I judge your organisation when your press office doesn’t know about its own press releases
Sep 13th, 2007 by cpev
Attempting to extract information from a press office yesterday, it occurred to me that press officers need to get with the programme, or social media is going to whup their sorry asses.
My request wasn’t a toughie. I’d seen a story on BBC News that I wanted to cover for a client. The source was research conducted by a particular political party, but there was nothing visible on their website, so I called the press office.
The press officer’s initial response was pitched somewhere between boredom and confusion, but I put the phone down reasonably confident that the appropriate press release was on its way. Opened my email a few minutes later to find a release from the previous day, on a different story.
So I emailed him back, explaining again what I was looking for and including a link to a story about it in the Telegraph. This time I received the correct press release, followed by a message that “this isn’t in today’s papers, it is for tomorrows” [sic]
Hello? This is 2007. Stuff for ‘tomorrow’s papers’ is for right now on the web, unless it’s embargoed. This one didn’t appear to be. And it was already being covered online by BBC News and the Telegraph. So what’s the point telling me it’s news for tomorrow?
It’s sloppy enough not posting your releases to your website the same day (a lot of organisations still fail to do this – don’t you realise, that’s the day we’re all looking for them?). But the devotion to ‘tomorrow’s news’ is disturbing coming from a modern press office.
If you fail to provide information, people will find their sources elsewhere – quickly – and you risk being left out of the conversation.
And if you’re incapable of organising your press office, why should anyone trust you to sell them decent stuff/tell them the truth/govern the country?* (*delete as appropriate)
Incidentally, the snappy title of this post is inspired by the phenomenally popular Facebook group I judge you when you use poor grammar.
Right, time to double-proof this post for embarrassing typos.
i nice blog . but i think you should try to be less technical!
cheers – this blog is going to be of most use to online journalists. some of the points may seem a bit pedantic to a wider audience.
but we will try not to get too technical – Simon, put that wireless power transmission away now.
if you haven’t already, it’s worth taking a look at Open for social media commentary