BeatBlogging: A new way for PR pros and Journalists to Connect

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By: Matt Clark

John passed along an interesting article from PBS’s MediaShift blog about how journalists are using Web 2.0 to inform their story flow – and of course, we found a few new ways PR pros can take advantage of them.

The author of the article, Mark Glaser also suggests that story pitches will come from an online community or social network set up specifically for that reporter’s beat. This community includes important sources, experts and various people with specialized knowledge of the subject.

He used a site called Beatblogging (www.beatblogging.org) as an example. Beatblogging.org is a collaboration between 13 news organizations from around the country and NewAssignment.Net, to figure out how journalists can use social networks to improve beat reporting.

That is the heart of web 2.0. Listening to an online discussion, finding out what participants are enthusiastic about and how they interact with each other. Then engaging that online discussion and contributing true value to it. Now Beatblogging is taking this theory to journalists.

Beatblogging is an interesting experiment. Publications such as The Seattle Times, MTV Multiplayer, ESPN, Cincinnati Enquirer, Houston Chronicle, WIRED, Dallas Morning News and Education week are all participating.

It’s giving PR professionals an inside view of journalists’ story flow. More importantly, it gives us a new way to interact with them. The hope for Beatblogging is that the community will help shape what they write about in their print publications.

Alexis Madrigal at Wired News is using his BeatBlogger status to let readers “chime in with suggestions, new ideas, and story angles that will help deliver the kind of news you’re interested in reading.” PR pro’s can use it to suggest story angles our clients are interested in.

Luckily this is a new project and is not well known. They have very little web traffic and only one or no comments on their posts. This is something we should all track and, if savvy in the way of blogs and online communities, engage. My fear is that flacks and pitch&ditch PR children will use new outlets such as Beatblogger to spam client pitches. If this happens, this intriguing new story vehicle will die quickly.