Hi. I am James Crawford, a PR man. Media relations is my specialism, but public relations is changing and the internet is at the heart of it.
I'm a Manchester dweller and lover of the media. I have too much music, support Manchester United and adore all things French.
I currently work for a Citypress, Manchester's biggest and best PR consultancy, but all the thoughts on here are my own and nothing to do with my employers.
@jwspaceinvader The boy is doing well. Check him out: http://j.mp/aqQ2ae . How is life, love and romance with you and Jess? #21 mins ago
@jwspaceinvader Hi John. I used your 'i want to give you the opportunity to contribute' line on my dad to get him to pay for my wedding.... #26 mins ago
@jamesbarley Oh, and Carl Craig's Papercliip People is up there with the best. #12 hours ago
@jamesbarley I'm with you on that. I just dug out some Beltram today. Energy flash. #12 hours ago
@jag4091@parlourchorlton Moi aussi (apart from the house mate). Just had three pints and fish & flips for lunch. Ace. #13 hours ago
Newser has recently come to my attention and is a news curation tool – or in other words, a user generated or edited take on what’s happening in the world.
I have been banging on about curation to my colleagues and anyone who would care to listen for a long time and some people agree with me that curation is the future, while others doubt why it’s so important.
For me, with so much content out there on the internet, curation sites and to a lesser extent aggregators are a great way to get a different take on things.
From a PR perspective, curation offers real opportunities. For example, brands should be curating content too, to show that they are experts in a given field, or aligning themselves to a given specialism, topic, person or campaign.
As I have said before, my favourite curation tool is The Twitter Times because it pulls together content based on your Twitter feed – a real time newspaper. As it is aggregated from your Twitter feed there isn’t a feeling of the content being biased towards sources from the USA.
Alltop.com is great because the user can edit the content and have more control by creating their own page. Popurls also remains a great place to start the day and find out what is happening in the world, while the Daily Perfect brings your Facebook friends into play too, curating what they are interested in.
What is really disappointing is that there is no British curation tool. All the curation tools I have just talked about are American so have a biase in some way to US sources. Whoever launches a British aggregator, will make a lot of money.
American (broadcast) media is often cricisised in the UK for its low quality analysis, but when it comes to digital news, the Americans have a far more sophisticated choice of content. Please can some clever website developed create a British aggregator to rival these others!
So, back to Newser, my latest favourite place to find news. Yes, it is American, yes some of the content is low on quality, but every now and then the site pulls up a real gem of a story to keep you hooked.
To close this post, here are some video clips to give you more insight. The clip here is an interview with Michal Wolf, creator of Newser. For some reason the clip won’t embed in this post. Michael is a little bit OTT (Over The Top) when he talks about the end of journalism as we know it, but he does raise some interesting points.
An interesting debate is rumbling about Facebook and its role in news. Some voices are evangelical about the social network, while others doubt why news organisations are putting Facebook at the heart of their digital strategy.
Earlier this week, Techcrunch recently criticised US news agency Associated Press (AP) for diverting Twitter users to their Facebook page. The blog couldn’t comprehend why AP would want to drive traffic to Facebook and not to their home page.
To the common onlooker, diverting their users to Facebook and not your home page, does seem a little odd. On the other hand, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Social media, Steve Rubel, thinks that Facebook could soon “swallow the internet!” There is data to show that Facebook is now the number one source of news on the internet, greater than Google News.
Facebook news traffic
He sees a day when there could be a “siteless” internet and thinks AP’s move is ‘visionary.’
In the short term, it is the role of the Public Relations professional to decide how best to integrate social media, such as Facebook into PR campaigns. While Facebook is a great tool for brands, using it to make news sharable can be seen as more difficult than using Twitter, Digg, Reddit or other such sites.
However, in the future as more and more realtime services are integrated into Facebook, the changes Steve Rubel talks about could become a reality.
Or, of course, a new unexpected technology might come along and change things again! Nothing in the world of web 2.0 happens as expected. However, it is worth keeping an eye on Facebook – it is not just a place to update your friends on what you had for lunch.
Interesting further reading:
You can create your own personal news channel in Facebook. I still prefer Twitter, but it is possible and people are using it
Slowly and surely Facebook is adding to its news functionality, such as this social search tool
How else is Facebook spreading news? The Daily Perfect is a classic example.
Newsswipe is a satirical look at the media, from angry, shouty Guardian journalist, Charlie Brooker. This video is from the last series, therefore it’s “old news” but still amusing in the extreme. The new series is funnier still because it benefits from greater topicality. It’s on BBC4 at 10pm every Thursday. Sky Plus it!
Contrary to popular belief, the regional news will never die. Not when there is a voracious appetite for hard hitting news. Just see this Pulitzer Prize winning example from the Dorking Advertiser:
Saturday, October 31, 2009
A much-loved white squirrel was killed after he was hit by a car in Dorking this week. The squirrel was killed as he crossed Mill Lane just after 3pm.
The curious point raised in my mind over the coverage of Stephen Fry’s decision to leave Twitter was concerning the level of coverage it received.
In old media decisions are made over whether a story is newsworthy or not – or they should be anyway. This is an intellectual decision based on the editorial values of the media outlet.
In new media (e.g social) it is very easy to see appealing trends, and along with trends come traffic. Therefore media outlets want a piece of the traffic and can decide to divert eyeballs to their own media space by running a trending story, such as Frygate.
This is what happened yesterday. The ‘Stephen Fry exit’ saga started to trend and other media outlets wanted to take this traffic. The story really was a none story, e.g man decides not to use website, then changes his mind shock.
Of course this sort of populism has been happening for a long time in old media too. It is just more transparent now that, through Tweetdeck, users get a live feed for the most talked about stories of the day. It goes back to the old argument of whether media has a mission to deliver news or provide eye balls to advertisers.
So, the Stephen Fry story is not a story, but perhaps an indication of how social media is changing editorial decisions.
From a PR point of view – I think my clients can learn a thing or to from this episode. Beg, steel and borrow your audience* from where ever you can (without doing a Habitat!!), but do it in a plausible, subtle and tasteful way. Do it well and your online profile will be boosted. Do it badly and you are toast (so hire professionals to advise).
For example, by writing this post I too am joining in on the feeding frenzy and getting a share of the Stephen Fry traffic. The only difference is that I am not a news channel set up to provide our nation with news.
Some might say, it’s not appropriate for brands to do divert traffic in this way, especially in the corporate or business to business marketplace. Well, they’d be wrong. Yes Frygate is not the right topic to use but corporate brands can borrow traffic from other places. Simply by identifying industry trends and then tapping into the online communities in which they operate or want to target. Yes the traffic will be lower, but much more targeted and a better match. For example a technology client should tap into the hot topics on Techcrunch and then into the billions of technology blogs that are in the blogosphere.
*sorry Fernando, I’ve stolen your concept
(Excuse any typos. I wrote this on my Blackberry. It was only meant to be a short post but I got carried away)
Curation of the news is one of the most exciting innovations on the internet. The internet is an enlightening place to keep up to date with current affairs and news, but now with news curation sites we can access, sort, consume and share thousands of news sources from around the world.
Fernando Rizo, a digital PR chap at Ketchum who I’ve met and respect, says he thinks that Google Reader is everything he could ever need. See his post:
The site recommends top content from all the main international sites, networks and blogs and aggregates it for you. OK, so the content is far too US centric, but I find the layout excellent and the content engaging. I’m also fascinated by the US, so the nature of the content doesn’t bother me. It also presents images and video in a simple and visual way.
Alltop.com is tremendous and above is a link to my Alltop list. The great thing about Alltop is the user can choose the news sites and blogs from which they want updates. The site also makes sharing incredibly easy. One criticism is that if a user only turned to their alltop.com profile for news then they might never find out what is happening on, say Fox News, or another media channel, which they wouldn’t normally give a second glance.
Twitter Times is a bit clunky still, but I love the way it curates news from my Twitter Network and provides it in an engaging way. I can also see uses for this for my clients, say for example internal communications (for example a way for an MD to keep his staff up to speed on industry topics). I also think Twitter Times is an intriguing insight into a person and their network.
I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has any better sites, or other curation tools which they think are more useful, or just different.
What is it about the British media?s desire to report on Bank Holiday traffic? The story currently has equal billing with pig flu, Jacko and Ted Kennedy?
As sure as eggs are eggs and night follows day, the Bank Holiday means an exodus of holiday makers hitting the motorways.It happens every Bank Holiday.
At the grand old of age of 31ish I have experienced this phenomenon, perhaps, 30 odd times.I know it is going to happen.I am used to it happening.I take evasive action to avoid it happening to me.And importantly, I don?t bore people with stories about six mile tailbacks…zzzzz
Stories about Bank Holiday travel are a good way for the BBC et al to fill time while the ?real? journalists are away on holiday.They can call in the eager correspondent from Bristol to report on the M5 junction, while the rest of the team take the day off.
My question to you all is this:is the inevitable newsworthy?If the inevitable is news then it is not very interesting!Wake me up when the Sport comes on…
Hi. I am James Crawford, a PR man. Media relations is my specialism, but public relations is changing and the internet is at the heart of it.
I'm a Manchester dweller and lover of the media. I have too much music, support Manchester United and adore all things French.
I currently work for a Citypress, Manchester's biggest and best PR consultancy, but all the thoughts on here are my own and nothing to do with my employers.
3 Comments to Read 
Curation of the news is one of the most exciting innovations on the internet. The internet is an enlightening place to keep up to date with current affairs and news, but now with news curation sites we can access, sort, consume and share thousands of news sources from around the world.