In fact, a bad Web site can actually cause a newsworthy story to be killed. "If we can’t get access to background information on deadline, we might not even do the story," says John Valorzi, business editor for The Canadian Press News Service.

Journalists are crying out for short descriptions of what a company does, its location(s), years in business, sales, employees—basic bullet points. "You have to mine through so much stuff to get to that," scoffs Valorzi. "All I need to run with a story are numbers, jobs, terms of the latest deal, and a hard news angle."

He adds that only one in three Canadian corporate news sites post fact sheets.

Business and technology correspondent Tyler Hamilton at The Toronto Star concurs. "Time is of the essence. PR people must understand our needs—the press depends upon finding information quickly. It has to be organized intuitively."

Speed rules: seconds are minutes and minutes seem like hours in today’s fast-paced news bureau. To stay in the game, your Web site has to be up to the speed and extremely well organized. Think like a reporter and reverse engineer it: let the process of news gathering guide the design. If the navigation is confusing, reporters won’t return. Spare them the marketing drivel, and be sure to offer a ‘search this site’ feature.

If you want to fail, design the media centre on your Web site to suit your boss.

"The newsroom should be one click off the home page, and easily identifiable," adds Denise Deveau, a freelance writer for The Globe and Mail, Canadian Retailer, Hotelier Magazine and several other trades. "It’s also difficult for a reporter when the name of the media contact is missing. Some releases leave off a telephone number, which is truly annoying." Deveau thinks that fully half of net newsrooms in Canada have not been set up with reporters in mind.

Who gets it right? GE Canada got high marks in our informal survey.

A reporter on deadline has precious little time to waste—frustrating them further is not a sound media relations strategy.

The secret to doing PR on the Net is achingly simple: give reporters what they want, how they want it, when they want it. Don’t sacrifice usability to internal politics, approvals, and your boss’s inflated ego. You’re the PR counselor, not them.

Reporters don’t surf—they plunge into Net newsrooms like a diver in search of oxygen.

Because reporters typically use search engines, the unanticipated happens every day. Instead of arriving at your news page, search engines beam users right into the middle of a site (like something straight out of Star Trek). Thus, navigational tools and menus are required on every page. In many cases, reporters never actually visit the news section or home page— searching instead only for the facts they need.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen surveyed legions of reporters about their satisfaction with the news section on corporate Web sites and reported that journalists found the information they needed a paltry 60% of the time. "If these sites were being graded in a school, the average grade would be no higher than a D," reports Nielsen.

Some people carp that Nielsen’s findings are dated (2001; updated 2003) and that everybody has seen them published in other reports. But like messages about diet, exercise and smoking, few heed them! Instead, we happily go for more poutine.

Here’s what reporters want, according to Nielsen:

1. A PR contact (name, telephone and e-mail)

2. Ability toverify basic facts (spelling of names, age, address, locations, employees)

3. The organization’s position statement re: breaking events

4. Financial data

5. Images or illustrations, with JPEG thumbnails

    

When asked for their wish lists, Canadian reporters added:

1. Product descriptions (succinct, not sales literature)

2. Basic "about" boilerplate text in short and long versions

3. News archive

4. Search function

5. Design that doesn’t change as soon as you learn it

6. HTML and Word files in lieu of PDFs (Acrobat)

7. White papers, studies, research, and backgrounders

8. Executive team names and titles

9. Releases divided into categories

10. News calendars

    1. Date earnings will be announced

    2. Public meetings

    3. Future disclosure dates

    4. Annual meeting date

11. Executive calendars for planning future news flow and coverage

    1. Public speaking events

    2. Analyst meetings

    3. Conference talks

    4. Industry participation

Like our Canadian journalists, Nielsen admonishes us to "cleanse (news pages) of the marketese and excessive verbiage that smother the facts on many sites." In his study, he says we focus a lot of energy on pitching journalists to gain their attention—only to lose them when they finally visit our poorly designed (and reporter unfriendly) sites!

Locally, Valorzi confirmed that advice. He added that, if you follow the suggested guidelines for content, "you’re practically guaranteed better coverage."

As an industry, we tend to list news releases chronologically—by date. Reporters work on beats. Releases should be segmented into buckets of related content by beat: financial, new products, environmental, social responsibility, regulatory issues, etc.

Nothing is worse than having to wade through a long, text-heavy page of uncategorized headlines (which invariably and uselessly all start with "XYZ Company announces") to find the three or four related items that should have been clustered together.

Bell Canada Enterprises  was cited as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, as a large corporation with many disparate holdings, the list of news releases can be a confusing jumble. But a robust categorization and search function tames the beast, enabling both broad and narrow searches that are quick and easy.

Bombardier received decent marks for the organization and navigability of its net newsroom. While the list of releases can be intimidating—moving from the election of directors to restructuring news to press conference announcements in one dense list—a handy search agent brings order. While the media contact’s name and telephone are listed on every release, e-mail addresses are curiously missing. A company this size should know how to cloak addresses from spammers by using forms or Java script.

Images are important too. The Fairmont Hotel chain was cited for its extensive gallery section. Having checked it out, I agree that it does rank in the top echelon.

"Release titles should act as headlines and offer a synopsis of the item," counsels Valorzi. As for the release itself: "sum it up quickly."

All of the Canadian media with whom we spoke reinforced the need for hard news over marketing copy. The media centre is not your corporate brochure. "We routinely dismiss product announcements," said Valorzi. "I don’t care about your new peanut butter. But if you’re creating new jobs or adjusting sales estimates as a result, tell me that."

"Yes, you have to touch on a relevant business issue," confirmed Deveau, adding that she skims news releases and deletes them after reading the headline and first two sentences. "It would be worth the time to re-work the headline and tailor the copy to different media outlets," she offers. "One size does not fit all, you know?"

Hamilton made a similar point. "In general, the PR industry doesn’t research their audience." He says. "They’re just blasting stuff out in the hopes someone will use it." As a result, he gets overwhelmed with off-topic marketing announcements posing as news.

Nowadays, he’s shy to sign up for news alerts. "If I do, I get bombarded with garbage."

Reporter’s want HTML (Web) pages for ease of viewing, and a "printer friendly" button containing a clean version of the release in Word. Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files irritate most journalists because they take longer to open and the content doesn’t easily copy and paste into a reporter’s work product.

Perhaps nothing is more important to reporter than an organization’s response to breaking events. When a milestone event occurs, reporters flock to your Web site newsroom looking for comments or facts. Usually, they are confronted with yesterday’s news. Blame CNN, but there is now an expectation that content will be posted in real-time, including off hours.

The bottom line is that we have to stop thinking about net newsrooms as repositories of information and start realizing they now serve as our de facto corporate news wires.

Technology has enabled a shift to real time communication. Our challenge is to ready our PR department, IT folk and resources to meet that challenge. Journalists often rate us against the standards of their own profession, so a Web site that fails to respond to breaking events misses the mark.

Moreover, it thwarts reputation management. If you can’t get your side of the story out to a broad audience rapidly, your organization’s spin on events will simply be left out of the news. Instead, speculation and third-party analysis will fill the information vacuum. Space has to be filled, one way or another.

Few Canadian sites offer media contacts after hours. In today’s world of 24/7 news cycles, a paging system or answering service is a necessity.

Here’s a simple litmus test: when’s the last time you had reporters test your site and provide feedback? Only reporters can gauge the level of content, organization and overall design of your site.

Failing to get the media to review your news or press section is like having a chef prepare food for others based on their own personal taste. Your news section is designed for others—it’s their input that matters, period.

I’ve heard scores of reporters plead with PR audiences and say they are willing to provide input if only someone would ask. The Star’s Hamilton confirmed that he has met with companies and offered suggestions. "It’s relationship building, eh?" he said.

Three common ways to get this intelligence are in-person, by survey or through feedback mechanisms.

In-person: Ask reporters with whom you have a good relationship to surf your net newsroom and provide some critique and suggestions. Don’t expect a point-by-point evaluation; instead, listen carefully to their impressions without responding defensively. Or ask the reporter over, bring in lunch, and have them surf the site in front of you. Pretend they are researching a story: have them find selected bits of information. Carefully observe how easily they can navigate to it. Resist any and all temptation to guide them… you’re trying to learn what doesn’t work. If you have to provide a tutorial, your site is already in trouble.

Survey: Keep it simple, and remember that a survey is only as good as the questions it asks. Query media about navigation and content, and ask for their wish list.

Feedback mechanisms: Taking the customer service approach, a small but growing number of PR departments have put feedback buttons on their media centres to capture impressions. Is the content useful, easy to find, and timely? While the data tends to be stream of consciousness versus comprehensive, compiling it will provide you with insight about site design weaknesses and the type of content the media really wants.

If you present news as quickly as reporters can gather it, you’ll make the grade. The speed and usability issues discussed here represent only the tip of the iceberg. Having studied this topic for nearly a decade, I’ve observed that technology keeps changing communication practice. Whatever you think you know is yesterday’s story.

Canadian reporters shared what works, and what doesn’t, when pitching stories by e-mail. We’ll cover that additional content and much more—including reviews of winning and losing Canadian net newsrooms—in the upcoming session hosted by IABC/Toronto.

Deveau named names, saying one Toronto-based PR entity sends out overly cutesy and downright cheesy e-mail pitches. (I’ll tell you who at the seminar.)

IABC/Toronto presents PR on the Net Revealed featuring Charles Pizzo on June 23, 2004.

Charles has spoken to communicators on four continents. He is a former chairperson of the board of both the 13,500-member IABC and its Research Foundation.