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This week on Inside PR, Terry Fallis and Martin Waxman welcome listener comments and discuss the future of newswires.
00:29 Terry opens the show.
00:50 Terry and Martin wish Dave Jones a Happy Robbie Burns Day AND a Happy Birthday!
02:22 Terry introduces a comment from Eden Spodek, one of the organizers of Podcamp Toronto 2010.
04:02 Terry reads a comment from Ben Hennessey.
07:50 Terry introduces a third comment from Rob Jeanveau, which also leads to this week’s topic: What does the future hold for newswires?
17:57 Terry kicks off the -30- segment.
21:53 Martin closes the show.
Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.
This week’s episode was produced by Sarah Laister.
Hi guys,
Another great show! I have a few things to add to your discussion on the fascinating future of newswires.
When CNW first set up shop in 1960, releases were issued via teletype to a proprietary terminal set up in newsrooms. Since then, PR people have proclaimed the end of the newswire business with each new technological advancement – fax, email and now social media, – as they can now reach online audiences directly themselves. But PR people have always been able to reach the media or other audiences without a newswire service, and PR people with a strong story can expect pick up no matter how they choose to share the information.
Despite decades of threats to our business model, CNW is still here, simply because media like the services we offer – and our clients benefit from this. In regard to Terry’s point about the volume of releases on our website, CNW’s search tool can make fast work of clutter. But even so, most reporters and news editors don’t use our website to scan for interesting releases – they use in-house editorial systems that process our newswire feed according to subject, category and industry. Interestingly, our website gets the most daily traffic from Bay Street brokers who keep the site open on their desktops and constantly refresh for breaking financial news. The newswire also feeds our many RSS, Portfolio Email and Twitter accounts – and it is these more focused tools that are most popular with journalists and bloggers.
Reporters routinely check our website to verify a release received from a PR person they don’t know, to check for an official comment or to locate another side to a story they are developing. The media (both online and traditional) view CNW as a stamp of authenticity – and they trust us to be the keeper of important information issued by organizations they follow. We know this because we talk to Canadian newsrooms every single day to ensure they are getting the news they want, how they want it.
We also know bloggers and online media are utilizing our services based on back-links to releases, the followers of our Twitter accounts, and registrants to our video on-demand and photo archive services.
As technology advances, as media evolves and as PR people adapt to ongoing change, so too will CNW.
Keep up the great work!
Laurie Smith
VP Culture and Communication
CNW Group