As a corporate communicator it is just as important to know the role of the journalist during the newsgathering process within an online newsroom, as it is understanding your own role.
I’ve mentioned throughout my blog that it is vital that corporate communicators or those updating the online newsroom should post more frequently than ever before. The reason? The field of journalism has expanded to the 24/7 time crunch, and journalists are constantly wanting the latest and greatest breaking news. If your company has something worth sharing, don’t hesitate, because your company could miss out on an opportunity to have a published story. Now that your company is updating so frequently, how in the world are journalists going to sort through all the different means a company can report their breaking news? Let’s take a trip back to our roots with the RSS feed, which generally hasn’t been as popular as e-mail alerts amongst journalists. Journalists, let me ask you to reconsider.
On the Online Journalism Blog, the team stresses the importance of what they dubbed aggregating-network newsgathering as “passive aggressive newsgathering.” What this means is journalists are subscribing to RSS feeds and at times e-mail alerts, which is more passive, while exploring a collection of networks, which is more active. So in short the RSS feed from Twitter, for example, has a social component, Twitter “followers.”
To get a handle on the several types of social media sites, set up a reader in Google or another aggregation site and subscribe to:
- 2 news sites
- 2 blogs
- 1 blog search (Technorati is a great place to start)
- 1 news search (Google)
- 1 Twitter search (search.twitter.com)
- 1 forum search (boardreader)
- 1 del.icio.us tag
As a journalist having experience and understanding the various ways companies interact takes practice. Journalists should not only research the above social media tools but participate to get a true understanding of what is expected from the tools, whether they are making a blog of their own, commenting on posts or forums, or simply “tweeting.” By learning the different tools journalists will be better prepared for the online aspect of their field.
In the PowerPoint below the team at OJB has provided two tips to manage feeds. Do you think they are quality suggestions? Why or Why not?
To complete our role reversal from the corporate side to the journalistic side, Ryan Thornburg, a professor at the University of North Carolina, created a presentation about how to report news online and posted it on his blog. This presentation is meant to inform and help the corporate communicators understand journalists’ expectations, making room for a relationship to form between the two groups. By watching and listening journalist can gain insight of where their field stands within the online world. However, corporate communicators can still gain knowledge of what journalists are expected to do when reporting. Knowing this vital information can improve the process of newsgathering within the company’s online newsroom or other social media tools.
