“In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger,” NYT’s Jeremy W. Peters explores how reporters are under more pressure to be the “most viewed article” on the website. Gawker even displays the top ten articles on large flat screen televisions in their newsroom. It has been dubbed as “big board” and is updated hourly.

With tightening budgets and magazines and newspapers cutting reporters left and right, the ones who remain now have less bandwidth and must compete to get the most page views. With their jobs and livelihood on the line each and every day, there’s never been a more critical time for PR professionals to reflect and be more cognizant of how they are approaching these time-strapped and multi-tasking reporters every day.

So what can we do to make their lives a little easier?  How do we help those reporters make their articles reach the top ten?

Be interesting and relevant

Look at your favorite news website – what’s in the top ten for the day? What’s being read? Chances are, it’s an article that is timely, interesting and relevant to all the readers of each website. Reporters who are competing with each other aren’t going to be looking at a simple (and let’s face it – yawn – oftentimes boring) product pitch to get in the top ten, they need something more compelling, more relevant, more consumable.

So, look at the big picture

Reporters are looking for those ideas that show what’s going on in the world and how it ties into their readers. As a PR professional, if you’re able to spot the upcoming trends before they are fully formed, you’ll be an asset to the reporter. If you have zeroed in on an emerging trend, be selective in who you send it to — giving a highly-targeted reporter an exclusive to the bigger picture story will help them “wow” their audience, ensure the right visibility for your client, and only strengthen your media relationships for future benefit.

Get to know your reporters

Reporters have never been more accessible than now. If you take the time to really get to know each of your target reporters, it will not only help you and your clients, but you may find that you’ve forged a new relationship (and friendship) for the long-term.  The best PR/reporter relationships are ones in which there is a mutually beneficial and respectful relationship and rapport.  Take the time to see what they’re Tweeting, blogging and writing about – i.e. take the time to get to know them.  See if they have personal blogs, too (e.g. a reporter might have a personal blog about parenting; perhaps something you could relate back to in your conversation) and get to know them on a personal level.  They are, after all, humans just like us!

As PR professionals, communications is our forte and trade.  With all these new forms of communication, it is up to us to figure out the most appropriate and relevant way to get in front of these reporters with a carefully crafted and thoughtful angle or story.  With the right approach, they will look to us as excellent resources for their next big idea and will view us as a partner in their success, helping them reach the “big board.”

Many think the word content is an overused term – and maybe it is.  It can mean many things – bylines, blog posts, marketing collateral, Web content, Tweets, podcasts and much more.  To take things a step further, the speed at which content is now being developed, published and then set aside for new thoughts and opinions is staggering.  Not to mention, everyone is in a life and death race to be at the top of the Google rankings and is doing everything they can to ensure optimal SEO.  Because of these many elements, the word content can be a scary word and trying to determine what steps to take can be daunting.

Some enterprises and PR firms are leveraging journalists – CA Technologies’ hiring of Denise Dubie, John Fontana planting routes with Ping Identity, and many more.  They are leveraging the expertise of these well known journalists to build out social media practices and to garner the written content that is so desperately needed.  Other organizations are working to bolster their content through video, podcasts and viral media campaigns.  And yet others are establishing industry portals to position themselves as thought leaders within particular markets.  We’ve helped several clients establish these portals and thus far have experienced great success as customers, partners and influencers are on the hunt for content that is aggregated into a single location, rather than relying on Google alerts, RSS feeds and daily searches.

However you do it – written, recorded, Twitter or industry portal – content is increasingly becoming the way in which companies large and small are differentiating themselves; and although the word “content” encompasses a lot and can cause feelings of anxiety in some, you can’t sit idly by.  It will be a missed opportunity.  Therefore, it is important to get in the game and to work with experts (journalists, PR practitioners, marketers) who can guide your organization down a path that will drive the results you are looking for.

In today’s marketing world, a number of CMOs, VPs of Marketing and Directors all have the same question – ‘where do we get more content and how do we stay ahead of our competitors?’ Good questions and ones that seem to have a large amount of potential answers. Well if you’re sitting within an organization – go to your marketing department and ask them who is creating our content? They may ask if you’re talking about the web site content, but correct them and say no, in general – who is talking on Acme’s behalf? Who is tracking the conversations about our new Widget and who is answering the questions about it?If you have a communications/PR/social media agency – is your account team pushing ideas over to you on a regular basis? Are they offering ideas and content and where is it going and who is seeing it once it has been created? Are you working together to pull the uniqueness out of your company and into the minds of your PR team?In order to stay ahead of the plethora of social media sites and news outlets – you need to be creating the written content, videos, podcasts and other viral components that get your message out to the masses while opening the door for commentary and feedback. It’s the way it is today and if we as marketers are going to stay ahead of our competition (and our clients) we had better become that content creator.More to come on this I am sure….

I randomly polled some folks here at PAN Communications on the following question: Who do you think is a thought leader in the following markets/industries:

Money/investing/economy

Politics

Personal technology

Football

The answers were rather surprising (as they were right in line with what I had originally thought people would say). Most folks associated thought leaders with media members such as Brian Williams, Jim Cramer, Maria Bartiromo, John Clayton and Walt Mossberg. What is the one thing that all of these folks have in common? They all have a venue for which they can relay information and an audience that is waiting to hear from them.

Now how does this do anything for the group reading this? Well, for who we’re working with, specifically within B2B organizations, you need to take an approach that is extremely similar to these journalists – get a forum for which you can get your message out and where you can provide your commentary on a regular basis. This takes time, I know. But in order to gain your audiences trust and further your reach, you need to take the time to engage with those interested in the service or product you’re providing.

Once you have made it a goal to start this – what’s next? Work with your marketing and public relations agency to formulate content based on what others are saying (as well as your own of course) to your target audience(s). In order to make this worth your time and effort, it needs to be hitting the right constituents so that you’re not wasting your time putting information out to a group that has no clue what your talking about. Take your time, build your followers and those that you follow, alert your audience that you welcome feedback and commentary and that you will be sharing your open and honest thoughts and feedback to better your organization and your customers experience.

Once you have taken these early steps, you’ll find that your now being looked at in a different light – heck maybe even like a thought leader….

Blogger ancestry.

Spring ahead to the golden age of news–from the time of the Civil War (when war photography really made its mark) to the age of the “muckrakers“, World War II, and then to Watergate and Vietnam. Journalism became a profession; and “citizen journalists” disappeared from the scene.  “Journalism” became a scholarly pursuit with the advent of “J-schools” and journalism degrees.  

And the then began the consolidation in the 80s, and finally, the beginning of the great newspaper extinction.  And the  journalist breed–the guy with the suspenders, rolled up sleeves, reporter notebook and hat with the piece of paper in it that said “press,” also disappeared…Right?  

They haven’t, of course. (though the medium of newsprint, I am fairly certain and happy to say, is going extinct–Mother Nature is happy.)

And we have blogs and citizen journalism to thank for this. Much like small mammals in the midst of the great dinosaurs,  blogs multiplied in the shadow of newspapers early in the 21st Century.  And as the fortunes of newspapers began to decline, the blogs and citizen journalists  have filled the void. 

And I’m glad to see the U.S. has returned to its roots as a land of citizen journalists. 

Many former journalists became bloggers too (and Tweeters, Facebookers, etc.).  But the best part about the growth of social media and blogs is the return of the “citizen journalist”–the Thomas Paines of the world.  People that have opinions and are not afraid to write about it.  I’m thrilled that bloggers consider themselves journalists. In my mind, they are one in the same.  (And, by the way, I think, The U.S. Courts, should extend freedom of the press to these citizen journalists. Citizen journalists, or bloggers, are the very best insurance against omnipotent government.) 

Bloggers, everwhere.

As a public relations agency and for company clients, the growth of bloggers has brought both challenge and opportunity. The media landscape is now more fractured, and it’s harder to persuade a “mass” that your product/company/service is “the shizznit.”  But as an American, and a lover of American history, I’m glad to hear that most bloggers consider themselves journalists (according to the PRWeek/PR Newswire study).  I’m glad because it makes me feel (Robert Duvall Apocolypse Now pause, please)…free.

During the 2008 Summer Olympics, YouTube videos and news blogs caused the games to leap into the viral world. A year and a half later, social media will be even further integrated into the Olympics Games. Widgets, RSS feeds, tweets and mobile alerts will all have their moments in the spotlight during this years’ games.

NBC, the network host of the Olympic Games, has launched a website dedicated to the games: www.nbcolympics.com. The site makes it easy to pick from a slew of widgets and pre-setup RSS feeds.

The website is just the beginning. The network is happily jumping on the applications bandwagon and has designed two apps that will help Olympic fans stay up-to-date. These apps will bring iPhone and Blackberry users top stories, medal counts, videos and more right to their cell phones. The videos are also accessible on Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon internet-enabled phones. Users can also receive SMS messages with this information by texting Olympics to 51515.

U.S. Athletes have a collaborative Twitter page right on the NBC olympic page titled “Tweet Sheet.” Athletes such as World Champion Erin Hamlin, who competes in the luge event; five-time Olympic medalist Apolo Ohno, who competes in short track skating; and gold medal winner Shaun White, who competes in both skateboarding and snowboarding, will all update in real-time during the games. Right now, the athletes are tweeting about everything from how their practice runs went earlier in the day to radio shows they will be guest starring on.

Members of the NBC team will not be the only people utilizing social media during the olympics. One user tweeted on February 4: “@Charisma_Events The Big O is coming – not Oprah – the 2010 Olympics.”

Blogs are springing up from every corner of the world to report on the upcoming Olympics. It seems fitting that all these fast-paced forms of media that join the masses on the web, will cover an event that brings the world together.

This story by Mike Masnick @TechDirt tackles fair use and whether or not Channel 7 actually can demand people not use the clip, which until now had stayed semi-under the radar.  Of course, the very best way to generate more unwanted publicity for video, audio or text posted to the web is to hire a bunch of lawyers to spook the few people who posted the video and moved on, until they got spooked by lawyers.

It’s like poking a tiger in a cage.  First bloggers will echo the story, then pundits move in to dissect the situation (which is where we’re at now), then the story will get more blown out of proportion by mainstream outlets.

Of course, with events in the world being what they are this is not anything of consequence.  But still, there’s something interesting in watching digital media (mostly open) wrestle with legacy media (mostly proprietary, filtered) over control of content’s soul.