What is on the horizon for arts coverage?

We have been crunching some numbers over here at Cision blog, really taking a hard look at newspapers during these tumultuous years to help give a little more articulation to what is largely regarded as their death, and lo do we have some more figures for you. This time we have dug into some beat comparisons, drawing out what looks to be a substantial shift in newspaper coverage since 2009. There are many conclusions we are hoping to draw, but you are going to have to find the long of it at our sister site, The Navigator, tomorrow. With this post I was hoping to raise a few questions. Read it all..

Jim McManus, President and COO of NewsCertified

If there is one thing readers of this blog understand, it is that journalists are short on time, a crunch most of us feel here at the legwork end of news production with the distribution of source material and the scheduling and execution of interviews. I recently spoke with Jim McManus, President and Chief Operating Officer at NewsCertified, about their solution to this problem, a database of news-trained, interview-ready expert sources on offer for free to journalists working under tight deadlines. Read it all..

No doubt infographics are taking all the left sides of our brains by storm, offering truths, stories and even a great deal of entertainment in surprisingly new and innovative ways. It’s a medium that has been around since the dawn of publishing but seems to be getting a contemporary breath, with embedded pdfs, videos and some highly sophisticated interactive features surfacing like wildflowers all over the internet. It seems like just yesterday I was watching Hans Rosling give his TED talks, and now look where we are.  Read it all..

wrapping our niches into a central place

One of my favorite aspects of Google + is a pretty simple one: I love watching the animation of my friends as they get wound around the Circle I’ve just dropped them into. At first I found it simply amusing, but the more I pulled my contacts from that boring grid and dropped them into my circles, the more the metaphor began to really sink in: I felt like I was twisting all these individuals into something stronger, something that could exhibit force, the way coiled copper can produce electricity—that I was really thinking about who my contacts were, what fields they were in, what relationships and interests defined who I am.

Now, Circles at Google + isn’t really that innovative nor really that exclusive, and it could be argued that many will basically ignore them and just drop everyone into their Friends (in all fairness, I was over-organizing just to test things out), but this switch in defaults marks a very real anxiety over the atomistic quality of the social space, out of the newsfeed, hoping to provide greater organization and definition to the huge rooms we call our social networks.

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A neighborhood of unlocked doors

With Google + eliminating private profiles, it seems the fledgling social network is making decided strides toward defining the social space as an open one. It also pits itself against the notoriously private Facebook, in many ways playing a red card to Facebook’s black and thus raising new questions about the culture of online security as it is shaping up in the social space. Read it all..

Journalists embracing Twitter to get their sources

Sometimes reporters ask to be pitched, and increasingly, that request is coming in at 140 characters or less. Communications firm Brunswick, not shy with great research over the years, has provided some telling social media numbers in the Summer issue of the Brunswick Review, pointing toward an increasing use of Twitter and other social media services to source business stories, with the door wide open for further and further adoption of these platforms. It’s an important reminder that “old” media, too, has jumped on the bandwagon, and that PR pros should definitely be integrating traditional coverage with their social strategies, not just supplanting it with them. Read it all..

Action!

We have been discussing video a lot over here, poring over tons of great blog posts on video strategies, even offering up some of our own. But one thing has flown right underneath all of our strategizing: how do you shoot these things in the first place? So I’d like to offer up a quick, cheap (relatively), and easy guide to shooting professional video.

To start, let’s keep it simple: shoot an interview. Now you can define “interview” loosely: it could in fact be your social media coordinator or product manager or CEO simply reading a script, but the point is to center the video on shots of him or her speaking, looking directly into the camera. Strive for three minutes—but absolutely don’t go over five. Of course, choose whatever topic suites your current needs, but just remember to keep things focused. Okay, here are some technical tips to get you started: Read it all..

Last week, Google, with little fanfare, added a new feature to their user dashboard that collects a variety of tools and tips for users to control how they appear on the internet. The Me on the Web section, with its almost childishly simple title, is most definitely geared toward those who wish to disappear from the Web, or at least disappear those embarrassing photos or private cell phone numbers. It’s a deft move by Google that, while providing few new tools, showcases one of the few responses to internet security and identity concerns that put users at the helm of their own appearances.

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Thought leaders in public relations and communications measurement drafted a set of new priorities during the Lisbon European Summit last week, dubbed the Measurement Agenda, 2020. The agenda builds upon the Barcelona Principles set forth in the Measurement Summit last year and coincides with Cision’s launch of Cision Global Analysts, which brings together international talent and experience to help meet the newly set out challenges in PR and communications measurement.  Read it all..

Last week we introduced you to Karen Freberg and her scientific groundwork researching the personality traits of social media influencers. This week we would like to present some of her notions on what this research means: areas of future study, possible applications, and a little bit of her sense of the social media influencer in today’s environment.

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