By inmedia
Further to Francis’s post about the demise of the Halifax Daily News, a post on Gawker yesterday shows that it’s not just smaller, local newspapers that are struggling. The New York Times announced that it will be cutting 100 newsroom positions this year. Which begs the question, where will the wealth of writing and editing talent end up? Surely some will move online, perhaps others will switch sides and become PR practitioners… Good writers and hard workers will prevail, it’s just a matter of what platform will act as their new venue.
By Francis Moran
The news earlier this week that Transcontinental Media was discontinuing publication of the Halifax Daily News was probably as inevitable as it was unfortunate for the 92 people who worked there. They joined scores of other newsroom and media workers who have been pink-slipped over the past little while in what is probably one of the worst employment periods for the journalism business in decades.
For those of us who worked at the News in what might charitably be called its heyday under cowboy founder and publisher, madcap Fleet Street refugee David Bentley, the news of its demise brought back — shall I say — interesting memories. My good pal Sherri Aikenhead, who was a summer cub reporter on the News the year I started there, recalled for a Globe and Mail story this week the night we ran a sensational scoop under the headline, “Agonies of a princess,” that, contrary to all rules and protocol that prohibited directly quoting one of the British royal family, directly quoted Diana, Princess of Wales, on the pain she felt when the media wrote nasty things about her. You’d think we’d nominated Hitler for sainthood the way the local and international media excoriated us for breaking the so-called rules.
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By Linda Forrest
Over the next few weeks, I would like to address individually some of the components of what we at inmedia consider to be an integrated public relations program. One of the sales challenges that we can face as an agency is shattering prospects’ perception that public relations consists solely of sending out news release upon news release, as far and as wide as your distribution method can take it. At inmedia, we consider news releases to be just one of the many arrows in our media relations tactics quiver. This series will hopefully shed some light on other methods of generating media coverage that have proven effective for our B2B technology clients.
Today, I would like to address bylined articles. Let’s start with the basics: what is a bylined article? According to Dictionary.com, a byline refers to “A line at the head of a newspaper or magazine article carrying the writer’s name.” Therefore, a bylined article is a feature that is (ostensibly or actually) written by an expert in a particular space and published in an appropriate venue, such as a trade magazine, a consumer-focused publication, or on a web site.
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By Danny Sullivan
I was over in Canada last week for some important meetings and it really drove home to me the value of being able to converse face-to-face. As a remote worker, I spend a fair amount of time joining meetings by phone, which is an effective but impersonal method of communicating.
My experience last week of sitting in a new client’s boardroom with about ten other people in the room was very positive. Ideas were being exchanged and the conversation was flowing dynamically. Had I been forced to participate in the same meeting by conference call, it would have been a far different story. Simply trying to determine who is speaking at any one time would have been a huge challenge, let alone trying to interject with constructive comment from my little speaker in the middle of the room!
Similarly, the roundtable I had with colleagues during my visit was a highly constructive one. The benefit of being able to interact in a lively conversation, without having to wait for a suitable period of silence to make oneself heard is a real benefit. Those little physical gestures that we use to convey humour, emphasize a point, or to imply something else than what is being said, all become moot to the guy on the end of the line.
This may all sound obvious, but in today’s productivity focused workplace, we often feel that the time spent traveling to sit in the same room as a colleague or client is time that could be better spent on other things. Why not just catch up by phone and save yourself those precious minutes or hours?
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By inmedia
The blogosphere seems to be abuzz with the revelation that Canadians hold many powerful positions in the U.S. and international media. We’re everywhere! An article in yesterday’s National Post tweaked Gawker and the Huffington Post to the fact that a large contingent of Canadians are influential media pundits, editors and journalists. Just as Canadians seemingly dominate the entertainment field, be it music – Celine, Avril, Shania, Nelly, Feist et al – or movies – Mike Myers, Jim Carrey, Ryan Gosling, Ryan Reynolds, just to name a few – or books – Malcolm Gladwell, Douglas Coupland, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and so on, so too does it seem that the true north, strong and free is well represented in the list of influential decision-makers in the media. Anecdotally, I was indeed surprised last year when my mother was planning on attending her high school reunion and discovered that she went to the same high school as Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair’s editor in chief. Pleasantly surprised though I was, sadly, my subscription cost remains the same.
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PR writing: Stay away from meaningless buzzwords
February 11, 2008 by Jill Pyle
By Jill Pyle The content we write for our clients can take many forms, including news releases, technology backgrounders, corporate backgrounders and bylined or contributed articles. To be able to write these kinds of pieces, we have to really understand our clients’ technology, market and audience. This is why we spend a lot of time […]
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Learning your whole story from internal knowledge-keepers
February 06, 2008 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest One of the attributes that inmedia is quite proud of is that with our agency, we feel that your whole story gets told. Because our vertical teams (meaning clients aren’t sold by the highest executives in the company and then work is actually implemented by a junior team) are involved in client […]
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Fiction: PR can’t be measured – Take 2
February 05, 2008 by Francis Moran
By Francis Moran About a month ago, as part of my continuing series of Francis’s favourite fictions, I tackled the too-widely held myth that public relations can’t be measured. I described how, at inmedia, we establish a critical path, or set of outputs, for every project and ongoing program that allows our clients to certify […]
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January roundup: Niche media outlets, PR measurement, boutique analyst firms, media launches and more
February 01, 2008 by Jill Pyle
By Jill Pyle January has been a long and busy month, with many current and potential clients eager to ramp their public relations programs. Looking back, it seems we’ve covered quite a bit of ground this month, everything from niche media outlets to PR measurement to the pros and cons of embargos and exclusives. Here’s […]
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Embargos, yes; exclusives, no
January 31, 2008 by Francis Moran
By Francis Moran My colleague Danny Sullivan made the strong case earlier this week in favour of negotiating embargos with trusted journalists that gives them advance access to your announcement and executives so they can do a better job with the story. In return, they promise not to publish or broadcast anything until an agreed […]
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Revisiting the hacks vs. flacks job satisfaction debate
January 30, 2008 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest Further to my post from a few weeks ago asking if journalist burnout was the reason for the escalation of the hacks vs. flacks war, I’ve done a little bit more digging in order to hopefully gain some insight into what job satisfaction ratings are like in the PR industry. Interestingly, the […]
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Embargos and how to use them effectively
January 29, 2008 by Danny Sullivan
By Danny Sullivan When a technology company approaches the date of a significant news announcement, the possibility of offering the story to media under embargo is often raised. For those unfamiliar with the term, it simply means giving selected media advance access to the news that you will be distributing, usually on the understanding that […]
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It’s a small world after all
January 29, 2008 by Francis Moran
By Francis Moran What does an RFID infrastructure company from St. John’s, Newfoundland, have in common with the Livingston, Scotland, outfit that makes the world’s most advanced prosthetic hand? Well, besides being inmedia clients, Cathexis Innovations and Touch Bionics both find themselves this week at the same trade show, Arab Health 2008 at the Dubai […]
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