When offered alone, with no other communication options (such as phone or e-mail, preferably for specific individuals), web-based forms send some very, very negative messages to journalists who may wish to contact your organization… (NOTE: This is part 3 of a 10-part series.)
Human contact remains the core of quality journalism, even though most journalists increasingly rely on the internet for their work. Every journalist knows that when you’re on deadline, the best way to get questions answered correctly and fast is to talk to a cooperative and knowledgeable source – that is, a real person, an individual. This is why it’s crucial, in your online pressroom, to prominently list the names, direct phone and e-mail, and areas of responsibility for each of your press officers…
Every organization with a web presence should offer a prominent, top-level section labeled “Media,” “Press,” or “News” (or that includes those words, such as newsroom). Here’s how that should be positioned, and what it should contain… (NOTE: This is part 1 of a 10-part series.)
It’s sad how many companies, organizations, and institutions still don’t seem to have the first clue about how to effectively reach out to journalists through online media! This includes high-profile outfits as well as miniscule operations. Journalists are always in a hurry, today more so than ever before. They want to be able to find your organization online easily, go straight to your news, and learn who to contact by phone or e-mail for more info – virtually immediately. Most of the journalists I know get remarkably peeved by web sites and other online operations that waste their time or that make their job more difficult. A peeved journalist can wreak considerable havoc. Here are 10 ways to help journalists find out more about your organization… (NOTE: This is the introduction and index to a 10-part series.)
Here’s another collection of interesting items that have caught my attention over the past week. TOP OF THIS WEEK’S LIST: “Why can’t a newspaper be more like a blog?” This is a brilliant and thankfully blunt series published June 2004 in Barry Parr’s blog MediaSavvy. (The rest of this week’s grab bag includes items on blogging, content management, content style, e-learning, tools and tips, webfeeds, and one tidbit that is just too cool…)
Something a colleague said recently in a private discussion forum got me thinking about news and power. Specifically, how much do – and should – major mainstream news organizations define what’s really “news?” On pondering that I came up with the following list of big thoughts…
Just a quick heads-up: Yesterday, CMSwatch (a leading online magazine that covers content management systems) published an article I wrote about how webfeeds can be applied to intranets…
Yesterday I wrote about the dangers of allowing domain registrations that you’ve actively used for past projects to expire. Well, today I just realized that it has happened to me. A few years ago I was involved in a venture called Content Exchange. It was very popular and cool, but it just didn’t work out as a business. So my partners and I abandoned the project, took down the site, and eventually allowed the doman registration to lapse. Well, that last part was a mistake. On July 9, 2004, a guy in Australia claimed that domain (which was legally up for grabs) and has posted a get-rich-quick site there — in other words, a fairly typical para-site…
Those of you who use the internet to prominently feature yourself or your organization, listen up: Don’t ever, EVER let the domain names you actively use expire – even if they were used only for a specific time-limited project. Some prominent politicians such as Marilyn Musgrave (the conservative Republican Congressional Representative from Colorado who sponsored the controversial Federal Marriage Amendment, and who is currently seeking re-election) recently learned this lesson the hard way. Their expired domains from previous election campaigns were grabbed and reused by online pornographers…
It’s been a while since I checked in on the spread of webfeed, the winning non-techie nickname for RSS- and Atom-format feeds, as decided by a contest I held several month ago via this weblog. I’m amazed at how widely this term is being adopted. It’s not yet as popular as RSS feed, but it appears to have gained considerable ground in the court of common usage…
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