Last week I went to an internal breakfast seminar on news gathering in the digital age - with a guest speaker from the BBC. My take out - it's about the whole package, not just the release - has some interesting questions for internal communicators.
Peter Horrocks, Director of the BBC World Service talked through the way in which auntie gathers news and more importantly how their copy-tasting works now. Once upon a time they would think about a news story as an event - perhaps there was a press release to judge. Now they have to think about how the news will evolve over the course of a day when looking a story; they have to think of it might work as phone-in, perhaps a discussion for the BBC website or how radio and TV will treat it.
This is intended to reflect the diversifying ways we consume news - most of us graze over the course of a day so expecting people to stick to one channel or medium just doesn't work anymore.
The lesson for PR's (if they haven't been doing it already) is to anticipate how news intake services will want to test a story. Instead of just offering up a release there's a need to provide possible speakers for the phone-in etc.
Internally, the lesson is equally clear although I'm not sure is we've all learnt it over the last few years.
In the past we'd often be happy just to get an announcement posted on the intranet or fed into the email system. But we have to keep reminding ourselves that its about repetition.
At work we're pretty diverse about where we get our information from - a multi-channel strategy is clearly the way ahead.
Liam
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