I was just listening to the latest installment of For Immediate Release and there were two – count them – two  – interesting snippets on the subject of press releases.

First up, a new press release search engine called PR Filter.

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It’s has been created by UK press release distribution company Realwire.

It’s still in beta and the results aren’t terribly comprehensive yet, but as a research tool it’s definitely one to add to your list.  (You can also grab an RSS feed of the most common searches (see the left hand column above).)

The second story relates to a new site called churnalism.com, which was covered by the UK Guardian last week and:

“promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.”

Stuart Bruce makes an interesting observation on the potential uses of the site:

“The site is intended to highlight the problem of churnalism, but I can already envisage some PR agencies and in-house PR people rubbing their hands with glee as they imagine how they can use it to evidence the success of their activity. “Just look at how many nationals used so much of our news release, aren’t we fantastic.” It isn’t great. In fact it’s depressing as without a healthy mainstream media the public relations industry will be a lot less important.”

So there you have it, two stories on press releases in one week and not one mention of it’s death. Fantastic.

 

@tpemurphy

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