REPORTNew technologies leave newswires’ role uncertainA recent MyPRGenie survey of U.S. journalists found that only1.4% of them now prefer to receive press releases via <strong>com</strong>mercialnewswires. Email, on the other hand, was the preferreddelivery medium for 90% of reporters. These numbers haveinspired some to reflect on the changing role of PR newswiresin this highly dynamic and ever-changing media landscape.By Johan-Till BroerReaching journalists with your storytakes far more than just sending apress release over the wire. This isnot new. Creating <strong>com</strong>pelling content,good writing and strong ties with importantreporters in your industry have alwaysbeen the fundamental pillars of any successfulPR program. But this is even moretrue in the age of the social web.The way journalists work has changeddramatically over the last years. Many publishinghouses have cut their reporter staff.At the same time, the number of PR professionalshas increased drastically, exposingeach journalist to more pitches and pressreleases. The social web and the digitalizationof different media forms requires journaliststo take on additional responsibilitiesand juggle multiple tasks. Many journalistsare now also bloggers, Twitter users andweb TV producers. They are very busy andforced to be extremely selective about theirsources. All of this means they have lesstime to deal with PR people and their stories,which makes it harder to get throughPR news briefsRUDER FINN GROUP FORMSRUDER FINN PARTNERSRuder Finn Group announced May 24 that it isspinning off Finn Partners as a separate unitunder Peter Finn later this year.Currently, he shares co-CEO duties at RuderFinn Inc. with his sister, Kathy Bloomgarden.Ruder Finn spun off RF Binder Partners in 2001under Amy Binder, sister of Peter and Kathy.As founder and managing partner of FinnPartners, Finn will initially preside over 160staffers and $25M in fees. RFG generated $97Min 2010 fees and employed 602 at yearend.Finn Partners will be housed in RFG’s NewYork headquarters and move into Ruder Finn Inc.offices in Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles,San Francisco and Israel.Finn expects the new venture will thrive in anera in which “innovation and partnership will bestrong drivers of the brand.”He has targeted digital/social media, consumer,technology, travel/economic development,corporate and the arts as areas of development.to a reporter. For any PR pro it is therefore,now more than ever, extremely importantto establish oneself as a reliable source thatjournalists trust and listen to. The surveyresults mentioned above reflect this:Instead of browsing through all the pressreleases that <strong>com</strong>e through the <strong>com</strong>mercialwire services every day, journalists preferablyrely on trustworthy sources sendingtheir news via email.Do newswire still reach journalists?There are still benefits to using a PRnewswire. Even though journalists preferto receive information via email, there arestill reasons for them to browse through thestream of a <strong>com</strong>mercial wire service, forexample, when researching a specific topicor looking for a new and specializedsource. In these cases it is clear that beingpresent with press releases on a newswiresite can be beneficial. A newswire can alsobe extremely helpful if you don’t have anyrelationships with journalists in place yet orwhen entering a foreign market. In thesecases it will at least enable you to reach acertain number of influencers that could beinterested in your story, and you’ll get thepress release into search engines.Newswire sites, like PR Newswire,Business Wire or Market Wire, still receivehigh web traffic, so posting a press releasecan result in good visibility on searchengines. This is a very effective way toreach journalists as 91% turn to Googlewhen researching a story, the study shows.When distributing the release over a wire,it will also automatically be posted onmajor news sites like Yahoo Finance etc.,which provides additional SEO benefits.Newswire alternativesAs already pointed out, establishing yourown network of press contacts that are relevantand sending press releases toreporters directly is still the most effectiveway of getting your news out. But there areother tactics that can work as well. Writinga blog post on your corporate blog can bevery effective and there are many <strong>com</strong>paniesdoing just that. It is a great way to getyour news into search engines, especially ifyour website and blog gets a lot of visits.Another benefit is that you drive trafficdirectly to your website instead of drivingit to a newswire site.It can also be very effective to just pitchcertain key blogs with a story and offerthem an exclusive. Popular blogs can serveas distribution vehicles. Their posts notonly rank high on search engines but arealso followed by many journalists at mainstreamand industry publications (especiallyin the tech space). One downside of thisstrategy, however, is the loss of controlover the message. While the content of apress release can be entirely controlled (ofcourse not the resulting coverage), a bloggerwill write whatever he/she thinks ofyour news, so there is a possibility that thefocus of a story will be different thanexpected or even take a negative tone.Reaching new influencersThe social web has not only changedhow journalists work, it has also changedthe audience PR pros need to address.Brands not only need to reach analysts andjournalists but also influencers on thesocial web as well as customers. This iswhy the Social Media News Release(SMNR) was developed. The idea of theSMNR is that it offers many different sharingoptions for various social media platformsbut also multimedia content — suchas videos — that can deliver the message ina different format. The SMNR alsoacknowledges the fast-paced work environmentof journalists and tries to not onlyprovide a news text but also additional content,such as links to articles that put a topicin context, as well as in-depth backgroundinformation. This provides journalists amore <strong>com</strong>prehensive view on a topic, evenwithout additional research. A SMNR canbe created in form of a blog post or withspecialized services such as Pitchengine.PR newswires have lost some of theirrelevance, but they aren’t obsolete. Whenplanning any media outreach, it should beassessed closely if a wire distributionmakes sense or not. There are surely manyalternative tactics. Hopefully, the bignewswires will realize this too and furtheradopt their products to the needs of thesocial web. While most of them offer sharingbuttons and multimedia integration,they are still far away from offering <strong>com</strong>prehensiveSMNRs.Johan-Till Broer is an international publicrelations professional living in Chicago.He is the North American PR Manager andSpokesperson for NAVIGON, and blogs atGlobalPRBlog.<strong>com</strong>. 14JUNE 2011 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM
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