The 2010 Winter Olympics are just around the corner, and I can't help but get excited. As a big-time ski-enthusiast, I'm especially looking forward to my favorite events like the Giant Slalom, Snowboarding, and all the other alpine events. I have fond memories of the time I was able to go to the '02 Games in Salt Lake City, where I watched Apolo Ohno skate his way to gold, and I saw Russia and Belarus face off for Ice Hockey bronze.
So it is with a little bit of personal excitement that I share with you the Newswise 2010 Olympics and Winter Sports wire. [This image is just a preview, and the official wire will be sent out at 1 pm today.]
All stories in the 2010 Olympics and Winter Sports wire are also available in the Newswise Feature Channel on Sports, available here: http://www.newswise.com/articles/channels?channel=93
To get Newswise wires, including special wires like the 2010 Olympics and Winter Sports wire, just register with Newswise and select your subscriptions: http://www.newswise.com/register
If you are a media relations professional, and you would like to know how to post a news release on Newswise for inclusion in a special wire, write to us at info@newswise.com and request membership info.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Winter Olympics News
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Media Relations in the Online Newsroom
My Newswise colleague, Zakira writes in with a recommended link about media relations and the online newsroom. -ed.
This concise article discusses the essential and optional components of an online newsroom. Perhaps obvious to media relations professionals, these points are still valid for any organization, whether non-profit, higher education or corporate. Also discussed are newsroom best practices, and the importance of transparency in leading journalists to the information they are seeking. The writer includes promotion of her fee based services, but this does not detract from the information offered. I also enjoy her complimentary weekly “marketingminute” emails.
Read the full article here http://www.yudkin.com/onlinenewsroom.htm
Monday, January 4, 2010
5 Tips for Successful Non-Profit Public Relations
There is a lot of talk in the PR world about the evolution of the press release – gone are the days of print-outs and mailings – and some even herald the waning influence of the emailed press release (though my inbox provides copious evidence to the contrary).
Savvy PR professionals know that exaggerations about the “death of the press release” are premature, and they know that newswire services are quite useful to promote the mission 
of their non-profit clients. Services like Newswise, by distributing news to a targeted media audience and providing in-depth effectiveness reporting, can augment a PR strategy to serve the non-profit’s mission. Whether the goal is to increase awareness, promote a campaign, influence consumers, or raise money and secure sponsorships, PR for a non-profit should follow these 5 essential tactics for success
1. Distribute content to a targeted audience
2. Achieve prominent results on search engines
3. Pitch experts and spokespeople to media outlets
4. Drive users to an action, such as to donate or sign a petition
5. Monitor effectiveness through reporting tools
Targeted Audience
The first goal for any PR campaign is to get the message out to the media. Simple, right? We'll explain how that's not targeted enough, and get into tips 2-5 after the jump.
Although it might be relatively easy to get a press release out to all of the media, the hard part is getting the info to the right media.
Newswise gives journalists the opportunity to filter the news they receive with more topic-specific focus. Health reporters can choose to receive only medical-based news, for example. This can serve a non-profit client’s goals in particular because these highly-focused media personnel are unencumbered by excess information in which they are not interested.
In any case, the advantage of using a newswire service is that at least some media are going to be interested in your non-profit client’s news. That includes broadcast and mainstream print media, all the way down to very specific regional outlets and trade publications.
Search Engine Optimization
Using a service to post news releases adds SEO effectiveness in several ways. First, newswire services like Newswise tend to achieve large amounts of daily traffic, and therefore are ranked well by the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. A press release posted to a newswire is likely to appear high in the search results for keywords related to your non-profit client’s content. Furthermore, any links you include in that press release tracking back to the non-profit client’s website should provide an uptick in their site’s ranking as well. Done effectively, this can have a lasting impact on the inbound traffic to your client’s content.
Pitching Experts
If your non-profit client has experts and spokespersons ready and willing to talk to the media, a newswire press release is a great way to promote them. Newswise even provides an "experts available" feed of stories, with the expert's contact info available only to verified, logged-in journalists.
For an effective expert pitch, Newswise recommends your press release should include the following:
• Who is the expert and why are they a credible authority in their field?
• Provide quotations and a brief description of the expert’s work on the topic.
• Describe the expert’s media experience and their availability for interviews.
An effective expert pitch can position your non-profit client to broadcast their message more directly to a wider audience.
Driving Action
A non-profit client often has some type of advocacy as part of their public relations goals. Whether that means something vague like influencing consumer behavior or something concrete like collecting donations, an effective press release can play an important part. This is probably the most obvious area where PR for a non-profit client is different than for corporate clients. A driving action might mean linking to an online donation form, persuading people to support a cause (sign a petition, call your congressperson), or even a creative bit of viral multimedia messaging (PETA’s vegetarianism PSA featuring a very sexy, and very naked Alicia Silverstone).
Whatever approach seems right for your non-profit client, do not neglect this crucial ingredient for success.
Monitor Effectiveness
Finally, no PR strategy is complete without a plan to monitor effectiveness. This can be done by setting up a Google News alert on keywords related to your non-profit client’s press release, by carefully tracking media clips, and through incoming requests from the media for more information.
Newswise offers several effectiveness reporting tools with different levels of membership, including hit reports on each press release, and online media clippings for an additional fee. A combination of several success monitors can be used to determine if a message is on-target or needs tweaking, and give predictions for long-term media impact of a release. Keeping the non-profit client’s goals in mind, effectiveness monitoring can help evaluate current and future public relations strategies.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Last Week's Site Issues Resolved
Last week, Newswise.com was experiencing some intermittent server issues, causing slow response times and long delays on pageloads. It was frustrating for all of us, including you, dear user.
After a lot of hard work and some expert diagnostics, the site is working at normal speed and the issues seem to be resolved.
Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work out the kinks. And thanks for using Newswise!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Tamiflu Metabolite Measured in Japanese Sewage Discharge, River Water
Tamiflu Metabolite Measured in Japanese Sewage Discharge, River Water - This story, posted to Newswise on Monday, September 29, has attracted quite a lot of attention, particularly as the H1N1 flu virus continues to affect concerns about the upcoming flu season.
Tamiflu is arguably the most popular over-the-counter treatment, and is considered a viable option to at least speed up recovery if you've already come down with the flu. One potential complication, however, is that trace amounts of Tamiflu's active ingredient, oseltamivir carboxylate (OC), is now showing up in treated sewage and river water.
From the article:
"[I]n the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), researchers measured oseltamivir carboxylate (OC), the active metabolite of the popular anti-influenza drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate), in samples of sewage discharge and river water collected near Kyoto City during Japan’s 2008–2009 flu season."
The results indicate the potential damage these trace amounts of OC could cause:
"...the peak drug concentrations observed in this study may be high enough to promote the emergence of drug-resistant influenza strains in waterfowl exposed to OC-contaminated waterways."
Researchers continue to examine the possibility of drug-resistant viruses, so watch Newswise for the results of those future studies. Follow our Feature News Channels on Drug-Resistant Superbugs and a Breaking News Channel on H1N1 Influenza. read the full article...
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Newswise Client Tutorials: Changes to the Contribution Form
Hello there, Journalists, Bloggers, Clients and friends of Newswise! As I wrote a few weeks ago, we've undergone many changes here at Newswise with the launch of our revamped website. With a lot of valuable user-feedback, we've made some improvements and we hope you're enjoying the new site.
For some additional info, I've asked my cohorts in Member Services to come up with some tips for our clients on how to navigate some of the new features on the article contribution form. Working together with my colleague, Andy Roy, we've put together this list of brief tutorials geared specifically toward our clients. If you are not a Newswise member and you have any questions about joining, you can reach us at info at newswise dot com, or use our contact form.
HTML tags: You are now allowed to use HTML tags when you contribute a release. This means you can apply styling such as bold and italics, for example. Perhaps most importantly, you can include tags to create a link in the body of your article. The HTML must be entered manually; simply copying and pasting from Word or other types of documents will cause the HTML formatting to be lost or corrupted. If you don't choose to put in the HTML to activate a url yourself, we will activate it for you as usual.
Tip: HTML code to create a link looks like this:
Save as Draft: If your release is awaiting approval or you just aren't ready to commit it to go live on our site, you may choose to save it as a draft and return to complete it later. You can access drafts through the "Manage Articles" link in the left-hand navigation bar, or in the "Tools" drop-down menu at the top.
Tip: Navigate to your "Manage Articles" page from either of these two locations:
Submit your article: Once you have finished your submission click the "Submit and View" button at the bottom of the page. This submits your article for review by Newswise staff, and it will bring you to a confirmation screen showing you a sample of what your release will look like. Keep in mind that some formatting will not be done on your release until Newswise editors review it; for example, your contact info will not yet appear in its usual place to the right of the article under "contact info".
Also, on the confirmation screen for your article, there is now a button labeled "Return to Edit", which takes you back to the article to make changes. If you do this right away, before Newswise editors have reviewed the story, your changes will be live immediately. However, if you edit the article after it has been reviewed by Newswise editors, your changes will create a replacement article. More info about replacements is explained next.
Editing a reviewed article (replacements): Once your article has been submitted, our editor will review it and release it at the time you specified. If you need to make edits after our editor has reviewed it, you will notice some html tags in your article
Tip: When you submit a replacement, it goes into a queue for Newswise editors to review the changes. In the meantime, you will not see your changes live on the article yet. Only after we review the replacement article will your changes overwrite the existing article.
Release Time: Our release times are now on a 12-hour clock, not 24, as it was before. Midnight is now 12AM instead of 00:00, and noon is 12PM instead of 12:00.
Embedding Images/Audio/Video: We've moved the "add image and multimedia" option to the bottom of the contribution form. To add images or multimedia such as audio and video, click the "Add Images and Multimedia" button, which will take you to a new screen. Follow the instructions to add image and multimedia files, captions and credits, and when you are done, select "Save as Multimedia" at the bottom.
Tip: Multimedia options are only available with certain levels of membership. If you have any questions about your options or wish to add multimedia to your membership, contact us at member@newswise.com
Tags (keywords): Tags should no longer be pasted in; they should be entered one tag at a time. You must then select your tag from the drop-down list. Adding appropriate tags will help your article appear in more searches on our site and on the web.
We hope these tips are helpful. If you have any additional questions or you are having trouble contributing a story, you can reach Andy at andy@newswise.com, or by phone at 434-296-9417. read the full article...
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Newswise 2.0 Website Update News
Welcome friends, fans, media types, researchers, science nerds, bloggers, journalists, and John Q. Publics; Welcome to Newswise 2.0.
As with any new web site launch, we've had a few bugs and hiccups. The new search tool doesn't accept special characters, for example. Also, some users running Internet Explorer 7 or earlier are having some issues with their login, and certain pages not displaying. We recommend using Mozilla Firefox, or at least upgrading to version 8 of Internet Explorer if you're having issues.
Some users have noticed that there's not currently a "printer-friendly" link on the article page view. If you wish to print an article, you can automatically print it in a printer-friendly format by just selecting file>print from the broswer's menu. Your print-out should be a single column of only the article body, and some users are finding that this seems to take up more pages than necessary. We're working on improving the printer-friendly format, and should have fix soon.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please use our Contact Form, and someone will respond to you as soon as possible.
Thanks for bearing with us as we go through this transition while we work on improving the Newswise 2.0 experience for you. Your support and patience is much appreciated.
All the best,
Thom and the rest of the Newswise Staff
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Study Reveals Major Genetic Differences Between Blood and Tissue Cells
Study Reveals Major Genetic Differences Between Blood and Tissue Cells
New research reveals there may be some critical variations in the DNA of blood versus tissue samples, particularly when it comes to researching and treating disease.
McGill University researchers in Montreal, while searching for a genetic cause for Abdominal Aortic Aneurisms (AAA), found that a gene found in tissue samples did not match perfectly with patients' blood DNA. It all came down to the BAK gene, a gene which controls cell death.
Dr. Bruce Gottlied explains: "In multi-factorial diseases other than cancer, usually we can only look at the blood. Traditionally when we have looked for genetic risk factors for, say, heart disease, we have assumed that the blood will tell us what's happening in the tissue. It now seems this is simply not the case.
"From a genetic perspective, therapeutic implications aside, the observation that not all cells are the same is extremely important. That's the bottom line," he added. "Genome-wide association studies were introduced with enormous hype several years ago, and people expected tremendous breakthroughs. They were going to draw blood samples from thousands or hundreds of thousands of individuals, and find the genes responsible for disease.
"Unfortunately, the reality of these studies has been very disappointing, and our discovery certainly could explain at least one of the reasons why."
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Newswise Blog Update
Exciting things on the horizon for Newswise! We've stepped up our presence in the social media, including several Twitter feeds, here, here, here, and here.
Coming soon - a whole new look to the Newswise website - with better navigation, search engine, sharing and recommending links, and eventually, a place for the blog on our domain!
If you are interested in getting a look at the new site while we beta test, please contact me at thom at newswise dot com.
