The Media Drop

Last Thursday, while in town for the BlogNashville event, I had the pleasure of visiting the Nashville bureau of Business Wire for a good portion of the day. My intent was to get a good sense of what a day in the life of the newsroom was, including the life cycle of a press release once it arrives at the wire service’s offices. This entry will provide some insights into what I learned.

Most of the releases that are to go out on the Business Wire service come in online via Business Wire Connect. Some do come in through other methods, such as email, but they are predominantly directly filed by the client or the client’s PR firm with Business Wire. Obviously email is an imperfect tool, and the direct access into BW can work to decrease the loss of important information. The Nashville bureau works for clients located in the area surrounding Tennessee, including Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri. This bureau has 14 copy editors on staff, spread out to cover 24 hours of time in the newsroom.

The average “time to market” for a “live” news release once it is delivered to the copy editors is approximately 15 minutes per page. This gives sufficient time for the editor to fully review the press release, ensure that it is directed towards the correct wire segmentations, check spelling, dates, etc. Editors are also responsible for adding a “Company Information Center” to each release, which leads items like stock quotes to the wire release. If a news release contains 10 pages of spreadsheets or financial information, it will obviously take longer than 15 minutes to hit the wire. Typically, financial results and other lengthy releases will be submitted well in advance of suggested distribution, such as in the case of quarterly financial results. The Nashville bureau sees anywhere from 100 to 130 news releases a day with a variety of distribution levels (national, industry specific, city-specific). Approximately one half of these releases will be considered “live,” as in they will be distributed either immediately or at a specified time during that day.

Each release is timestamped the moment it crosses the wire services, so a client is aware of when its news has been distributed to sources like Bloomberg, the Associated Press, and Yahoo! News. Editors will typically contact a client by whatever means is requested to confirm that the release is ready to go, or has hit the wire. This ensures client satisfaction, and allows for a company to be prepared for any contact they might receive from reporters covering a story or other interested parties. What I found most interesting was the weight that clients put on the Yahoo! News service. While public companies are obviously following Regulation FD by putting their news on the wire services through either Business Wire or competitor PR Newswire, it was curious to see that a site like Yahoo! was so important. It appears that all the chatter you hear about the following that Yahoo! Finance has is true, from what I could tell.

As far as measurement, Business Wire members are able to get an idea of how many journalists registered on the PressPass service have viewed their press releases. While specific journalist identities are not shown to the customer, Business Wire offers various levels of clipping services and tracking options as a value add. This seemed very similar to services (manual or otherwise) that many PR agencies offer to their own clients.

The office seemed not unlike a publication’s newsroom, with editors on the floor at all times, and a few staff members handling other functions such as sales and management. Additionally, having the Internet at any desk would make it very easy to monitor any difficulties with websites who receive the wire’s feeds. Each editor can also see what is in the queue at the other Business Wire bureau, including being able to identify who is working on what release. In this office, editors effectively “took turns” going around the room as releases came in, length and effort needed on each release being kept in mind to help balance the workload.

So what’s the future of the wire service? It’s hard to say, at least from my perspective. The ability to adapt to market conditions is going to be more than important. The Internet has made it very easy for almost anyone with the ability to publish a story based on a press release. While a company like Bloomberg has the capability to do so on a much wider scale, they no longer have the edge of immediacy they once did. That said, a manner of “fair” distribution like what Reg FD requires appears to be staying in play for the near future. Additionally, many news organizations such as newspapers and online publications still rely on AP, Bloomberg, Business Wire and PR Newswire to provide them with the data they need to publish the news. That doesn’t appear to be falling off the horizon anytime soon. And with both major wires adopting RSS as a syndication method, it’s clear they are aware of where the bread will soon be buttered.

[editor’s note: In the interest of full disclosure, I’d like to point out that the visit to the Business Wire offices was initiated by me, and staffer Mark Dunn, who attended BlogNashville, was nice enough to show me around town during the weekend.]