Entire Site
Convergence of Media Online
While preparing for Interactive Austin 2008, I kept thinking about the great breadth of experience represented in our panel and how they were going to be able shed some light on the impact of news and consumers shifting online.
Reporters and consumers are networked now and accustomed to news being delivered directly to their desktop. Citizen journalism exists; bloggers claim a distinct voice in news reporting as well. Social networks and conversational social media are places where consumers hang out online to get connected and to get their news.
In trying to understand how this has impacted public relations, we needed a panel that understood the transitions and transformations happening at todays newspapers. Our Interactive Austin panel had incredible experience in this area.
Jon Lebkowsky of Polycot Associates helped us to find the roots of the convergence of media in low cost social media applications spinning out of open source technologies.
Adam Weinroth of Pluck has worked with newspapers like USA Today, The Washington Post and Better Homes and Gardens as they have added social networking and Web 2.0 features and discussed the importance of management in having the vision to meet the new demands.
Stacey Higginbothan who has experienced the traditional needs of publications like the Austin Business Journal and also the GigaOM voiced her belief that PR people need to be both a “stalker and a concierge” in the world of new PR. She explained the reporters or even more overloaded with new publications and information overload. PR specialists need to stalk a reporter on the one hand, shadowing them and learning what is of interest to them on their beat and on the other – serve up the stories of interest.
Clint Howell of BusinessWire updated us on the social media press release and his client experiences with the SMPR template format, which has not been adopted as readily as many had hoped.
And, then the ever entertaining Omar Gallager, Digital Savant blog author, woke us all up with the realities that reporters face in keeping up with social media strategies and the demands or reporting. He sees hope for the local hometown papers like the Austin American-Statesman in the interest in the local story and in new niche markets, which often reach entirely untapped readership.
This conversation spun off into User Generated Content and other related topics, but this should give you’re the feel for the insight of the group. I personally found useful information from each of the panelist and walked away loving the fact that I live in a social media kind-of- town where experts like these will get together and share their expertise for the benefit of all.
My thanks to you all… when you see this post.
July 8th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Cynthia, while I did not attend this panel, I heard it was well received. I think I had booth duty at the time unfortunately. Thanks for the recap here.
By the way, I am sure you would be interested to know that we have launched our very own IA08 event blog to help keep the conversation going.
Also, thanks so much for your very major role in helping FG SQUARED meet our business objectives as title sponsor of the Interactive Austin 2008. I left the conference very pleased in that it appears:
* many new strategic business contacts were made and overall the event was flush with knowledge share.
* the conversation of putting social commerce to work is clearly rising to a board / strategic level.