A survey about the adoption of online newsrooms by some of Australia’s leading brand companies, released in the last few days by PR agency Burson-Marsteller, should provide food for thought for Australian PR Directors and Managers.
The basic conclusion of the survey is that online newsrooms are poor because they are either not providing a comprehensive enough range of content, or using the latest technology tools to raise the level of functionality of the sites.
It’s a superficially interesting survey and while it purports to survey Australia’s 20 leading brands as defined by Interbrand, it doesn’t actually list what these organisations are (you have to go and search for yourself).
It also means that because the survey is about brands it misses some of other large organisations whose inclusion in the survey may have added further useful data.
Most importantly (to me) it doesn’t make any of the observations, findings or conclusions specific to the Australian brands/newsrooms it surveyed – apart from nominating Telstra’s as best practice. I can’t help but suspect that client sensitivities got in the way.
For these reasons, while I think the survey is useful and interesting, and B&M should be congratulated for doing it, in my view it only deserves a rating of 6/10 when it could have been 9/10.
But to me the real interest is not what information and tools the companies surveyed are using or not using. To me the issue is why? How come intelligent and online savvy PR Directors and Managers who in the main understand the needs of the media are failing to come up to scratch (in B&M’s view)?
Online newsrooms are not new. Some years ago I did extensive research into them with the intention of launching a local Australian service – which for various reasons I decided not to proceed with.
However I’ve written about them over the years in PR Influences and one article I wrote in 2005 gives some simple advice which is still relevant (although of course the technology has moved a long way since then).
In my view there are three principal issues and challenges that PR Directors and Managers face in getting Online Newsrooms up and running in their organisations:
1. They don’t always have control. PR Directors and Manager’s battle internally over the question of ownership of web based communication and social media. Even though it’s called an Online Newsroom Marketing often wants to take ownership and control. Regardless, unless there’s cooperation between the two, and agreement on the reasons for having an Online Newsroom, the result can fail to satisfy any of the external audiences.
2. There’s the philosophical argument as to whether an Online Newsroom should be passive or interactive and what elements it should contain. Perspectives vary from it being seen as simply a repository of information – like an electronic media kit – to it as an inter-active tool based around social media principles. Sometimes this is determined corporately as a matter of policy. But some is determined by the vision (or lack of it) coming from the PR Director or Manager.
3. Regardless of all this the issue often comes back to the turf war with the IT Department and/or their external technical providers. IT Department’s are notoriously uncooperative and often they simply cannot provide the functionality that many in PR and marketing take for granted.
But the biggest problem is that too many efforts to build Online Newsroom’s become production driven and internally focused. The real challenge is put the tensions and rivalry between PR, marketing and IT to one side and focus on who the end audience is and what they are looking for.
There’s plenty of survey’s around (albeit international) on online newsrooms that provide a real insight into what media want, and don’t want, and what works for them and doesn’t.
This 2009 Online Newsroom Survey from TEKgroup International is a good starting point – along with Burson-Marsteller’s Australian perspective.
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