Unjournalism

Shannon Whitley pointed me to this post from John Furrier about social media news releases. I started following links within and ended up reading this post from Matthew Ingram, which John was summing up.

Matt’s post was prompted by this one from Mark Glaser, which provides a pretty good history and current state of the union on social media news releases. Another link in this long chain led me to Tom Foremski’s post expressing (legitimate) surprise that putting links in news releases on the Web is still relatively unexplored territory. Seriously, people…

Why did I tell you that? Because after all that reading, I had dozens of eager and angry thoughts flying around in my head. I was about to start writing them down, sharing my thoughts on why this whole “social news release” concept isn’t really all that difficult. Then it hit me.

I already did. Thirteen months ago.

And pretty much every word is still relevant, still being discussed in those posts I linked to above. I could update or add a bit more, but to prove a point, I’ll let my previous post stand as is.

Tags: public relations, social media release by Mike Keliher
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Brian Solis has another good post on the social media release panel discussion from the NewComm Forum that took place last week. Read it, you should, but here’s a highlight:

It’s a bigger discussion about sharing official news in way that reaches people (which should include bloggers and journalists too) with the information that matters to them, in the ways that they use to digest and in turn share with others through text, links, images, video, bookmarks, tags, etc., while also giving them the ability interact with you directly or indirectly. It also helps new people find the information in different ways. All this, without the BS.

We don’t need focus groups to ask journalists what they want. We already know that most reporters despise the press release - that should come as no shock to people, yet it always seems to.

Brian is one of the many who’s adding some great thoughts to this discussion. The problem with NewComm Forum’s social media release panel? It was only an hour long — should have been a week.

Tags: Brian Solis, NewComm Forum, newcommforum, social media, social media release by Mike Keliher
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This session was awesome. In a packed-ass room at the Venetian, Chris Heuer of the Social Media Club moderated a panel that discussed the idea of the social media news release. Participants (official ones, not those who jumped in from the audience, for better or for worse) were Brian Solis, Laura Sturaitis from BusinessWire, George Vazquez from PR Newswire, Tom Foremski of “Die Press release! Die! Die! Die!” fame, and the man himself, Todd Defren, the creator/inventor (and human dart board, at times) of the social media release template.

People keep saying Tom Foremski said “the press release is dead.” I know that a lot of people have said that, but did Tom? Whenever anyone in this room mentions that, Tom shakes his head — leading me to greet Tom after the session as “the man with the honor of having more words put in his mouth than any other at the conference” (rolls of the tongue, doesn’t it?). Read enough PR blogs and you’ll start to think Tom is trying to kill the whole PR business. But he’ll tell you that, really, he just wants to get the info he needs to write his story and get to sleep.

Mr. Heuer did a noble and respectable job of making sure this didn’t turn into a “lynch the wire services” hate-fest, but one guy tried to make it one (I won’t say who, but anyone who was there knows who it was). I have a lot of respect for the folks at the wire services. They’ve got a lot of work to do to keep up with the leading edge of a business that’s, in large part, making it up as it goes. Sure, their role is changing dramatically, but they’re not the devil, nor are they going to die any time soon. It’s too bad the two representatives of the newswire biz spent so much time backpeddling and defending themselves. I would’ve liked to have learned more about what they’re doing for social media news releases and what lies ahead rather than about how they justify their existence.

Now, that said, I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Foremski, who very politely laid into the wires, challenging them to explain how the SEC’s reg FD requires public companies to use wire services (technically, it doesn’t, but the wires really hang their hats on the idea that it does). As soon as the SEC acknowledges another method to achieve this mystical instant and simultaneous notification, the wires are going to have some splainin’ to do.

Fortunately, the panel is under no illusion about one key idea: No format — tailored for social media or otherwise — will fix poor content. The social media release template might be a good way to distribute info, but if your info sucks, tough shite. As the wise Mr. Defren said, we still need “to do good PR.”

That’s a fundamental truth, but here’s what I see as the real bottom line for anyone interested in new news release formats: Don’t sweat the details of some fancy social media release template, smart as it might be. Want a “fancy, new” news release? Write clearly and strip out the bullshit, for starters. (Amen to Mr. Solis for saying that, literally. Isn’t it sad how just that — a lack of fluff and BS — can still make you stand out?) If you think bullet points will work, like the social media release template calls for, great. If not, just write succinctly and clearly. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s good.

And to paraphrase Mr. Foremski (at risk of perhaps putting more words in his mouth — sorry, Tom), recognize this basic idea: You’re distributing your news on the Web, so for god’s sake, put links in your release. I can’t believe how rare a thing this is.

Do you have something worth showing off – I mean literally, visually? Great. Include photos or videos. These are things the social media release template guides us toward, but don’t get caught up in fitting a template. That’s how we got ourselves in this situation in the first place.

Do you want people to learn more about the topic you’re writing about? Include links to other content that’s related to the topic. Who cares if it came from your company? Let go, for god’s sake. Be a resource, not a megaphone. Resources are useful and valued. Megaphones are just fucking loud.

Tags: Chris Heuer, NewComm Forum, newcommforum, social media release, socialmediaclub, socialmediarelease by Mike Keliher
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I finally have Internet access at the NewComm Forum. I’ve spent most of the day watching everyone around me check e-mail, write blog posts and just generally enjoy the wonder that is wi-fi, while mine just wouldn’t work. Some sort of goofiness with the hotel’s authentication, coupled with my utter laziness in trying to fix it. That, and the sessions were good enough to keep me tuned in. Because I’m a geek.

I couldn’t spend the day blogging about the conference during the conference, as I had intended, so I’m going to try to put some extra thought into the later-than-expected posts I throw up later. In the meantime, though, I must say (again, keep my indisputable geekdom in mind here) I’m quite pumped to have met Shel Holtz today.

We and others around us had a good chat over lunch about everything from the fate of newspapers (not as dire as many think) to the future of widgets and RSS (you’d better come to the next NewComm Forum). Bummed, though, that his colleague Neville Hobson couldn’t be here. These guys co-host the For Immediate Release podcast, which I enjoy greatly. They’re bright and insightful and apparently dedicated to improving the community of communicators — a rather respectable set of traits.

I met some other very cool, very bright people today, too. Tom Foremski and I had a great walkin’-the-halls chat about the way newswires are changing (are the doomed…?!). And while I didn’t actually meet Todd Defren, I nodded eagerly a lot when he said things during the session on social media news releases. Todd’s a bright guy with some great ideas.

More to come later on all of this stuff. No time now. Battery’s dying.

Tags: Shel Holtz, future, newcommforum, social media release by Mike Keliher
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Several folks in the public relations industry are working to make the grand-daddy of all tried-and-true PR tools — the news release — more relevant and useful in this crazy new world of blogs and Web journalism and “we don’t want no more of your corporate BS marketing junk.” I’ll spare you the details and simply point you to some the fruits of their important, difficult work at socialmediarelease.org.

Several of the folks close to this issue have formed a “working group” that focuses on hammering out issues related to the revamping of the news release. They post occasional podcasts to report on what they’re up to; NMRcast, they call it, with NMR being “new media release.”

In the most recent installment of said podcast, Tom Foremski, the guy who’s basically responsible for starting this whole discussion with this post, eventually brings the discussion around to the name “social media release.” At about eight minutes into the podcast, Tom says something to this effect:

Maybe it should be called a “media release” or something like that because there are so many constituencies to serve.

He’s hesitant to call it a social media release because the content is for more than just perveyors of social media like bloggers and podcasters. So what do you call a document that is designed to officially release important information — often news — to various groups with different interests or reasons for caring about that information?

Call me a visionary, but here’s my suggestion: How about calling it a damn “news release”?

I don’t intend to stomp on the folks who are leading this discussion around bringing this PR tool into the brave new world of blogs and the like, but this strikes me as a textbook example of thinking too hard. You’re conveying news — “releasing” the information, if you will. What’s wrong with “news release”? You’re not playing favorites by calling it “press release” (old school!) or “social media release.”

You could call it a “new media release” — which many people use interchangeably with “social media release” — but that’s, at least in name, bypassing consumers or anyone who’s not “media.” And as many people now recognize, news releases on the Web are increasingly a direct-to-consumer source of information, no longer requiring a reporter to take interest in a news release and putting that news in the paper or on TV.

Keep up the great work, NMRcasters. But don’t get hung up on the name. That’s not what needs to change. Trash like this news release is what needs to be done away with.

Tags: Shel Holtz, Tom Foremski, common sense, public relations, social media release by Mike Keliher
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