the story, but wanted to tell me how well-written the release was. Ego hits are less profitable, but just as rewarding.
All this said, the SMNR is far from a solution to whatever problem it is we have. To my mind, the problem is less about what format the release takes, and more about how to get information to reporters reliably, and in a way that they can use.
Dealing with the media is like having a girlfriend who won’t tell you why she’s mad at you. Some tell you never to call. Some tell you never to follow up. Others say to always follow up. Some will only respond if you call them. The problem with the media release as we know it is that journalists are not some homogeneous mass. If they were, our job would be easy.
For those who work in an industry where they can create relationships with reporters covering their beat, this is less of a problem. For PR service firms who usually will have to research a new media list and reach out to unknown reporters for every new project that comes in the door, this is a gargantuan task to manage. Every time a new reporter or editor is added to a list, we as PR people need to know what kind of angles interest them, what they write about, how they prefer to be contacted – everything.
I’ve been listening in on the SMNR discussions. I’ve heard people talking about Microformats and the like (which frankly, is completely over my head), but it seems to me that all of the energy is somewhat misplaced. What seems more pressing is deciding how we as communicators can effectively communicate with the media. For now, the media release is still one of the tools that we need to use. Todd made it better, but he didn’t make it remarkably different and I don’t think microformats will either.
We’ve crashed our car into a brick wall, and we’re buffing out a scratch. Let’s fix the communication problem before we spend thousands of man-hours polishing up the 100-year-old news release.
