Education Week: Is Education News Falling Off Front Pages?

Education Week: Is Education News Falling Off Front Pages?

Great story about the shrinking coverage of substantive education stories. A reporter with multiple beats has a hard time keeping up with the complexities of education and education policy. Yet, all other topics are losing coverage as well. New York City has a good option with GothamSchools. Politics aside, we are going to see more explorations into uncharted "reporting" waters.

My 500 words: News Releases are DEAD!

Someone told me “The day of the news release is long gone!” Here’s my preferred statement: The day of the news release used in the traditional way is long gone.

When starting off in PR in the late 80’s, we wrote news releases, put them on the wire and called the newspaper reporters or beat editor. When faxes became ubiquitous, we started to broadcast faxes. When email became the preferred mode of communication, we started using emails.

Throughout all this, we still relied on the wire especially when the news was of a timely nature. We could always be sure that the most respected wire services were feeding into nearly every news room. However, there are a few distinct changes in today’s PR that has made the traditional use of the news release obsolete.

1. More companies exist and more people can use the wire services. With more companies come more PR people and suddenly, there is so much “news” that newsrooms are simply awash in irrelevant information.
2. Newspaper (and broadcast news) staff are shrinking faster than glaciers in the northern hemisphere. Ink is shrinking, too (i.e. editorial space). Wires keep spilling out news releases and emails keep coming into the editors’ and reporters’ desks.

With so much “news” and so little “ink”, a news release used in the traditional way is truly dead. Someone without a clue writes it and sends it out hoping that somewhere, someone will take an interest and call them because their phone number is on the bottom.

If you are Apple or GM or Microsoft or Intel or another highly visible entity, that might work. Sadly, I don’t represent those companies. My clients are small companies and we have to be scrappy.

News releases now are used with multiple aims:

1. Sometimes we PR people use them in the traditional manner by pitching them to a specific reporter who we think may be interested in our story idea. We pitch these stories carefully, research our target and make sure we have a REAL story to pitch. The good ol’ phone call and hard work gets that story going, not what went out on the wire.
2. We use the news release for social media. A well-crafted news release with accompanying multimedia might be passed along because of some interesting tidbit or a cool video. We have to get creative about distributing these (see a future post about the wire service offerings).
3. We issue news releases on the wire because they now feed into thousands of online news outlets. The best wires feed to Wall Street Journal, CNBC and the like). Wires also reach our local newspapers and broadcast news and we get “reprints” because they take the release verbatim.
   

The strategy is to get that news release on as many online sites as possible so that when someone searches on your company or your keywords, the release pops up.

Darn…I’m out of space…but I promised!

My 500 words: News Releases are DEAD!

Someone told me “The day of the news release is long gone!”

 

Here’s my preferred statement: The day of the news release used in the traditional way is long gone.

When starting off in PR in the late 80’s, we wrote news releases, put them on the wire and called the newspaper reporters or beat editor. When faxes became ubiquitous, we started to broadcast faxes. When email became the preferred mode of communication, we started using emails.

Throughout all this, we still relied on the wire especially when the news was of a timely nature. We could always be sure that the most respected wire services were feeding into nearly every news room.

There are a couple of distinct changes in today’s PR that has made the traditional use of the news release obsolete.

1. More companies exist and more people can use the wire services. With more companies come more PR people and suddenly, there is so much “news” that newsrooms are simply awash in irrelevant information.
2. Newspaper (and broadcast news) staff are shrinking faster than glaciers in the northern hemisphere. Ink is shrinking, too (i.e. editorial space). Wires keep spilling out news releases and emails keep coming into the editors’ and reporters’ desks.

 

With so much “news” and so little “ink”, a news release used in the traditional way is truly dead. Someone without a clue writes it and sends it out hoping that somewhere someone will take an interest and call them because their phone number is on the bottom.

If you are Apple or GM or Microsoft or Intel or another highly visible entity, that might work. Sadly, I don’t represent those companies. My clients are small companies and we have to be scrappy.

News releases now are used with multiple aims.

1. Sometimes we PR people use them in the traditional manner by pitching them to a specific reporter who we think may be interested in our story idea. We pitch these stories carefully, research our target and make sure we have a REAL story to pitch. The good ol’ phone call and hard work gets that story going, not what went out on the wire.

 

2. We also use the news release for social media. A well-crafted news release with accompanying multimedia might be passed along because of some interesting tidbit or a cool video.  We have to get creative about distributing these (see a future post about the wire service offerings).

 

3. We also issue news releases on the wire because they now feed into thousands of online news outlets. The best wires feed to Wall Street Journal, CNBC and the like). Wires also reach our local newspapers and broadcast news and we get “reprints” because they take the release verbatim.

The strategy is to get that news release on as many online sites as possible so that when someone searches on your company or your keywords, the release pops up.

 

Darn…I’m out of space…but I promised!

 

My 500 Words

I’m starting a new series: My 500 Words. These will be essays tackling PR issues and they get to the point quickly! I’ll write them when something irks, interests me or needs to be explained. I’ll write them as I gain new insight into this chaotically changing world.

I promise to keep them at 500 words or less.

Give me your feedback and your comments. With 500 words, I can’t say everything I’d like to and have to leave some holes but it will force me to be succinct.

EDUBLOG Awards Nomination

I really enjoy this blog by Ken Royal. He has a number of interesting authors including an 11-year-old girl whose insight astounds me!

So, for the 2009 Edublog awards, I nominate The Educator's Royal Treatment for best group blog

http://www.educatorsroyaltreatment.com/

Lincoln Students Learn How to Monitor and Restore Area Creeks

LINCOLN, Calif. — November 9, 2009 — Students from Lincoln High School are helping to study and protect the Auburn Ravine in a program that combines science with environmental stewardship.

For 12 weeks, students have been learning how to monitor the creek in Auburn Ravine and how it can be restored to its natural state. The monitoring process is called SWAMP (Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program) and it is a method to evaluate the health of a stream and its surrounding environment. The students’ work is part of a statewide effort to monitor California waterways. The program is a partnership with ECO:LOGIC Engineering, the City of Lincoln, Lincoln High School and other groups.

More on BusinessWire http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20091109006349/en