PR practitioners should plan for the Next Newsroom today
In surveys with readers of the San Jose Mercury News, Chris O’Brien, reporter and innovator on the issue of news in the US, presented four major findings about how people get information:
-
Google
- Other people are a major resource of information
- Choice
- Conversations
There are 5 main theme of the Next generation of the newsroom a project to build the next generation newsroom being conducted at Duke University
1. Integrated - Newsrooms must be fully integrated across blogs and multimedia. It should embrace all platforms. Adapt a consumption model where readers can become so intrigued by the site that they lose track of time as they are immersed in the information.
2. Innovation - The newsroom must be a center for innovation; the 150 year old model was mostly static. We are now in an era of constant change.
3. Collaborative - there must be interactions with other groups outside of your own comfort zone. Cross pollination is a good thing in a new newsroom to expand knowledge and create areas where they will meet each other.
4. Adaptable - Allow for flexibility in assignments, even movable furniture that can be quickly reconfigured to meet a project need.
5. Transparency - Newsrooms need to be open to the community, creating the ability for a dialogue. Changing from a one way medium to a two way organ of information.
New jobs in journalism according to O’Brien
- Programmer journalists
- Media Conductors
- Backpack Journalists
- Cybrarian
- Community Managers
This is a summary of a presentation given at the NewComm Forum produced by the Society for New Communications Research. I agree and submit that all media is now multimedia. That means companies and PR firms need to determine what other resources are appropriate for specific releases. For example, consider audio soundbites or videos of relevant visual elements that enhance the story. These can be set up on a news page at the company’s website or posted on a unique landing page, all trackable. This is a start toward what will be a new type of news release called the social media release. A topic for another post.
Tags: newsroom
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 7:19 pm and is filed under journalism, new media, news release.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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April 24th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Albert, thanks for posting this — fascinating stuff and I’m looking forward to diving in further. The next question, of course, is how the newsroom of the future will be financed independently.
It seems like PR firms and corporate marketing have a great opportunity to supply the research and media content that newsrooms need — but this also raises the responsibility PR professionals have to not just “be the media” on behalf of their organizations, but maintain the high ethical standards of journalism as well.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Albert - what’s a programmer journalist please? I get the rest —-
April 25th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Ah financing the new newsroom, that’s an interesting question. I believe new types of revenue models such as sponsorship, community co-opt forums, and local events are among the ways to generate necessary cash.
However let me ask you to clarify Ken. Are you posing that PR and corporate communications resources are going to be providing a variety of formats for the new newsroom? Or that the new newsroom will be comprised of PR and corporate communicators? Sorry just want to make sure, and good to see you are on twitter too.
Aside from your answer, we both agree that PR and corporate communicators that don’t practice ethical standards across our profession don’t serve themselves, journalists, or the client.
At times PR professionals are called to be the conscience of the company. One of the most respected PR advisors in our field Howard Rubenstein commented at a recent Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit, that on numerous occasions he has advised clients that tell the truth is the best PR path.
I’ll get into other aspects of PR and journalism in a longer blog post. To conclude on this topic I believe Chris O’brien’s work is wonderful and will serve as a guidepost to young journalists. I believe the new newsroom will give PR professionals abundant opportunity to be responsive to journalists’ needs, open a dialogue with the community, and articulate their position’s in the most effective formats.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:35 am
[...] Maruggi’s blog article, PR Practitioners Should Plan for the Next Newsroom Today, led us to Chris O’Brien’s [...]
May 25th, 2008 at 8:05 am
[...] Maruggi’s blog article, PR Practitioners Should Plan for the Next Newsroom Today, led us to Chris O’Brien’s [...]