Read the text and trace the development of press releases. Test your knowledge of the evolution of press releases using this 5-question quiz

Reading

Test your knowledge of the evolution of press releases using this 5-question quiz.

Pre-reading tasks

Part 2. The History of the Press Release

1. If you make a PR blunder, what is the best way to fix it?

a....by issuing a press release that directly counters an earlier story or release.

b....by focusing on the next positive story you can tell and having both tact and a sense of humor about past mistakes.

c....fire the person responsible and hire a PR professional from outside to help.

d....there's no way to "fix" a PR blunder. You're stuck with that reputation forever.

1. The first working press release was developed by

a. Edward Bernay

b. Ivy Lee

c. Jason Kintzler

III. The evolution of a press release was

a. stagnant

b. rapid

c. uneven

IV. Tools, networks and services

a. make the process of disseminating news more complicated.

b. are facilitating and simplifying the system for creating and distributing new media releases.

c. replaced old PR tactics and techniques.

1. The most efficient alternative to the traditional press release is

a. a pitch letter

b. a press kit

c. a Social Media Release

According to public relations lore, the first press release was born following a train wreck on October 28, 1906, in Atlantic City, N.J., that left more than 50 people dead. It was created by Ivy Lee, known by some as the founder of modern public relations. The train was owned by Pennsylvania Railroad, one of Ivy Lee’s clients. In response to the disaster, Ivy Lee convinced the railroad to issue a statement about what had transpired. In doing so, he set in motion a practice for companies to address issues important to them, or, in the case of the railroad, to offer an explanation of what had happened. The New York Times was said to have been so impressed by Lee’s release that the newspaper printed it exactly as Lee had written it. When Ivy Lee created what is widely believed to be the first press release, he established an invaluable component to any public relations campaign.

More than 100 years after Lee’s innovation, press releases remain an important tool for attracting the attention of the news media to a newsworthy item of information. The evolution of a press release was mostly stagnant for the majority of its lifespan. However, the press release has evolved more in the last decade than it has over the century thanks to the proliferation of the Internet and most notably, the Social Web. It wasn’t until the ’90s when online newswire services like BusinessWire’s Smart News Release and PRNewswire’s MultiVu multimedia release (MMR) service began to appear, decreasing reliance on fax machines and e-mail for disseminating news releases. During the past few years, we’ve witnessed a shift towards the “social media release.” Services like PitchEngine (Social Media PR Release Builder), PressLift, PRX Builder* are bringing the press release into the new millennium with embedded multimedia and easy distribution through various channels, including social media and e-mail.

Social Media Releases (SMR) offered the ability to share stories in a more palatable and meaningful format. Supported by the media content they helped reporters and bloggers to retell the story using the media building blocks that contextually framed it. Social Media Releases also served as a hub for connecting disparate media elements across multiple social networks. They served as a frame of reference for distributed videos on YouTube, pictures on Flickr, supporting documentation on DocStoc, market reports and information bookmarked on Delicious, etc. In 1997, BusinessWire debuted the Smart News Release, which offered businesses ability to integrate links to supporting audio, video, and digital images. In 2001, PRNewswire released its MultiVu multimedia release (MMR) service, which also offered a branded, stylish online dashboard for businesses to tell their story through text and corresponding media. The first multimedia release published using MultiVu introduced the movie Pearl Harbor and featured stills, clips, and other media files to create a more immersive experience. Soon thereafter, all existing and also new breeds of wire services, including PRWeb, BusinessWire, MarketWire, among others, debuted online multimedia friendly press release hosting solutions that adapted to the Web’s migration from 1.0 to 2.0. In 2006, Todd Defren introduced us to the concept of a Social Media Release, which connected online media to social networks. Shortly thereafter, Shannon Whitley developed PRX, the first automated system for building and distributing Social Media Releases. In 2008, PitchEngine launched a dedicated service to empower PR to create, host, and publish branded Social Media Releases and Social Media Newsrooms without the help of developers or Web marketers. MindTouch debuted a powerful wiki-based smashup platform and application for automatically creating affordable, custom, and hosted Social Media Releases and Newsrooms for SMBs and enterprise organizations. This was the first service that provided IT and Web marketing with the tools necessary to socialize static releases and newsrooms without changing the hierarchal process of Web site and content management systems.

Blogs represent some of the most effective platforms for communicating solutions and offering answers to the community of customers and prospects seeking insight. It’s the most profound forum for actively demonstrating expertise and sharing vision and direction consistently over time. Blogs are also an ideal home for sharing news in a format that tells a story in a more human voice. It shouldn’t be read as a typical release however. It should capture the essence of what’s new, unique, and worthy of attention and present it in a format that mirrors the story you would ultimately hope to read elsewhere – complete with all of the shareable media content that also speaks to people, their way.

*PitchEngine was dreamed up by Jason Kintzler in 2008. As a former journalist turned PR guy, Kintzler realized that businesses and journalists needed a better alternative to email for exchanging information and assets for publication and print. This led to the creation of a new kind of social PR platform. It also represented the beginning of the end of the “word doc PR” era. Unlike traditional wire services, PitchEngine enabled users to openly create and share their own content, while including images, videos and attachments at no cost. In 2009, more than 70,000 pitches were shared by 27,000 organizations looking to get the word out to not just journalists, but to bloggers, consumers and other influencers as well.

PRX Builder allows anyone to create an online press release (also known as a Social Media Release, or SMR). The SMR tells a story using SEO techniques to reach the intended audience. It helps authors of press releases provide re-mixable content to online sources in a standard way. The format allows service vendors and individuals to automate release distribution, saving time for both authors and distributors.

Presslift is a service that lets you give your press releases a much-needed facelift by including multimedia like pictures, videos, audio files and documents, plus links to your company’s social networking profiles. Presslift is easy to use-basically, you just write a standard text press release, upload it to the site, and then attach your multimedia items. Presslift creates a website for your multimedia press release with an SEO-optimized URL.

Дата добавления: 2015-03-31