Journalists don’t want your press releases – they want your multi-media content

By , Tuesday, 5 April 2011, 3 Comments

I had an interesting meeting recently with
Clare Horton, the online editor of Society Guardian.

She told me that Twitter
has become one of her main sources for news stories and she’s more likely to
turn to social networking sites than traditional press releases when
considering ideas. She also says
she’s crying out for charities to offer her stories with multi-media elements -
whether video, audio or photography – and is especially interested in stories
from the perspective of service users. She’s not alone. 

I spoke to
a journalist at the Daily Telegraph who echoed Clare’s comments and to a former
colleague at the BBC who says  they are increasingly exploring how they can use content produced externally. But how often do press offices approach journalists with stories with
their multi-media content in mind?

To save costs, several of the larger
charities are getting practical training for their staff to enable them to
record simple multi-media content in-house. They often produce the types of
stories that journalists like Clare are looking for. 

This is great news and will enable charities to reach a
wider audience with their content.
But from my experience it’s often a different team producing the
multi-media content to the person who deals with general press and communications
work. 

There are still many old school
charity press officers who work in a traditional way using press releases with
quotes from the chief executive who simply don’t understand the value of this
multi-media content. There
needs to be more joined up thinking if the charities are to get a return from
their investment in training and production work. 

I always say that if you can’t use this
content in 10 different ways – not just giving to journalists, but across all
your other communication channels from your e-newsletters to your Twitter
streams – you shouldn’t be doing it.   

One press officer that Clare mentioned who
approached her recently with some photographic content was from Scope who
suggested some pictures they’d produced to raise awareness about the Disability
Living Allowance. She loved the
photographs and turned them into an online slideshow
.

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  • James Renton

    The subtext being that the traditional media are operating on such a shoestring these days that they want someone to do all their work for them.

    While I accept the Twitter is a good way of getting stuff out there if it was not backed up by the traditional approach of something well written, accurate etc. then it would fall after the initial burst of interest?

  • John Brunsdon

    Having worked on both sides of the fence – as a BBC journalist and now in charity marketing – it’s not so much traditional media wanting to do things on a shoestring but the simple fact that, in a deadline-centred environment, there’s a natural inclination to go with what can be turned around quickly, as long as it is relevant and adds to the story.

    If you can give a journalist something they can use immediately (a great quote on a current story, good images, video etc) they are going to be more inclined to use it than if they have to dig around for the extras themselves.

    It’s the same principal as keeping in touch with journalists via social media. If they need a quote and don’t have to look up your number, they’ll go to you for it rather than someone else.

  • Howard Lake

    Yes, fully agree. There’s a role for the press release – good old text with background notes. But I’ve been urging charities and fundraising agencies to send me videos, audio or large images to use on fundraising.co.uk for a long time.

    A few are doing so now in 2011 but it’s been slow progress, despite the good work of people like Jude training and showcasing how these digital tools can be used.

    I try to video interview people myself as often as possible to back up a story, just to fill the gap.

    It’s lovely that charities are using Flickr for sharing photos, but look how many don’t make their photos available by Creative Commons licence! So many of them state ‘all rights reserved’.

    So, charities and fundraising agencies – think: what draws your eye most, three paragraphs of text, or a YouTube video?

    I fully agree that embedding a video is hardly professional journalism – it’s the combination of media that really informs – images, reasoned reporting and comment in textual form, an interactive map perhaps, and contextual links to other related content in its various forms.

    That’s how I’d like fundraising.co.uk to continue to develop – a combination of multiple informed voices sharing information in various formats, often culled from multiple sources. And all of them curated by, ahem, someone who can present them in a useful format.

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