Press cuttings: There must be a better way

13Aug/093

Press cuttings: There must be a better way

I've been looking at some of the functions the communication and marketing department performs and how they can be performed with less people (we're losing staff through transformation). Specifically if by changing the way we do certain things we can save time and money, or if we can do it better.

Having looked at press cuttings prepared by our team it does seem that this is one area that could be improved.

Present situation

Every day we take the morning (Journal) and afternoon (Evening Chronicle) regional newspapers. The weekend newspapers from Saturday (Journal and Chronicle) and Sunday (Sunday Sun) are looked at on Monday morning.

Press Officers then look through the papers for anything relating to Newcastle City Council, mark the pages by category, publication, date and page number and pass them to a Communication, Marketing and Press Assistant who cuts them out and files them away. A folder is kept for each category containing one month's original cuttings.

In addition a round-up of the weekend's news is provided to senior officers and members by email.

As part of my role I receive Google Alerts for news relating to the council. I have been asked at times to circulate links to relevant articles.

What's wrong with this?

Duplication in the articles clipped by Press Officers and picked up by Google Alerts
Time taken by Press Officers and Communication, Marketing and Press Assistant
Archive is not searchable other than by date/category
Archive is not used
Cost of newspapers
Duplication of function across council (directorates, officers, members taking papers themselves)

My solution

I've been bookmarking the articles I've picked up on delicious. I cut and paste the url, title and first par from the articles and add relevant tags, e.g. publication, +/-.

Advantages

The archive is searchable
Members/officers can subscribe to updates via RSS
email digests can be produced automatically via Tabbloid
Quicker than manual approach
No duplication
More news sources
Reduces cost of hardcopies
Reduces cost of NLA fee

Disadvantages

Not all content published online (approx 50% of Chronicle/Journal/Sunday Sun on random sample)
Does not avoid NLA link sharing fee
Members/officers prefer tactile hardcopy
Column inches not measured

Issues for improvement

Additional searches can be added to Google Alerts to pick up some missed articles but coverage will still be patchy
There are some people that will always prefer hardcopy, but is this a justification for expense?
Initially press office would need to take hardcopy as a backup (they need to know the news before it's added to the web)
This system is reliant on the type of data added to third-party websites but could cover more than the current system

I'd like to hear from blog readers about this. What do you think are the merits of the two systems and which should we use? Is there any way of integrating the two or should one be abandoned in favour of the other?

Tagged as: bookmarking, Newcastle City Council, press office, RSS Leave a comment

Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

@tjabif
August 13th, 2009

I’ve really enjoyed reading this. I’m a web enthusiast and not a coder/programmer person so do indulge my rant.
I agree there must be a better way… However, there remains the small matter of finding a way to aggregate local or regional based news items and articles without the need to resort to press cuttings; bearing in mind sustainability and issues (ok, maybe that’s a tad off point) but in my opinion, I think there is a need for an hyper-local format web based service to pool info and news articles into one place. A good example is: http://www.london-se1.co.uk/ (website could do with a makeover )
Saying this, there’s still the issue of traditional newsprint media not posting all of their content online (as mentioned in your article) so news items/ articles not released online may not be picked up via an aggregator, bookmarking or hyper-local type format, hence press cuttings by press office to the rescue
Perhaps print media need to up their game with regards to getting all of their content accessible online(?) There’s also the issue of duplication of articles submitted for the web via press cuttings and items obtained via alerts and feeds.
I think the two systems have their merits and both can work pari passu (never thought I’d use that phrase ) at least until the powers that be, create a central point for the aggregation of news items and articles relating to the region, council etc. A //popurls.com type site perhaps?
Thanks for indulging my rant!
alsmith
August 13th, 2009

Thanks for your comment – I didn’t think it was particularly ranty.

I agree that a site which aggregates regional news, in the same way that you aggregate regional tweets would be useful, but we would still need to create our own feed. We need to be able to highlight stories which concern the council regardless of their profile and interest to others. We would also then need to add our own tags so that we can analyse the data e.g. how often a particular publication or journalist writes about a particular issue.

If we could filter content from a regional repository this would certainly be helpful.
Philip Young
September 30th, 2009

Thanks – I have just saved this to my delicious account!