The New York Times published an interesting article yesterday titled, "As Coverage Wanes, Los Angeles Kings Hire Own Reporter."
In response to the declining number of media outlets able to afford to send reporters out to cover stories, the Los Angeles Kings hired their own personal beat reporter, who had previously wrote for The Los Angeles Daily News, to report on the team's Website. A Kings spokesman said the team had given "a multi-year commitment and complete autonomy to post reporting or commentary" on their website. The King’s personal reporter will also travel with the team to cover all of their games.
The story stated that “after years of trimming jobs, pages and travel budgets, many big-city (news)papers no longer provide regular coverage of every local sports team, and sending reporters on road trips has become rare.”
The Kings aren't the first to lead this emerging trend. Major League Baseball has a beat reporter assigned to each team and to write for its website.
Could the role of the PR practitioner evolve into reporting as newsrooms' reporting structures radically change due to staffing and budget constraints?
I think a great place to start reporting is on your company (or client's) blog. Social media tools such a Twitter and Facebook have made it extremely easy to push out content and attract followers to your blog site. These days, a blog plan / social media relations is critical to an organization's marketing success and should be included in the company's overall PR and communications strategy. Social media is dramatically changing the newsroom and how journalists gather story ideas and research, therefore, we must change the way that we making information and company news available.
To read the full article, click here.
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