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5/05/2005

NOTICE: THIS BLOG HAS MOVED. CLICK HERE FOR NEW SITE

Press release relevance

I've been wondering about the relevancy of traditional press releases for a long time now so it was interesting to see this article from Ben Silverman at PR Fuel. His poll of 50 beat reporters from small-medium sized dailies uncovered some interesting results.

Believe it or not, only 24% of them said blogs "add value to their jobs as a form of research," and a whopping 76% "do not feel they're a source of information or an opinion barometer." So I wonder what they do think is a good opinion barometer? Corporate PR people spinning "trend" stories? As a wanna-be reporter and journalist myself, I find the blogosphere quite an amazing research tool.

It's actually hard to believe that 36% percent of the journalists surveyed still receive press releases by fax...yes fax! Who the heck still uses those things anyways?

I've been using traditional press releases less and less. For me, PR is not a matter of writing a press release and broadcasting it out to a list. I try to find a select group of journos who I know might have an interest in the information I have, then I engage them with a personal email or phone call and we go from there.

posted by jmaus @ 5/05/2005   1 comments

1 Comments:

At 1:33 AM, May 13, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Press release by fax? Stone Age techology.

I even get press releases by snailmail. From PR companies. Dumb. Like I'm going to want to type out their info. But more than my laziness it's about currency of information. If something is newsworthy, I'll try to get it on my site within nanoseconds of receiving it.

I check the facts, sub the piece, add background info of my own, link to previous articles and then publish. We're all information junkies now and information delivery needs to be both accurate and FAST.

PR companies who still send faxes or snailmail releases need shaking.

 

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