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Wednesday, September 07, 2005
What’s in most online newsrooms?
Does your company need to beef up its online newsroom? After perusing a report from the Communications department at IBM’s Spanish operation, you may think so.
Online newsrooms—sections of a company’s website dedicated to providing resources to the press—have been de rigueur on the web. Some, like General Electric’s, are models. Others are nothing more than collections of press releases. (It’s been some 30 years since I was a newspaper reporter, but try as I might, I just can’t remember a time when I needed an old press release.) There have been numerous studies in which reporters and editors were asked to rank the most important elements of an online newsroom (contact information invariably tops the list). But now, thanks to communicators working for IBM’s operation in Spain, there’s a detailed report exploring what companies from around the world actually offer in their newsrooms.
The 118-page bilingual (Spanish and English) report—available for download as a PDF—analyzes sites from well over 100 companies in the US and Europe (along with one Asian country, Singapore), examining each on 51 different metrics. While the study didn’t ask whether these sites offered RSS feeds, they did check into the general notion of subscribing to content, along with the usual elements, like press releases, contact information, and photos. It also looks at the ability to submit inquiries and how quickly media relations staff responds.
It’s surprising, given the number of bad pressrooms I’ve seen, how many of those included in the report offer so many desired elements. The companies studied are listed at the end of the report, so it’s easy to point to samples you can use to bolster your argument for enhancing your newsroom with features they have that yours doesn’t. And it never hurts to be able to say, “By the way, of the newsrooms studied, 66 offer backgrounders and reports (or whatever).”
Download ”Best Practices in Public Relations: An Analysis of Online Press Rooms in Leading Companies Round the World”