“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.

Boy was I WRONG!

Since walking through the doors of PAN I learned two very important things that perhaps I’m just fully realizing more than ever two years later:

One; Boston PR is not just a scene; it really is a community unlike anything I have ever experienced.

And two, Boston PR people not only love what they do, but they are some of the most dedicated practitioners in the industry.

Now before I get a lot of nasty comments to this blog from my friends in New York, San Francisco or otherwise (which I’m sure my boss or webmaster won’t appreciate) let me explain.

When I say that Boston PR isn’t a scene, it’s a community, what I mean is that in my time here so far, I’ve been truly impressed by how much PR folks actually care about the state and health of PR in this region. I saw it less than a month ago when I attended the Pub Club’s Bell Ringer Awards. There was a great vibe at the event that really showed how much everyone in the industry cared about the work they do and a great spirit of competition and support even among rival firms.  The pride that teams had in their winning campaigns was really inspiring and for the first time in my career, I felt that I was a part of a group of professionals with a big impact on how the industry at large evolves.  I realized I was more than just an employee at an agency, or a PR flack trying to move her way up the ladder.

Regarding my second observation, it all starts with a certain arrogance I admit, I brought with me: New York equals PR and nothing else compares. In fact, I never paid much attention to what was happening in other regions. As a young PR professional I thought I had everything at my fingertips in NY. What I didn’t realize at the time is that while baptism by fire can sometimes be good, the flames will burn you up fast, and when the dust settles you want something a little more lasting. Coming to PAN and to Boston taught me just that. For the first time in my career I met practitioners, not just flacks. The people I’ve met and had the opportunity to work with have showed me that working in PR isn’t just a series of sprints; it can actually be a long distance run. So I guess what I’m saying is that my colleagues at PAN and the Boston PR community at large have reminded me that I love PR not just for the thrill of a few hits, but because it’s a great career I can grow into.

With that, I’d just like to say, thanks, Boston.  You’re not just a great place to live, but probably the best thing that happened to my career.

~ Your forever-grateful New York flack

Onto the reason of my post. I just read the CNN teaser taking a look at the BP PR strategy after an oil blast back in 2005 in Texas. Campbell Brown is doing an in-depth piece this Thursday on it – but there are some documents out there today that caught my attention. The main one is an email from BP PR exec Patricia Wright to some fellow colleagues immediately following the blast. Here’s a piece of it:

“Looks like injuries and loss of life are heavy. Expect a lot of follow up coverage tomorrow. Then I believe it will essentially go away — due to the holiday weekend,” BP America public relations chief Patricia Wright advised other executives.

Wright added, “This is a very big story in the U.S. right now — but the Terry Schiavo story is huge as well.”

My question is this: Isn’t it  your PR teams job to let you know what the situation is and what the possibility is for positive, negative or no coverage at all? Communications professionals aren’t always working with the good news – there are days like this (on this scale, I hope not) when you need to respond and put some recommendations together to negative and in this case, tragic circumstances.

Now I am not privy to all of the documents referenced here, but in the information that is available, I don’t think Ms. Wright did a lot wrong. She was up front with her executive team, she let them know what to expect, she set a timeframe and also gave a lay of the land in terms of national news. What else could either highlight or push this catastrophe back.

Do you want your PR team (both external and internal) to be honest with you? Do you want their recommendations on how to deal with the positive and negative news put in front of you? In today’s age of citizen-journalism, don’t you need to have all the information and recommendations from all sides of the room? Your thoughts? What do you exepect from your communications team?

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….

What I wanted to do is give BP a ‘grade’ in terms of how they’ve managed this crisis from a communications standpoint. IMHO – they haven’t done so bad with this. First off their CEO, Tony Hayward and COO, Doug Suttles have been out in front of every camera and reporter in the Gulf region and doing their best to keep everyone updated on the progress, situation and plan to stop this leak. We’ve also seen BP on the ground surveying the situation and reviewing ideas on what can be done to stop this now. Credit to the team at BP for not running and hiding behind closed doors during this disaster – they were out in front of this from day one. What could help them now is to introduce more of the engineering team that can discuss the depths BP is going to in order to shut this leak – also if BP were to introduce some of their enviornmental scientists to discuss the impact on the immedate coastline and what needs to be done to limit anymore damage and what needs to be done to fix what damage has been done to date.

Now to all the good things you can do, there is always some bad. 1. Be humble and keep your ego in check. BP’s Chairman recently told the Financial Times that BP is “big and important” to the US.  Really? Stay quiet and talk about what you’re doing as a big and important company to fix this big and important problem. Your reputation and brand has been hit and hit hard – it’s going to take a lot of work to repair it. 2. Mr. Hayward suppossedly kicking a camera crew off a local beach where oil has been washing up. You can’t hide this spill.

Now keep in mind – the most savvy of communications executives can’t fix the engineering side of their house – but they can advise on what should be addressed and what should be focused on by their spokespeople. They’ve done a good job of making their people available, addressing the tough questions and showing that BP understands the local fisherman in Louisiana are in dire need of their paychecks and have offered them work (if only temporary) – but what stands in front of BP is what will they do 6, 12 and 24 months down the road to make sure that this is not a lasting situation in the Gulf region. This issue is going to be around and part of the Gulf residents lives for the foreseeable future and BP needs to show what they are going to do long-term for the area – here is where the BP team needs to be thinking about ways to alleviate this problem in the future, continuous focus on clean-up and what they can give the community hope that their lives and businesses will return to normal very, very soon.

From a pure communications and public relations grade on the clean-up and issue at hand - they’ve done a decent job. B-minus in my opinion. What are your thoughts? What would you do differently or what have you done in the past when a crisis hits?

As public relations professionals, we are challenged every day with leading our clients through the new media landscape. When we talk about managing relationships, we are talking about engaging with critical audiences and, certainly, we are presented with new channels and tools for interaction on an almost daily basis. From Twitter to Facebook to the ever-growing blogosphere, the power of persuasion is in the individual’s hands and reputations are always at stake. Public opinion can turn on a dime and a full fledge crisis can break out and spread to all corners of the earth within a matter of minutes. For these reasons, social media is no longer a niche specialty or “nice to have” add-on to a public relations program. Social media and one-on-one engagement is the face of modern public relations.

Everyone wants to be the first to coin a new phrase or lead the pack with buzz words that usher in the future (e.g. social media release), but please back it up with some substance rather than simple semantics. Public relations or public reputation management – call it what you want. We’re all talking about the same thing here. Jaffe hopes to usher in a “new paradigm” with public reputation at the heart of the new reality. While I agree that there is a new paradigm for public relations in 2010, public relations has always been about reputation management. It is the strategy, tools and tactics that have changed not the end goal.

Every industry conducts their own events. Some are local, regional, national and even international. However, there are too many industry events to count and an individual cannot attend them all. So, what can be done to allow those who cannot attend an event to hear what was spoken about? What about the use of the podcast?

 A podcast is a collection of audio (sometimes video) segments that can be listened to over the Internet or downloaded and listened to while on the go. This tool turns out to be a great medium for sharing previously recorded material with others.

 Earlier this summer I used this technique for a client event.

 DiCicco, Gulman & Company held a roundtable with professional service veterans in the architecture and engineering industry to discuss how to manage a business in an uncertain economy. The event had a wonderful turn out, but we realized that the material discussed would definitely be of interest to others in the industry, so the roundtable was recorded and turned into a podcast series to be shared with others following the event.

 Creating a podcast series out of a previously recorded event is a way of sharing knowledge with others. Not only will the information be accessible to those who were unable to attend, but it also has the potential to attract others in the industry, and it can help position you or your company as a thought leader.

 The podcast is a social media tool that continues to be underutilized. However, with an understanding of how podcasts work and how they can be used to share a message, a podcast can be powerful public relations tool.