What newsrooms should be

A while back, I mused about how newsrooms can integrate social media tools to better serve the media and bloggers alike.  A few weeks later, I was happy to see an email from Todd Defren announcing the release of a social media newsroom template that he had been working on.  Rarely does timing work out that well in the real world, but it was especially nice to see given that I was right in the middle of finalizing my own newsroom for the relaunch of our corporate site.  Serendipitous indeed.

There are a lot of great ideas in this template, and I want to comment on a few.  The template is laid out as a series of content buckets, which I think is important in terms of layout as it gives reporters a wealth of knowledge at a glance, which they can further drill down into when they see something that interests them.

Executive Corner

A no-brainer, really.  Every media room should include bios of spokepeople and senior management.  Todd has added a LinkedIn link on each of those, which is something I was toying with, and this solidified the idea for me.  Each of those pages should also include upcoming speaking engagements if any exist.  Confabb has a decent widget that does just that.

Multimedia Gallery

This is another no-brainer, but it’s one of those things that may have been put off because it was too hard.  PR people have no such excuse these days.  Putting pictures on Flickr or YouTube is now dead easy, professionally accepted and increases reach.  If you don’t know how to do these things, you owe it to your clients to learn.  The hard part is actually getting the content, but with speaking opportunities, candid interviews with CEOs and stakeholders and product demos for little other than the investment in some lighting and a digital handycam, it’s a lot of value that can be added for little money and a modest effort.

Del.icio.us Accounts

I’m kind of up in the air on this one.  On one hand, the purpose-built del.icio.us pages are a good way to provide relevant links to a reporter.  On the other hand, I find it hard to keep up-to-date.  My preferred approach is a list of relevant links, but you may find success with the del.icio.us approach. 

Press Releases / News Coverage / Schedules

If this part is surprising, perhaps a change of profession is in order.  This is the obvious stuff, but what I like about this approach is the subscription and sharing options built into each.  Providing email links as well as social bookmarks for each release / news bite provides reporters with an easy way to catalogue their research, and makes it more likely for them to come back to you as a source if you fit the story.  RSS and Email subscriptions are also key for allowing reporters to stay informed on developments within your organization.

Tag Cloud

My first impression of this was “ugh, another useless tag cloud.”  Then, I thought about it a little more and it occured to me that a newsroom is the ideal place for a tag cloud.  They allow reporters to see information at a glance that they would not necessarily think to search for.  In our case, if a reporter comes to our site because they’re doing a story on interactive advertising, but sees that a number of items have been tagged “toys,” and they also happen to be doing a story on online toys, I have just provided them with a lot of information in one click.  If they didn’t know or didn’t stick around the site long enough to know that we’re active in the toy industry as well as advertising, I now have two potential stories instead of just one.   I spent a half hour convincing my design team of this.

RSS Feeds

To me, this is the most important part of the newroom redesign exercise.  You can aggregate and microchunk so much information and allow reporters to self-identify and hook themselves into a steady drip of information from you.  To me, there is no argument you can possibly make against this.

What We’re Reading

This to me falls under a “nice-to-have.”  It’s a good way to educate reporters on your specific sector of your industry, but I can’t see it getting you anymore ink.  That said, in Todd’s words - if they’re going to leave anyway, why not help them?

StoryLine Syndicator

The only thing in this design that requires some in-depth explanation is the storyline syndicator.  Todd has gone into this in-depth on his blog, but in essence, it’s a password-protected RSS feed or microblog populated with story ideas.  I think this is a good idea, though I suspect that adoption will be very low.  My suggestion if you want to try this is to monitor subscribers actively so that you’re not yelling into the wind.

Other bits

This is not about cramming as many “web 2.0″ toys into a site as possible.  This is about giving media and bloggers a cohesive, complete and easy-to-navigate place to learn about your company – one that keeps them coming back.  The site has to be sticky, so make it easy for them to stick, through subscriptions, bookmarks, and any other way you can do it so that it makes life easier for reporters.

All in all, this template both validated and inspired a lot of what my company’s newsroom will be.  I’ll be sure to point you to it as soon as it’s live, likely early next week.  Ultimately, I don’t think this will be anywhere near as controversial as the social media news release, but in the end, it will be far more beneficial.