Comments for

PR Wire Service to Journalists & Bloggers: We Don't Need You

2008-02-14T19:56:39Z

We received an interesting email today from Business Wire, a press release wire service that Warren Buffett bought in March 2006. Currently Business Wire is ranked about #32 on the Techmeme Leaderboard, which puts it above some top tech blogs (but not ReadWriteWeb, which is ranked #6 currently). The email claimed that companies and marketers can use Business Wire to bypass journalists and bloggers to get into key news sources like Techmeme and search engine results too. Is this true?

]]> I think it's a fair claim - and there's no reason why Business Wire shouldn't feature in Techmeme if it is 'breaking' news stories or is being linked to by bloggers. In fact it does indeed route around blogs that simply regurgitate PR - which is a good thing in my book!

The real value of good journalism and blogs, IMHO, is the value-added analysis and contextual information that we can provide. A press release that runs in Business Wire may well be a great source of data on a news story. But people read newspapers and blogs to get a more rounded view of news stories, and if they're lucky some added analysis about the company and/or market segment.

I asked Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera what he thought of Business Wire ranking #32 on the Techmeme Leaderboard. Gabe replied that this in itself "isn't a problem." He told me that "press releases are kind of like poorly-written company blog posts, which also have a place on Techmeme. That said, I wish Techmeme at times did a better job at elevating good blog posts above the press releases they discuss."

I asked Gabe if people actually read press releases from the likes of Business Wire. "Sometimes people want just-the-facts", said Gabe, "Some PR Newswire releases are in fact remarkable reads". He pointed to this recent story about Microsoft's bid for Yahoo (screenshot below). But, Gabe noted, "many others are less so, and better retold by blogs like RWW."

Techmeme coverage of Microsoft-Yahoo story, with PR stories to the fore

Back to the Business Wire email, which stated that "with a team of engineers and coders, press releases have not only gone 'public' but they are embedded with multimedia and infiltrate search engine and social media flawlessly."

I agree that PR has infiltrated search engines and some blogs - which in the former is good and the latter not so. It's definitely a good thing that PR is public nowadays due to the Internet. Because it forces journalists and blogs to provide added value to news stories, rather than just copy and paste PR.

You still see some blogs rank highly in Technorati by copying PR sometimes word for word. But long term I think such blogs will, ironically, have their lunch eaten by PR services such as Business Wire. Already Business Wire claims it is embedding their stories with multimedia, so how long before they start to have other 'social software' features such as comments, voting, tagging, etc.

So yes, PR wire services probably don't need us anymore. But to some of us, that's a good thing!

Comment from Antoine of MMM/Brighthand on 2008-02-14

2008-02-14T21:55:55Z

For some blogs, it would be better if they did provide extra analysis and discource on items, rather than just reporting. And I mean beyond comments as well. Facilitaing applications of the said PR by journalists and bloggers would do wonders towards helping companies better understand if their PR/marketing is working by people being able to digest the product, as well as its well-crafted and adjectve-laden announcement.

Comment from Gleb Tulukin on 2008-02-14

2008-02-14T22:04:14Z

1. "key news sources like Techmeme"
You have to be a die hard news junkie (or a full time blogger) to read Techmeme. Bloggers (among other things) act as content aggregators whom you trust to filter out the junk. I value my time and I want somebody to prepare my essential daily reading for me. And that somebody is definitely not Techmeme's bot.

2. PR Newswire posts are way too lengthy (thus, time wasting) and of poor quality. I need somebody to convert a PR post to the size of Twitter message. Let somebody do dirty job.

3. PR news are just news. They usually do not have any analysis or trend spotting. The news that MS bids for Yahoo (or Facebook is dropping "is" in the status message, or new gadget from some vendor) are much much less important for me than semantic web, microformats, openId, a startup with unusual brilliant business model, etc. So far, I did not see good analysis (except occasionally in Wired) in the old media.

4. Ok, a PR News got to Techmeme. What's next? I see the blurb and bunch of links that discuss the news. From the Techmeme's screen above I'd go to TechCrunch (to see if it's Michael), Silicon Valley Insider (read: Wall Street insider) and some a VC blog like Venture Beat and NEVER to PR Newswire.

Yes, I know how important Techmeme for bloggers, it brings a lot of traffic but from reader's viewpoint Techmeme has very arguable value. As for PR Newswire, they are posting very biased content directly from companies that pay for it. I prefer independent third-party review over the company press release or PR news and go to blogs I respect.

So, dear RRW, ignore that b/s email from an old media company and keep the ball rolling to be #1 on the Techmeme list.

Comment from Dominic Jones on 2008-02-14

2008-02-15T00:13:50Z

Here's the thing. You pay a service like Business Wire big bucks ($1.30 per word on average)to deliver your news. You post the same release to your website.

And everyone links to Business Wire's website, not yours.

Paying to build Business Wire's PageRank and Techmeme juice?! WTF?

I ask all bloggers not to link to Business Wire or any other wire service's website. Try to link to the release source's own website or blog.

Just my two cents!

Comment from Dominic Jones on 2008-02-14

2008-02-15T00:40:40Z

Something odd here. The links to both PR releases in Gabe's example do not go to either PR Newswire's or Business Wire's websites.

The Microsoft one goes to the release on a Yahoo! page and the Business Wire one goes to Yahoo!'s corporate newsroom, which is hosted by Shareholder.com.

So how does techmeme know that the news releases were distributed via PR Newswire or Business Wire when they're posted to a different domain?

Is Gabe manually checking, or does the techmeme bot have some artificial intelligence capability I'm not aware of?

Comment from Scott Lawton (Blogcosm) on 2008-02-14

2008-02-15T01:18:48Z

Dominic: no AI needed. The first URL is at biz.yahoo.com/prnews/ which is titled "PR Newswire". The text "PRNewsire-FirstCall" is also in the press release. The second includes "BUSINESS WIRE" in the text.

(I'm not Gabe and no nothing about the internals of Techmeme. But I liked his quote and am going to blog it shortly.)

Comment from Dominic Jones on 2008-02-14

2008-02-15T01:27:04Z

Scott,

I thought perhaps the bot was reading some meta content in the source code, as it does on blogs. I doubt it "reads" the text.

Another thing, why does Techmeme give Business Wire or PR Newswire credit? They're not actually writing anything or contributing to the community. Their clients are the ones writing the content. The PR wires are just syndicators. They should be invisible.

Comment from Dan Katz on 2008-02-15

2008-02-15T20:17:21Z

The use of the pr wires to reach the public seems pretty clear. It works to get their word out via the sites that carry the releases. But do journalists really still value these services? Do they really want the emails? I have been wondering if the wires are still valued by their traditional audiences. There have been some general surveys lately that seem to come close, but do not ask the question. I just popped up a survey and while certainly not overly scientific I am hoping to see if there is any consensus.

http://www.quis.com/2008/02/15/complete-the-journalist-survey-rss-vs-pr-wires

Comment from Badger Gravling on 2008-02-18

2008-02-18T11:29:35Z

In an age when I've been advising people to spend more time thinking about who they send any Press Releases to, and how to make them more effective, it's telling that checking out the latest news on Business Wire sent me to sleep just by checking the headlines...

A company should have a pretty good idea of who operates in their market by now?

And both the company and journalist/blogger should be working to establish relationships before the PR release comes out, now after. That's the entire point of journalism - get the story before everyone else, and add analysis/information that the others haven't got!

Press releases exist as a safety net, just to make sure that something isn't missed, or to provide something that can be quickly rewritten to fill a space. As such, I have no idea why I'd want to bypass traditional journalists and bloggers to read such content...

Comment from Tom Becktold, SVP, Marketing, Business Wire on 2008-02-19

2008-02-19T17:47:07Z

Richard,

We're happy that our email sparked such a lively discussion. But to be clear, while your headline is clever, it doesn't reflect Business Wire's sentiment, the text of the email we sent to you or really your own post.

The foundation and driving force for Business Wire has always been to enable PR and IR professionals to effectively communicate with their target audiences as they define them. Here's an excerpt from the email we sent to you:

"...with the Internet's transparency, it's no longer necessary to count only on a journalist to open a press release and write about it, since it's available now everywhere to everybody at the same time..."

Journalists, bloggers, print, web, and broadcast media are critical components of our network, outreach efforts and ongoing investment of resources. Business Wire's network reaches directly into the editorial systems at major media around the world, while at the same time posting to vertically targeted websites and information portals. Our site allows completely customizable RSS feeds, permalinks, sharing tags and other features for bloggers to use to reference or share the press release materials of interest to them.

We also encourage companies to embed URLs and hyperlinked keywords to drive traffic back to their own sites. Our goal is to draw meaningful audiences to the customer's message, whether that message lives on our servers, the client's, or any of the thousands of other services that carry or use our content.

To reiterate our point: In addition to reaching key influential groups such as journalists and bloggers through Business Wire, companies also reach consumers directly through our network. That's been the case since we first posted our file on our site in 1997, but technology is making that outreach more targeted and effective than ever. Again, this does not take away from the importance we place on journalists and blogger communities.

With the growth of social media and search engine influence, Business Wire also works very hard for to maximize effective reach in these realms. Business Wire wouldn't be high up the Techmeme Leaderboard it wasn't considered a valuable tech news source. How bloggers and journalists interact with the news and announcements is purely up to them.