Al Smith Social media in local government

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?