Surveying more than 500 journalists and bloggers from IT and business titles, US firm PRSourceCode has announced its annual list of ‘Top Tech Communicators’.
Of the large agencies – A&R Edelman came out top, followed by Weber Shandwick Worldwide.
Agree or disagree? And your nominations outside of the US?
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has issued a statement condemning Yemen’s ‘harassment and denigration’ of Al Jazeera television, including a threatening telephone call to Sanaa bureau chief, Mourad Hashem, earlier this week.
RSF said that Al Jazeera has been branded by the authorities as the ‘enemy of a united Yemen’ because the channel covered unrest in the south of the country.
“The authorities use and abuse defence of national unity to censor media that try to cover events in southern Yemen,” the press freedom organisation said in the release.
Thanks to everyone who has commented, tweeted and emailed with their advice on writing the perfect press release – from the journalist’s point of view.
We’re doing this to create a guide for PRs, press officers and other communications professionals with no nonsense tips from those receiving the releases.
What’s been interesting from the responses so far is the degree of consensus regarding what should and shouldn’t be included.
I’d like to get your views on the following specifics too:
Leave a comment below, email me (laura [at] journalism.co.uk) or send a message to @journalismnews.
Love them or loathe them, press releases provide the initial spark for a story for many journalists
Whether it’s the launch of a new product, a statement from a campaign group on a hot issue or details of new research, most journalists will be inundated with releases during their career (some more relevant than others, though that’s material for a wholly different blog post…).
For PR professionals and press officers they are one vital tool for publicising events and brands or creating buzz for a client.
Journalism.co.uk has its own service, PressGo, for matching press releases with journalists interested in 37 subject areas, from consumer goods and affairs to fashion, IT or the environment.
But to make this service more efficient for its users (that’s you hopefully), we want feedback on how to write the perfect press release. For example:
We hope to create a guide – focusing on the writing, NOT distribution of releases – featuring comments from individual journalists as a point of reference for the PR community and we’d love your feedback, including your name and publication if possible.
Please leave a comment below, email laura [at] journalism.co.uk or send a tweet to @journalismnews.
Attributor has teamed up with German agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur to monitor online copyright infringements against its content distributed in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The agency has been trialling the service for eight months, but will now make it available to its clients.
Transmission of the loss-making analogue television service will end in January 2010 rather than 2012.
The National Union of Journalists announced today that its members at Trinity Mirror in Birmingham have ‘unanimously passed a motion of no confidence in the company’s management of its regional titles.’
The motion was agreed by the chapels from the Birmingham Post, Mail, Sunday Mercury and Midlands Weekly Media, it said in a release.
“The big newspaper companies are following a policy of slash and burn – and the people who work there have had enough,” said Chris Morley, NUJ Northern organiser and a former father of the Post and Mail chapel.
“Trinity Mirror would rather close titles than put them up for sale – giving them the chance to survive under another owner.
“The Walsall Observer used to sell more than 30,000 copies a week. It is a much-loved local institution.”
NUJ members at the Birmingham titles are currently balloting for action, following the announcement of job cuts and closure of weekly titles.
At the weekend, the Financial Times reported that the Birmingham post might soon cease daily publication.
The chapels sent this letter to Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey:
Dear Ms Bailey,
The Birmingham and Midlands NUJ Chapels find ourselves in dispute with the company over cuts and redundancies.
Regretfully the unanimous view of members is that while some difficulties are expected in a recession, the successive assaults on this business goes way beyond that and in fact continue a trend of cutbacks which began long before the economic downturn.
Therefore the BPM Media and Midlands Weekly Media chapels have unanimously backed a proposal from the floor for a vote of no confidence in Trinity Mirror’s management of its regional titles.
The motion, which will be issued to the newspaper trade media, states:
“Journalists, already having recently suffered a major round of redundancies. massive structural change and being the testing ground for new, unproven IT systems, have responded to these greater workloads and longer hours, with professionalism and much good will to ensure deadlines are met and quality is maintained.
“This has been thrown back in their faces and they have been betrayed by a management with a single aim – the pursuit of short term profit through cost reduction, asset sale and redundancy. This one-trick pony has no plan for the future and no concept of how to grow the local news, advertising and publishing business.
“Under this management we fear that within a few years there will be no Birmingham Post, Mail, Mercury and weeklies. Titles which have served communities and made profits for decades in the face of recession, depression, war, the advent of radio, television and recently the internet, are either being closed now or are in immediate danger if the present policy of cut, cut, cut continues.
“The company has accused the union of ignoring the disputes procedure in immediately calling a ballot for industrial action in the face of these cuts. However, the company broke its agreements with the recognised unions in imposing a pay freeze without negotiation or consultation at the start of this year.
“We believe closing titles such as the Walsall Observer, which has been published for more than 150 years, and proposals we believe are being considered to cut publication of the Birmingham Post and stop same day publication of the Birmingham Mail are reckless and negligent as it sends out the message that this company is failing and will scare advertisers away.”
Reed Business Information has sold its travel publishing division, which includes Gazetteers.com, Travolution and Travel Weekly, to entrepreneur Clive Jacobs.
Simon Ferguson, former publishing director of the group’s travel portfolio, who left RBI in March, struck the deal and will become chief executive of the newly created TW Group Ltd.
UK based digital publishers PageSuite have landed a deal with America’s largest publisher of metropolitan business newspapers, American City Business Journals. The company will launch of all 40 of their bizjournal titles online, using PageSuite as their provider.
Bizjournals cover 40 industries, distributed across 41 cities and their websites have more than eight million unique visitors per month. “Our production teams have found the software to be very flexible and user friendly,” commented Eric Mick from bizjournals, in a release.
PageSuite already publishes digital editions for some of the world’s biggest newspapers including Metro Canada, Metro UK & Ireland, San Francisco Examiner, Express Newspapers, The Guardian Weekly & Brazil’s largest daily newspaper Zero Hora.
David Fordham, chief executive of Iliffe News and Media, has been appointed as president of the Newspaper Society.
Georgina Harvey, Trinity Mirror Regionals managing director, has been named as vice president.