Passionate about technology, media and chocolate eclairs, I've worked in web and print for over twenty years and now run a digital media consultancy in Scotland.
On 29 June, Highland Council announced it was going to stop sending press releases by email from 12 July and start using Twitter as its core method of distributing its news.
This came as a bit of a surprise, since most of the weekly newspapers that operate in the area it serves make no apparent use of Twitter, either for newsgathering or news distribution.
Although news releases will still be available via RSS, SMS and through the website, the use of Twitter will allow the council to distribute its news to a wider audience, and also make it easier to share. Any member of the public can get a notification when releases are issued if they follow the council’s Twitter stream.
On paper, it’s a move with the times, but will it work in reality?
Press releases have a limited audience. They go out to newspapers and if they’re used, all well and good. If they’re not, it’s too late to regurgitate by any other method.
Social media kills two birds with one stone. It allows print media to pick up on their articles as soon as they’re published (as they do with email) but it also gives it a far wider (potential) audience, especially for those, ahem, duller releases that never see the light of day in a newspaper.
Basically, it is making itself a distributor of its own news with a potential audience far greater than that of its press release mailing list.
But if newspapers are not already using Twitter, are they going to rush out and learn how to use it before 12 July, or will they use one of other methods of distribution, or will council news start to fall by the wayside.
Reaching out to newspapers is still vitally important to council in terms of distributing news. It still takes a newspaper to see through the spin and extract the real news from the propaganda. This is a media service after all.
I now of two objections, one from a substantial news provider, to this ‘move with the times’ already, less than 24 hours after the announcement. I wonder why the council didn’t ask for the opinion of its ‘clients’ for their thoughts first?
It is interesting to see the council moving with the times and adopting social media to provide a better service, but you’ve got to question whether the media is ready to adopt it.
The Twitter service will be trialled for three months. It remains to be seen what will happen after that.
