In the world of corporate PR, it has become fashionable to outsource the company's online newsroom. Third-party vendors are only too happy to do the heavy lifting: They'll host
the newsroom, manage the database and even track the hits. Lately, however, industry observers are sounding a note of alarm. Too often, they say, these sites are not being used to
their full advantage.
"People are thinking about them as nothing more than news release databanks, but they need to be more than that," says Charles Pizzo, former chair of the International
Association of Business Communicators and a consultant to the PR industry. "We need to start thinking of them as our online newswires, and using them that way."
When it comes to online newsrooms, Pizzo applauds third-party management. But he warns against complacency in a system that makes posting press releases almost too easy.
On the plus side, these third-party products really do make it easy to keep the news fresh, at least according to Debbie Eliades, PR specialist at The Gap. Although the
clothing retailer boasts a 40-strong public relations shop, the PR team still opted to let outside vendor Vocus create and maintain its online newsroom. Eliades calls it a win. In
the past, PR executives at the firm typically would have had to put in a request through the IT shop if they wanted to post a press release on the corporate site, then wait for IT
to do the HTML coding before the news appeared. But with the management tools provided by Vocus, "we are able to publish directly to the site from our workstations,
instantaneously to the Web," Eliades says. "We don't even have to be at work to go public. We can be at home if we want to make changes after hours."
At the University of Michigan Athletics Department, Director of Media Relations Bruce Madej has had similar success, not just with the issue of speed but also with the overall
functionality of his site. For example, Madej puts out different news releases for basketball and football fans, and for the media.
"We used to literally just do flat files. You put up an HTML page with no metadata to search, no way to move something from one page to another," he says. Sometimes that meant
literally posting the score of a game in five different places on the site. Now it's all in one shot.
So what's the problem? Too many press releases, Pizzo says, or, more precisely, nothing but press releases.
"When people start to rely on content management software or third party vendors to help them to post more quickly, that can be a good thing. But sometimes it means that they
gain speed but they lose functionality," he says. "The result can be just a long list of news release headlines, just this big gray block of text arranged by date. But reporters
don't work by date, they work by beat or subject, and that's how the site has to be arranged."
The best newsrooms avoid this by offering search functionality, reporter-friendly organization and, most of all, a depth of content.
At TEK GROUP, founding partner Steven Momoerella says that with high-bandwidth connections and cost-effective imaging tools, today's online newsrooms can -- when it comes to
depth of content -- far outpace their counterparts of just a few years ago. PR can use these spaces not just as press release archives but homes for press kits, including audio
and video content.
TEK GROUP's software makes it possible for PR executives to create and post multi-media content without having to bring in the IT folks. That capability does not come cheap --
the newsroom package can run $1000 to $5000 a month, depending on the size of the company -- but Momoerella argues that PR can make it back in productivity and material savings.
"For every photo you put up on your site that you don't have to make a slide or a CD for, that you don't have to send out by Federal Express, you are saving money,"
Whitney Drake agrees. As Internet communications manager at Ford Motor Company, she relies on a TEK newsroom to push news out to the media. As a major international
corporation, "we reap enormous benefits both from cost savings in terms of mailing materials around the world, and time savings, especially for journalists who might be working on
something in Europe and California."
While these savings are a nice extra, the real payoff in online newsrooms comes from the ability to sidestep IT and deliver news directly to the public. Having satisfied
themselves that newsrooms are worth the time and effort, PR executives now are doing just what skeptics like Pizzo are suggesting they should: They are asking for more.
"Today they want to do more than just put up press releases. They want to post news, yes, but they also want to have a searchable database," says Kay Bransford, VP of marketing
communications at Vocus. Vocus can provide newsrooms with all that functionality for $7,500 a year, which Bransford argues is a small price to pay for the ability to get
information out at the quickest possible speeds. "Say you are a small- to middle-sized company, where maybe IT is not on call 24/7, and, heaven forbid, your CEO is caught drunk
driving. People are going to go to your Web site first. Are they going to find anything? Or is it going to be a 'No comment?'"
Contacts: Contacts: Whitney Drake, 313.337.3669, [email protected]; Debbie Eliades, 415.427.4585, [email protected] ; Bruce Madej, 734.647.2583, [email protected] ; Steven Momoerella, 734.945.7790,
[email protected] ; Charles Pizzo, 504.282.0454, [email protected]
How Online Newsrooms Pay Off
An online newsroom costs money and requires daily care and feeding. Why make the effort if you aren't going to get max bang for the buck? Users and vendors alike say there are
always ways to improve upon a newsroom.
Keep at it, says Whitney Drake, Internet communications manager at Ford Motor Company. "It has to be constant. Press releases need to be archived. Photos need to be linked to
the relevant articles," she says. "For a newsroom to be effective, it's constantly being looked at and updated."
Of course, a 'better' newsroom is one that meets your desired ends. "You need to know what is the role the Web site is going to play in the corporate messaging," says Kay
Bransford, VP of marketing communications at Vocus. "We have seen people change their minds and end up spending a lot more time than was necessary. It is just like any PR
campaign. Know what you want before you start, so you will know that it meets your needs when you are done."
On the topic of changing minds, Bruce Madej offers a major caveat. "You need to own the rights to your material," says Madej, the director of media relations for the University
of Michigan Athletic Department. "Let's say that after a while you change [newsroom] providers. In my case, I have my data and I take it with me. You don't want to have your
photos and videos and all of that on someone else's server and then have to pay for the rights to take it back off."
Charles Pizzo, former chair of IABC and a consultant to the PR industry, provides a simple piece of advice on taking online newsrooms to the next level: Post more stuff. Give
reporters everything they could possibly want to know about the company, organized in a way that will help them find it quickly.
"We need to stop thinking of these things as online newsletter repositories," he says. "I have seen sites where there is an archive of news releases, but you cannot find out
when the company was founded or how many employees they have."