[Image courtesy Geek and Poke]
As always, the Publicity Club of New England hosted a great event on Monday night. It was its "All Eyes on Tech" roundtable and had some stellar participants:
- Denise Dubie of Network World
- Martin Lamonica of CNET
- Brian Bergstein of the AP
- Jeff Burt of eWEEK
- Wade Roush of Xconomy
Moderated by Dana Gardner, the panel discussed the impact of social media on traditional journalism. Here are the best takeaways from the discussion.
- Social media content has created a lot of noise, and it's the journalists job to filter it.
- For those outlets that still offer print editions, there continues to be a challenge to figure out how to do things both online and print. Online stories with hot topics like Apple, VMWare, Microsoft and others in the headline draw lots of traffic. The challenge comes in the balance between appealing to a qualified audience and covering the "Paris Hilton stories."
- Blogs are great news vehicles because it gives flexibility for coverage. Some use them to be more opinionated, but many stick to straight reporting.
- There was some good back-and-forth on the extent to which things like SEO, getting Diggs, and getting linked by other bloggers factor into how journalists write their stories or posts. One stated that "we like to generate discussion." Part of this includes thinking carefully about the headline, and using the right keywords and tags so other bloggers can link to their stories. Others shared a different view that because most readers get stories through RSS or e-mail, SEO doesn't matter.
- This led to some discussion about whether PR pitches and press releases also needed to be optimized through tags, SEO or "guaranteed Diggs." The consensus response was that news value still matters most.
- One of the reporters conveyed the opinion that a blog is an online publication with the most recent story on top and an archive. It's another opportunity for journalists to practice their trade.
- On the $64,000 question of whether social media is killing PR, there was a view expressed that PR still needs to help clients navigate the media, and that journalists are trying to figure out who they should be talking to and how to find better stories.
If you were there, what were your takeaways?
