American News

Advantages of Internet News over Newspapers and Television or Radio
Newspapers cover stories in more depth, but the news in the morning papers is ‘yesterdays’. Using the internet search engine, background can be found to most stories the same day as the story breaks.
A major disadvantage of the ‘television news’ is that the viewer often has to watch news either they have seen before, or news that is not relevant to them. For example, the BBC news on the day that the engagement of Prince Andrew and Kate Middleton was announced. It first appeared in the morning as breaking news, but then as the day progressed, it was on every news bulletin. On the 24 hour news, in order to add more content, the story became speculative; who will make the dress, where will the wedding be held, which day and month will it be held on. Invited guests who were supposed to be ‘experts’ were asked these questions. They could not know the answers, and so the much of the news on that day was a waste if time for those who did not want to speculate about the dress etc. For serious factual news and stories other than the Royal Wedding, people had to turn to the Internet.

The Mobile Phone or The Internet?
When mobile phones had mainly MMS and SMS (text and picture messaging), if a there was breaking news, someone might phone a newspaper or tv station. If it was a major disaster, for example the London Bombings, the mobile phone networks were overloaded and many people heard the engaged tone and so pressed re-dial.

]]>

The internet can cope with a surge in demand if someone wants to report a major story.  
News websites are becoming ‘people powered’ and reporters who have previously sent in stories have a log in and become ‘trusted reporters’ in a similar way to an author is judged to be better if he has submitted a high number of articles to an ezine.
Internet news sites will automatically put stories from reporters with good track records at the top of the page; articles from new reporters will be checked by news staff and then posted.

The Internet is Better for Breaking News
Because people can post news stories onto the internet in just 3 simple stages, the speed at which breaking news hits the internet is hard to beat. To submit a story the reporter:-
1. Click to write & report news
2. Add videos, photos & tags
3. Login or register to submit
The story is being read as they type it in, if it is a big story several reporters will be sending in the same story.

London News, UK News, World News.
Stories can be posted from anywhere in the world without difficulty. Website design allows each major heading to have sub heading, so if someone is interested in UK news, they can quickly click on the part of the UK they are most interested in.
A drop down menu from a UK tab would typically be:-

London and the Southwest
N Ireland
North
North East
North West
Scotland
Wales
South West
Midlands

24 Hour News
Major newsrooms have more staff working during the day, at 5 pm, even the switchboard staff may go home. The internet is the same day or night, and it is just as easy to submit a story whatever the time.

No news bias on internet websites
Many newspapers and television stations are influenced by the political views of the owner. The BBC often seems to have a bias towards the Government of the day  (he who pays the piper calls the tune).
slant put on it.

A Growing Market
The rapidly growing mobile internet market is helping fuel the growth in internet news websites; Ipads, note books, tablet pc’s, smart phones and ultra thin laptops with longer battery life.

There is now an endless supply of reporters who will regularly submit breaking news in the same way that authors enjoy sending articles to internet magazines.

Originally published here.

Barclays: Japan 4Q GDP Will Shrink 12.1%; Holiday Sales Worst Since 1970; American Greetings Buys Recycled Paper Greetings; Consumer Confidence Hits Record Low; China Eastern Gets Additional Funds; Gazprom Gets Paid

An economist for Barclays Capital (ADR:BCS) estimates Japan’s economy will shrink at an annual pace of 12.1% this quarter, nearly a three-fold negative jump from the rate previously predicted. “Given the speed and the length of the contraction, this recession could be the most severe in the postwar era,” Barclays’ chief Japan economist Kyohei Morita said, Bloomberg reported. “We expect negative growth will continue for a fifth straight quarter to the April-June period of 2009.”
U.S. holiday season shopping was the worst since at least 1970, with bottom lines plagued by low demand, heavy discounting and unfriendly weather, the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) said yesterday (Tuesday). ICSC’s tally runs up to December 27, and its chief economist, Michael Niemira isn’t holding out for a miracle turnaround in the remaining days, Reuters reported.
American Greetings Corp. (AM) said it will buy privately held rival Recycled Paper Greetings in a deal that includes restructuring Recycled Paper Greetings’ debt under a Chapter 11 reorganization process. American Greetings Chief Executive Officer Zev Weiss acknowledged his company was attracted to RPG’s witty, funny and fresh content, according to a news release.
Consumer confidence hit an all-time low in December, with the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index dropping to 38 for the month from a revised 44.7 in November. Rising layoffs and the deteriorating housing market were the biggest reasons for the decline.
The Chinese government more than doubled the size of a bailout for China Eastern Airlines Corp. Ltd. (ADR: CEA), just weeks after announcing a plan to pump $440 million (3 billion yuan) into the carrier, the Financial Times reported. China Eastern said it would now receive more than 900 million (7 billion yuan) through a private placement of Hong Kong and Shanghai-listed shares to its state-owned parent company.
Ukraine yesterday (Tuesday) paid in full for natural-gas imports from Russia for November and has made an advance payment for supplies in December after OAO Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned oil monopoly, threatened to cut off supplies to the country. The Ukrainian government instructed two state-run banks to provide the country’s energy company NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy with the funds, a day before a deadline, Bloomberg reported.

Read More

Investment News

Originally published here.

So you and your CEO have reached the conclusion that you really need to monitor the media with a well-designed media monitoring program to find out what’s being said out there about your organization.

How do you go about selecting from the different approaches to news monitoring and the many media monitoring subscription services?

With the effects of the Great recession still being felt, there may be a temptation to hone in on the media monitoring approach that appears least expensive. Usually, that is having staff do the monitoring using free online tools. As with many B2B (business-to-business) services, however, what appears inexpensive on the surface is often not the most effective, best value or the best use of internal public relations and marketing resources.

“Print” News Monitoring vs. Online News Monitoring

For most organizations, news monitoring and clipping is the core media monitoring service.

Today, news in traditional media (newspapers, consumer magazines, trade journals, news syndication services) is best monitored on the Internet. The truth of the matter is that, with rare exceptions, most every article that appears in newspapers, magazines and trade journals also appears in the publication’s online edition.

In addition to monitoring and clipping most every print publication, online news monitoring services capture clips from thousands of online news sources that don’t exist in print. Widely-viewed online news portals include, among many others, MarketWatch and Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance, CNN and CNBC. In addition, Internet news monitoring offers worldwide coverage in most every language.

The online news monitoring software misses fewer clips than human readers or digital scanners of print publications, especially broadsheet newspapers. On balance, then, you get far more coverage and clips by monitoring online sources than through traditional press clipping services.
Online news monitoring is also timelier than press clippings since many publications publish stories on the Website long before the print version reaches newsstands or post offices. (Check the New York Times in the afternoon to see many of the next day’s stories in the print edition.)

Press clipping services typically charge a monthly “reading” fee and an additional fee for each clip delivered. The per clip charges can mount up quickly. The monthly bills can cause billing hassles and budgeting issues because of widely varying monthly charges. In contrast, online media monitoring services usually charge only a predictable fixed monthly fee with no per clip fee. In most every case, then, online news monitoring services are less expensive and offer greater value than traditional press clipping services.

Online news monitoring offers a wide choice of services.

Free Online News Monitoring Services

First, there are free online news monitoring services – usually supported by advertising. The leader is Google News. It offers reasonably good coverage of news sources, but not as extensive as the paid subscription services. The Google News service will send you daily news alerts via e-mail with articles containing the keywords you specify.

]]>

But there are drawbacks to free online news monitoring services that require users to invest substantial time in finding clips.

With Google News, neither the e-mail alerts nor the organic searches deliver all the clips. Google uses its algorithms to deliver only what it considers the most relevant or important articles (clips). For “market intelligence” purposes this may be adequate. For public relations monitoring and measurement, it is seriously lacking.

To get all the international clips in Google News or to monitor more than 10 key words or phrases, you have to conduct multiple daily searches -’ a time-consuming and tedious process for staff. And if you enter multiple searches each day, you will undoubtedly get redundant clips in your search results. Staff will have to filter out duplicate clips manually.

The Boolean search capabilities in Google News are not as advanced as most of the paid subscription services. As a result, the free service often delivers extraneous or irrelevant articles, especially if you are searching corporate or brand names that are similar to other companies in other industries. Google News also limits searches to a maximum of 10 key words.

Google News and other free news monitoring services do not include a way to store the delivered clips. To store the clips, a staff person will have to cut and paste the clips into a database or spreadsheet – a tedious and time-consuming task – or print out each article, an expensive proposition (especially in color).

Google News provides no circulation or viewership data. As a result, measurement of PR success is near impossible.

Nonetheless, for many small and mid-size organizations, news search engines such as Google News or Yahoo News provide sufficient coverage and features.

A free search engine may well meet your needs if you have just a few search terms, typically receive only a few clips each day, have no need for measurement data or tools, and are willing to invest the time to conduct multiple searches each day.

The free search services, however, are not truly free. They can be quite costly in terms of time required to do daily searches. Since the free news monitoring services do not store your clips, as do most subscription media monitoring services, there is also the cost of transferring the clips from the search engine results to a database or spreadsheet and the cost of then printing out clips. Searching and managing those paper-based clips is more difficult and time-consuming than the digital clips subscription services store in a fully searchable online database. Using RSS feeds will help minimize staff time devoted to media monitoring.

Paid Subscription Online News Monitoring Services

The subscription online news monitoring services including the leaders CyberAlert, CustomScoop, and Meltwater offer many features not offered by free services including: a) more comprehensive news coverage including virtually all the daily and weekly newspapers, consumer magazines, trade journals, news syndication services, news portals on the Web, websites of broadcast news organizations worldwide – all in multiple languages b) automated daily search queries in multiple languages for multiple countries with virtually unlimited search terms c) advanced Boolean logic to minimize extraneous or irrelevant clips d) online digital clip archive to store, search and manage clips e) instant software-based translation of foreign language clips f) PR measurement data attached to each news media clip g) dynamically created media measurement charts and graphs g) custom features to meet special needs.

The customized features in the online news monitoring services assure that the service exactly meets your requirements, with a minimum investment of staff time.

Do you want clips only from a custom list of specific publications — not all news sources? Do you want only “important” articles, not all mentions of your key search terms? Do you want only one copy of the same story — a press release for instance?

Do you have special delivery requirements such as clip delivery throughout the business day or XML format? Do you prefer RSS delivery? Do you want the clips delivered at a specific or unusual time each day? Do you want the clips delivered to multiple people? Do you want clips automatically inserted into separate e-mails and archive folders for different clients or brands?

Do you want the clips edited and packaged into a daily or weekly news briefing for executives? Do you want all news clips edited by human readers before delivery to absolutely, positively eliminate unwanted clips?

Most of the specialists in online news monitoring offer these customized services.

The traditional press clipping services such as Burrelle’sLuce or Cision also offer online news monitoring services.

But don’t let the press clipping services sell you both press clipping and online news monitoring. Most every article in print editions of newspapers, magazines and trade journals also appears in that publication’s online edition. Some small community newspapers (mostly weeklies) and some trade journals (mostly medical and academic) do not publish all their print content on the Internet — but that’s rare. In fact, abstracts of all medical journals are also available online at PubMed, a free service of the National Library of Medicine. If there are print publications that are really important to you and are not published on the web, then ask the press clipping service to monitor only those publications in print – and everything else online – in order to avoid duplicate clips and escalating variable costs.

Once you have decided what custom features you want ‘and have made a list of the commercial media monitoring services of interest to you – you can start contacting and vetting potential vendors.

Originally published here.