Category: media relations

Liveblogging from CASE: The Dan and Dave show

This post is out of synch because I was moderating this particular session so couldn’t blog in real time, as they say.

One of this morning’s sessions — “Bloggers as Journalists and Journalists as Bloggers” — featured two terrific Philly bloggers: Dan Rubin, who has a full-time blogging gig at the Philadelphia Inquirer (the blog is called blinq), and Dave Ralis, who blogs for Phillyburbs as well as on his own site. Both of these guys have enjoyed long and successful careers as reporters but have made the transition to new media. Even so, they still consider themselves reporters and use that skill set in their blogging.

This session stirred a lot of discussion about the role of blogs and other social media in terms of traditional vs. non-traditional delivery of the news. A few of the points that came up:

  • Higher ed PR people should monitor the blogosphere — just as we do traditional media — to see who is talking about their institutions and how. This is easily done by searching for your institution’s name on Technorati, a popular blog search engine/aggregator. One of the conference attendees mentioned that she shares a “blog report” of mentions with upper-level administrators on her campus, just as many of us do with our “clips reports” of media mentions. (A good idea! Wish I’d thought of it.)
  • Bloggers are journalists, too. One question came up about whether media relations staffers should grant bloggers’ interview requests with college presidents. Both Dave and Dan agreed that PR folks should have policies for dealing with bloggers’ requests, just as we may have similar policies for granting interviews with journalists. (Another good idea I wish I’d thought of.) We discussed possible criteria such as blog popularity (the assumption being that granting interviews to popular or influential bloggers might be preferred, while requests from small-time bloggers could safely be ignored), but Dan noted that a post by some little-known blogger could be picked up by an A-list blogger and spread the story virally.
  • Correcting misleading information in the blogosphere can be tricky. If you discover a misleading blog post about your institution, it’s a good idea to post correct information in the comments section of that blog (if it has a comments section, and many of them do). Or if your institution has a blog of its own, you can post the correct information there.
  • We don’t control the message. Neither does the mainstream media. At best, we can help to influence the message by becoming part of the conversation in the blogosphere.

Similar themes came up in an afternoon session about crisis communications in the web 2.0 era. Does your institution’s crisis communications plan consider the potential impact of the blogosphere? The recent tragedy at Dawson College in Montreal serves as an immediate and evolving case study of the power of blogs, the photo-sharing site Flickr and other social networking phenomena to tell and shape the story of an ongoing crisis — and to become a big part of the story.

Improving your PR pitch: 10 reporter hacks

The Bad Pitch Blog presents 10 reporter hacks — ergo, 10 ways PR and PIO types can improve their relationships with reporters.

Most of these hacks are standard practices — doing your intel via Google alerts and searches, building relationships, etc. The rest sound so common-sensical that I don’t know why we don’t do them more often. (For instance, this advice: “Give your mouse a rest and step out to Barnes & Noble and buy the damn publication. Sometimes sidebars, graphics, freelancers and editorial coverage cannot be found online.”) Maybe this list will serve as a reminder for us to do the common-sense stuff.

Embargoes: stranglehold or service?

PIOnet is mildly abuzz today with chatter pertaining to Monday’s Inside Higher Ed piece about the embargo system employed by science journals (“The Embargo Should Go,” by Vincent Kiernan).

Kiernan’s premise is that science writers have a love-hate relationship with the embargo practice. While reporters like Natalie Angier of The New York Times believe that “the embargo system gives journal editors ‘a stranglehold on journalistic initiative’,” Kiernan notes that “[j]ournalists are enthusiastic participants in the embargo system and act to keep it functioning. In short, if journalists are in a stranglehold, it is a self-inflicted stranglehold — and one that does not serve the public interest.”

It need not be this way. Journalists could do end runs around the embargo, if they wanted. “Any decent journalist knows what’s in Nature next week,” says David Whitehouse, science editor for the BBC’s Web site. That point is exemplified by Robin McKie, science reporter for The London Observer. He writes for a paper that publishes only on Sundays; because of the embargo’s timing, journal articles seem like old news by the time his paper publishes. Consequently, McKie refuses embargoed access to journals but nevertheless has broken news of important embargoed studies such as the cloning of Dolly and the results of decoding of the human genetic sequence. Much of his reporting, he says, is based on talks given by researchers at open meetings.

On the PIOnet listserv, one PR guy noted that embargoes have become “part of marketing efforts for particular journals. They usually serve no journalistic function. Whenever someone comes to me and wants me to embargo a news release, they have to come up with a pretty powerful story even to get my attention.”

Wrote another PIO:

… [S]cience/medical writers already have a variety of options other than doing pack journalism: they can go to science conferences, peruse abstracts, press releases, tip sheets…….the very things that seem to be getting disparaged here [in Kiernan’s article].

Instead of covering the same thing many other writers are covering, an enterprising reporter can find a wealth of fascinating, context-rich stories in the material sent out by PIOs. PIOs always have compelling stories on tap for enterprising reporters — stories that go begging. …

Those press releases and tip sheets aren’t the problem. The problem, I think, can be that enterprising science/medical don’t realize that those releases and tip sheets are signposts that can lead them into a world of original, and perhaps, exclusive, reporting opportunities. And with the substantial output of material from universities daily, enterprising reporters hardly have to worry about stepping on each other’s toes chasing the same one or two stories.

How better to get your nose under the tent that to make a point of following up on more of those press releases and tip sheets? They’re not the only way to get your nose under the tent, but they are surely a quick, effective way to discover stories — and new sources — that can be a font of future enterprise pieces and new contacts.

Let’s hear it for the PIOs!

Yes, let’s. Huzzah!

A lot of great work is happening on college campuses that doesn’t make it into the scientific journals. Much of it isn’t necessarily of the breakthrough quality the big-league science journalists are looking for. Some of it is applied research that is leading to innovations in the marketplace. Some of it is student-centered research that doesn’t find its way into Nature or Science, but into smaller journals.
Maybe the real stranglehold here isn’t the embargo system, but science journalists’ reliance on the journals for their news.

Then again, maybe the problem is like that encountered by another PIOnet member, who wrote this about his experience at a conference organized by science writers from the New York Times:

I spent almost the entire time defending PIOs and news releases. They were very negative towards us and put down news releases. I brought up a few stories they had developed from news releases — a few were mine, most were from others.

I not only didn’t get my bang for the buck, but any good reputation they might have had with me took a nose dive.

Unless things have changed — I don’t know because I have never gone back — if the NYT science writers are any indication, there may not be many “enterprising” science writers out there looking at news releases.

Friday five: college wranglings

It’s that time of year again: students returning to class, and U.S. News & World Report‘s annual rankings of America’s “best” colleges. Campus admissions officers, deans, presidents, faculty and PR folks across the nation are now scrutinizing the lists, comparing where they fall on the list to the rankings of their competitors, wondering why they slipped or rose in a certain category and lamenting the unjustness of a system that would exclude their institution from, say, the “best values” list. No doubt factions at every university in the nation — other than Princeton, that is — will spend hours critiquing the U.S. News methodology today.
So, before I begin my earnest investigation into how my employer rose from No. 51 in last year’s ranking of best engineering programs to 48 this year but dropped from No. 109 to 112 among national universities, let’s see what the blogosphere and mainstream media have to say about the rankings:

  1. From Tony’s Kansas City, an opinion about the tie in the rankings between two Big 12 universities known for their “border wars” in sports: Equally worthless schools tie in meaningless list.
  2. U.S. News rankings: What they mean for RIT is a post from a PR staffer at Rochester Institute of Technology. It’s a valiant attempt to make sense of the whole rankings hubbub and offer some perspective. “The U.S. News report is only one list and should be put into context with many other variables when determining the reputation and prestige of any university.” That’s pretty much our standard line, too.
  3. An op-ed piece from Ohio State’s student newspaper comparing OSU’s U.S. News ranking from last year (60th) with its No. 27 designation in yet another publication’s list. The op-ed piece wrongly asserts that “U.S. News’ much maligned college ranking system is based solely on academic quality.” It is not. Reputation, exclusivity, fund-raising and other factors come into play in the U.S. News rankings, too.
  4. Look beyond ‘U.S. News’ for college quality, an opinion piece by John A. Roush, president of Centre College, who criticizes U.S. News and other rankings organizations for relying on “flawed research methodology and inaccurately reported data.” He adds: “My real worry about the rankings and the guides is that they are based almost exclusively on ‘inputs’ — the size of a college’s endowment, for example, or the percentage of Ph.D.s on the faculty, or the median GPA of incoming freshmen. Such quantitative criteria, while important, say nothing about what actually takes place when a student attends and graduates from your institution.”
  5. Only in Chicago: Recount helps university rise in magazine’s ranking.

Feds investigate ‘fake news’ (aka VNRs)

In a move that could spell trouble for purveyors of video news releases (VNRs), the Federal Communications Commission is investigating 77 TV stations about whether they “failed to tell viewers about the sponsors behind corporate video releases presented as news, a practice criticized by watchdog groups who say showing ‘fake news’ is an illegal breach of trust with local communities” (Mediaweek story, via FlackLife, who doesn’t like VNRs).

Jonathan Adelstein of the FCC says: “The public has a legal right to know who seeks to persuade them so they can make up their own minds about the credibility of the information presented. Shoddy practices make it difficult for viewers to tell the difference between news and propaganda.”

So where does the fault lie? With the news organizations, or with the PR agencies and offices that send them out? We’ve used VNRs a few times, but with mixed results. Small-market TV stations that don’t have the staff to travel the 60-100 miles to our campus to cover an event appreciate the footage. Big-city stations will have nothing to do with them.
These days, we don’t even try. We’ve concluded that VNRs just aren’t worth the time and energy they require. When we send out news releases to TV stations and have some video available, we let them know. But usually if they want to do the story, they send their own crews.

Over the past year, we’ve been setting up accounts and posting promotional video on all the high-profile video sites (YouTube, MySpace, Google Video and Current TV) and on our video website.
How about you? How do you get video out to the masses?