Many called for two factor authentication, like Facebook offers. Adding this feature to your account will require you to enter a code that is texted to your cellphone when you attempt to log in.

This week Twitter announced that it has now added that very feature.

Per Twitter’s instructions, you can enable the new security feature in three simple steps:

1)      Visit your account settings page.

2)      Select “Require a verification code when I sign in.”

3)      Click on the link to “add a phone” and follow the prompts.

However, if you share management of a brand Twitter account, this new verification process may not work for you. Ask yourself, whose cell phone number is going to be attached to the account and how certain are you that person and ‘their cell phone’ will be available each time the code is needed?

Jim O’Leary on Twitter’s product security team states on Twitter’s blog, “With login verification enabled, your existing applications will continue to work without disruption. If you need to sign in to your Twitter account on other devices or apps, visit your applications page to generate a temporary password to log in and authorize that application.”

That sounds good. Most brands use a third party application like Hootsuite to manage Twitter. But sometimes authorization fails. Sometimes you need to delete an erroneous tweet quickly. Sometimes you get a new laptop and what if the person with the cell phone attached to the account is traveling. I can think of too many reasons why I don’t want one of our brand accounts attached to a single person’s cell phone. Not the least of which is if an account is hacked the person able to act quickly on your team to log in and change the password may not be the person with the cell phone needed for the security code.

Twitter’s security solution is a start, but it’s not a solution that will work for all, and certainly not in all situations.

In truth, the bigger problem to be addressed may be internally. Educating  employees on not clicking questionable links in emails may be in order. The Onion, which was recently hacked, kindly shared exactly how the attackers got in. It all started with an employee clicking on a link in an email that should have been questioned. The AP admitted that it was hacked similarly, because an employee clicked on a link that came in an email.

What should we be doing until all social networks are secure from hacking and the threat of spam emails has been eradicated? As marketing and PR professionals managing brand social media accounts, we should all be having serious and hopefully productive conversations with our information security officers, as well as keeping ourselves educated on what the current threats are.

Information and awareness are essential.

Victoria Harres is VP, Audience Development & Social Media at PR Newswire, the main voice behind @PRNewswire, social media lead for @Business4Better and a frequent speaker and writer on social media for business. 

Have you ever stopped to think about how much media monitoring costs your company?

Your PR department has been collecting clips for your company for a while and you’ve even managed to come up with some metrics to trend for tone. But how do you know you’re capturing all the coverage that’s meaningful to your business? How many sources do you examine?

Have you ever really considered the cost of doing this kind of thing manually?

Well, we did.

We made a few assumptions, adjusted for inflation, and voila!  We figured out what a North American company spends on average per year on monitoring its media coverage. When trying to justify a monitoring service, consider these figures.

How much time would it take to compile a clipbook manually?

This depends on the size of the company but, on a regular day (no issue to be managed or crisis to quell), let’s assume (if you’ve had your morning coffee)…it takes:

• ~ 2 hours every morning to scan the news sites, broadcast sites, video sites, RSS feeds, and collect news clips
• ~ 1 hour to manually generate a clipbook
• ~ 1 hour converting the information into manipulate-able data…if you’re an Excel wiz
• A few hours for tone analysis and reporting brings you to your full 8-hour work day

Some days will be worse than others. You might be sluggish because it’s a Monday or maybe your company recently released its earnings and there are a higher volume of mentions.

Now let’s talk money. According to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2012, the mean hourly wage for a Public Relations Specialist is about $33.50.

Let’s say that he/she spends about 95% of their time working on media monitoring-related things. So, based on the 40-hour work week, your company pays about $1,200.00 per week towards manual media monitoring – which rings you in at about $65,000.00 per year.

Now, if yours is a larger company, you could be paying 2 or 3 staff members to share that work. Or consider if your PR pro is at the higher end of the pay scale and makes closer to $40.00 per hour – now it’s costing your company about $80,000 yearly.

Either way, media monitoring may already represent a large resource drain and hidden spend for your group.  If that’s the case, it might be time to consider a full service media monitoring service, like our very own MediaVantage.

The classic storytelling arc is a structure on which you can build many communications – including press releases.

Assuming that you need to stick to dry language and a certain format when drafting a press release can limit the appeal (and ultimately the success) of your message. Press releases have the potential to reach huge audiences, and constituents of every stripe.  

“We’re kind of stuck on making an old format meet a new purpose,” notes Jeff Domansky, CEO of Peak Communications and author of the popular public relations blog, The PR Coach.  “ The first social press release format came out 7 years ago, but we’re not using it. People are falling back on the old format, and complaining that it doesn’t work.” [Editor's note - Shift Communications used PR Newswire's multimedia press release ("MNR") to issue their social media release template.  The MNR remains popular today.]

So what does work in crafting messages today?  Building storytelling into the mix.

“Write a good story that communicates all the salient information you need to get out there, and do it in an interesting way,” suggests  Steve Farnsworth, chief strategist at Jolt Digital Marketing, and publisher of the widely-read Steveology blog.“Stories are how we understand things.”

In addition to building understanding, framing messages in the context of a story makes them relatable and memorable.  Stories provide contextual glue that makes key messages stick.

“You can tell the story, and press releases are a great way to do it,” says Farnsworth. “Press releases should be journalistic, not formulaic.  Trustworthy content has a balanced point of view.  It asks and answers the right questions. It doesn’t love itself. It tries to inform and educate.”

Adding narrative elements to your press releases

Building a story into a message as succinct as a press release can be challenging.   The key is to add narrative elements to your press release, such as:

• A quote from the member of the product development team (instead of a canned exec quote) discussing the genesis of the product, and problem it solves or the opportunity it creates.
• A video clip of a customer describing a successful outcome or demonstrating the utility of a product
• An account from an employee on the service side of the business, describing decreases in support or other indications of customer happiness.
• An infographic illustrating potential savings or efficiencies that could accrue over time.

“There’s a huge opportunity for communicators who are brave enough to deviate from the status quo and try new things,” notes Lou Hoffman, CEO of the Hoffman Agency, a leading Silicon Valley PR firm and author of the Ishmael’s Corner blog, where storytelling is a common theme.

But storytelling can be a tough sell to executives, who may be focused more on promoting the brand than serving the audience.   Hoffman is waging an ongoing war against “corporate drivel.”    He believes that a good story can fit strategically within the PR message, as long as the message answers two questions:

• Does the content deliver the “frame” that today’s journalists need to write a story?

• Does the content resonate with the target audience when reaching out to customers/prospects directly?

The storytelling arc

Putting the audience in front of the brand is one challenge when it comes to writing more engaging copy.  Figuring out how to build the story into the content – especially when you’re drafting a press release – can also be difficult at first.   But the classic storytelling arc, in which the scene is set, the conflict arises and is resolved in the climax, which then leads to the denouement, is a structure that works for a press release, too.

Borrowing from Hoffman’s post on storytelling techniques, this is our simplified vision of how the storytelling arc structure can work for press releases.

If you frame the message in terms of the story of the experience you would expect your audience to encounter if they bought your product used your service/read your book/ attended your event/ etc., the storytelling arc structure makes a lot of sense.  To the point of the aforementioned war on drivel, it also leaves precious little space for, shall we say, the wandering narrative that folks up and down the approval chain are tempted to stick into your press release.

Though they’ve been around for decades, the press release is ripe for a re-think.

“Look at the release as the executive summary of any newsworthy things that comes out,” suggests Eddy Badrina, co-founder and chief strategy officer at BuzzShift, a digital strategy agency.  “Break the formula.  Dive into the value proposition, the benefits, case studies, the feature set and the CEO’s visionary take on what the announcement means to the company and the market.”

There’s no reason for any message we issue to be classified as boring, dull or dead.  Taking pages from the storytellers’ playbook will help keep your messages lively, relatable … and effective.

Have you experimented with different approaches to your press releases?  I’d love to your out-of-the-box approaches to press release writing!   Stick a link in the comments for me to admire and tell me the story of YOUR stories!  :)

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing,  and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

“Press releases have a chance to be something so much more relevant,” notes Steve Farnsworth, chief strategist at Jolt Digital Marketing, and publisher of the widely-read Steveology blog. “But they have to be immediately specific and relevant.”

Who’s reading press releases (and why?)

A couple minutes’ worth of press release tweets from this morning. Click the image to see the live feed.

According to research PR Newswire conducted with Forrester on the visitors to PRNewswire.com, a significant portion of millions of monthly visitors are engaged in researching a product or service, and they find  press releases through their use of search engines.  People are also accessing press releases increasingly on mobile devices –views to PR Newswire’s mobile site have almost doubled in the last year. 

What’s the attraction? Press releases, as on-record statements from the organizations issuing them, are viewed as credible sources of information, and they are read and shared by the public, as well as journalists, analysts and bloggers.

“Most press releases that are produced aren’t read by the media, they’re read by the people,” says Farnsworth. “Your readers are going to be your stakeholders, and you’ll reach more directly that way than through the media.”

The long tail of the press release

Many communicators distribute the press releases in one way or another, whether through an email to industry players, a newsletter to customers or a commercial newswire service.  Once distributed, press releases develop an amazing ability to work their way into key industry niches, attaining the credibility of earned media status as they are liked, commented upon and shared.

Additionally, press releases are read long after they’re issued and the PR department has moved on to other things.  PR Newswire’s data indicates that most of the views the average press release will accrue over the four months following the distribution of the message – longer than many communicators expect.   A good message can actually increase its audience’s attention span.

To capitalize upon the ongoing attention the message generates, the press release also needs to provide direction for interested readers to take.

“The press release needs to be a guide to something bigger or better than itself, such as an infographic or ebook,” commented Eddy Badrina, co-founder and chief strategy officer at BuzzShift, a digital strategy agency.  “In fact, all those things you spend time creating probably deserve a press release.”

The recent “Dove Beauty Sketches” campaign included a exemplary press release that – while also loaded with multimedia elements – was also masterfully written to capture attention behind-the-scenes information about the wildly successful social media campaign.

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

When someone says, “My son just graduated college,” does your core grammatical nerve start to twitch? Dust off your cap and gown and let’s take a quick look and the correct way to discuss the graduates and what they actually did when they crossed the stage at commencement.

Grammatically speaking, the correct usage is to say, “My son just graduated from college.” Why? Because the verb “to graduate” is acting as an intransitive verb. Remember, intransitive verbs do not take objects. Transitive verbs take objects (either direct or indirect).

Transitive verb “to break” – He broke the glass.

Intransitive verb “to break” – When I see those commercials on TV with all the sad puppies and kitties who need homes, my heart breaks.

Consider this – by saying “He just graduated college,” it’s the same as saying “I slept my bed.” You need a prepositional phrase there to clarify exactly what you were doing. “I slept in my bed.”

Now, once again, we’re in the grammatical minefield of common usage starting to rub out the rules of grammar. “My son just graduated college,” is pretty firmly in today’s vernacular. No one is going to say, “The college my son attended has just graduated him.” That sounds archaic, but is grammatically correct. That’s also what’s actually happening when Junior parades across the stage, shakes the dean’s hand, picks up his degree, turns, smiles and waves at his proud parents, who are cheering and taking pictures, and then saunters off the stage to join his classmates and throw his cap in the air.

So remember, the school is the one doing the graduating. Students are graduated from a school.

Congratulations to the class of 2013!

Have a grammar rule you’d like me to explore? Drop me a line at catherine.spicer@prnewswire.com.

Author Catherine Spicer is a manager of customer content services at PR Newswire.

Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts ‘Gone Nutty!’ Toaster Pastries, Now Available in Two Peanut Butter Flavor Varieties. (PRNewsFoto/Kellogg Company)

Breakfast may be the most important meal of the day, but when it comes to a modern press release, social media is reigning champion.

My eyes popped upon seeing Kellogg’s recent release announcing the new Pop-Tarts® lineup. The release jumped from a “traditional release” (just text) to a supercharged social media delight!

Social media can be daunting but is important when it comes to releasing news. Why, you ask? Search engines are showing social content higher and higher (as of May 16th,Yahoo! is showing tweets in the news feed itself), a whole untapped audience is awaiting on these social channels (more and more are joining daily), AND it expands the life of a release.

Imagine dropping colored dye into a glass of water. The moment the dye hits the water, the entire glass changes color. Impact. If you can drop more dye into more glasses of water, the dye goes even further and affects even more.

Sharing your story on social media is adding glasses of water!

Kellogg accomplished this by way of Click-To-Tweet.

Click to Tweet: Pop-Tarts have Gone Nutty! @poptarts411 brings fans the most requested flavor #CrazyGoodPB! Check it out http://on.fb.me/kdgHx

A) Clicktotweet.com is a website for custom tweet creation. Want others to tweet something specific? Create a click-to-tweet!  The release is so much more shareable because quite literally, it is a push of a button.

B) The tweet is solid – the handle (@poptarts411 is called a ‘handle’ as it is how to find the company/person/group on twitter) is within the tweet instead of at the beginning. This is important because tweets that start with a handle look like replies or a conversation in progress. While the hope is for replies and conversations, many simply skip over tweets that start with a handle. Optimum visibility is not starting with the @.

C) #Hashtags are the way to search via social media. It shares a thought/trend/news that connects others. The #Discover feature at the top of twitter finds the news you’re looking for. Whether it is a #workout or sharing your Pop-Tarts® #CrazyGoodPB experience, you can find conversations around the #.

The press release did not just stop there. Also included a link enabling readers to connect on Facebook, providing seamless connections on multiple platforms.

Having social-media friendly releases are not difficult to have but imperative in our social-savvy world. Start the conversations by putting your content on social media platforms. Share your news and let your story be heard everywhere it can.

Big thanks to the Kellogg Company for the release we’re nuts over!

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mornings-have-gone-nutty-with-new-pop-tarts-peanut-butter-flavors-207165211.html

Author Emily Nelson is a Customer Content Specialist for PR Newswire. Follow her adventures on www.bellesandawhistle.wordpress.com or on twitter www.twitter.com/emilyannnelson.

It boggles the mind and makes one try to find some sense in it. What does it mean?

Well, it certainly proved the tremendous reliance we all have on the content that comes from Twitter. Some would say investors rely too much on automated trades based on tweets.

It also proved the great value our society places on Twitter as a provider of content and information.

Tweets will now be featured in Yahoo’s news feed.

Yesterday Yahoo announced that it was taking Twitter very seriously indeed.

In her blog, Merissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo stated, “Tweets have become an important information source for many of our users, so we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Twitter to bring Tweets directly into the Yahoo! newsfeed.”

She went on to say that over the next few days users would begin to see Tweets “personalized to their interests and preferences” appear in their content stream, delivering on earlier promises that the search and new aggregation giant would move toward more personalization of content for its users.

[An interesting side note is that the title of Mayer’s blog post “@Yahoo delivers #bestoftheweb” is really not very tweetable. Oops. To start a tweet with a Twitter name is a mistake unless you are talking ‘at’ that person/account. It will not appear as normal tweet.]

Yahoo’s big search competitor, Google wasn’t able to keep its former relationship with the microblogging giant. Twitter results disappeared from Google some time back, making this an quite a win for Yahoo.

But what does this move mean for communicators?

While few details have been revealed, it’s probably safe to assume that Yahoo will feature tweets that are popular, influential and of course meet certain criteria for authenticity and newsworthiness.

As communicators we should be prepared and simply take this as a reminder of some best practices for content creation:

1)  Create share-worthy content with tweetable headlines and by highlighting crunchy, interesting facts in bold font or in bulleted lists.
2)  Cultivate social networks. Build credibility for your content and your brand.
3)  Build relationships with influencers.
4)  Calibrate your team for rapid response to current events.

Perhaps your content will make it to the Yahoo news page along with relevant content from trusted news sources which Yahoo customizes based on user interest.

One thing a fast-moving PR team needs is information. Stay on top of issues and opportunities as news breaks by incorporating MediaVantage into your communications strategy. Learn more about our real-time media monitoring suite.

Victoria Harres is VP, Audience Development & Social Media at PR Newswire, the main voice behind @PRNewswire, social media lead for @Business4Better and a frequent speaker and writer on social media for business. 

Dear Q&A Team,

Now that Facebook Home has been released, I want to understand how it will impact my work as a marketer. Is it worth taking a closer look at? What should I be aware of? I want to make sure I don’t frustrate and annoy our fans with ads. Any advice?

“Home” Run or Loss

_____________________

Dear “Home” Run or Loss,

Here are three ProfNet experts who can address your questions about the impact of Facebook Home on marketers:

What is Facebook Home?

The Google Play store app provides the following description of Facebook Home:

“Facebook Home puts your friends at the heart of your phone. Replace your standard home screen with a steady stream of friends’ posts and photos. Get to apps with one swipe — just drag your profile picture up to open the app launcher. And when you download Facebook Messenger, you can keep chatting with friends when you’re using other apps.”

The app is available for download on various Android devices — including the Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung Galaxy Note II, HTC One X and HTC One X+.

Pros to Using Home

Lorrie Thomas Ross, CEO of Web Marketing Therapy, simply says, “Businesses have to respond to Facebook Home — it’s here. The impact on the Facebook pages of organizations hasn’t been discussed enough. It is a big point for professionals to ponder.”

RJ Bardsley, senior vice president of Racepoint Group, says, “If Home takes off, Facebook marketing campaigns (paid and earned) become a lot more impactful. Home has the potential to turn Facebook from a primarily PC-based experience to a primarily mobile experience. This is important, seeing as PC sales continue to drop (14 percent this quarter according to IDC). If marketers invested in Facebook ads or another type of Facebook presence, they’re in for a treat as these move front and center on people’s mobile devices.”

Ross is also excited with the future potential of Home and says, “In theory, the new mobile app could create more inventory and advertising options, which can help address more monetization of the user base. This can also create more ad options.”

Cons to Using Home

Jacob Chapman, vice president of corporate strategy at Sazze, Inc., thinks Facebook Home will not prove to be an attractive option for most marketers of online businesses. Chapman has found that controlling where his message appears is just as important (if not more important) than controlling the content of the message itself.

“Controlling the ‘where’ provides us with insight into and control over our viewers’ moods and intentions,” he says.

Chapman explains that with most mobile advertising, the advertisement is placed within a certain app or collection of apps: “As the marketer, I know certain things about a viewer and their frame of mind if they open the Words With Friends app, or even if they open the Facebook app. Contrast that with Facebook Home, where all I know is that a person has turned on their mobile phone. This type of passive ad impression is phantom advertising and it is not going to be anywhere near as valuable as an ad that is served to someone who is primed for engagement.”

However, Chapman thinks this issue can be resolved if Home can serve up relevant location-aware advertising, which is advertising that is served to a user based on their proximity to the advertiser’s real-world location.

There are dozens of mobile companies trying to make this model work, but no one has been able to get the formula quite right (e.g., Groupon Now!, MobSav, Scoutmob, etc.), said Chapman. “If Facebook Home goes down this road, they will certainly have the brainpower, scale and financial resources to do it successfully where others have failed.”

How to Prepare for Home

Ross recommends that businesses interested in Facebook Home do the following three things: 1) monitor traffic from Facebook to see if there is more traffic driven to their site from mobile devices; 2) anticipate more ad costs to account for the additional inventory that could develop with the new real estate; 3) develop a strategy for the app experience — management, communications and measurement.

The more the marketplace adopts Facebook Home, the more businesses need to be prepared to monitor it and be present on it, advises Ross.

Bardlsey reiterates the importance of being present. He thinks that for good marketers, it should be all about improving the brand’s visibility by providing more value. “Now that marketers know their audiences will be more mobile, we need to think about how we engage and what value we bring to people on the go.”

Nonetheless, Ross thinks one concern for businesses is how Facebook pages will work on Home: “Will they have new features above and beyond the browser experience, or will experience be compromised with the smaller app screen? That will likely evolve in time.”

How Users Will Respond to Home

There is always initial frustration with ads, but consumers seem to get over the initial frustration fairly quickly, says Chapman.

“I definitely think Facebook will need to be very careful about how many ads they insert into Facebook Home, who they allow to advertise and what format those ads take. Tasteful and relevant sponsored posts can probably be worked in without horrendous backlash, but ads for diet pills would drive people to uninstall Facebook Home in short order,” he explains.

Bardsley agrees with Chapman, saying, “Too much of anything can be bad — and this is especially true in marketing.” He strongly suggests that any marketer focusing a campaign or part of a campaign on Home become familiar with the MMA. It has a great set of guidelines/best practices for mobile marketing.

As far as users staying away from the app due to security/privacy risks, Chapman says, “It isn’t as benign as a native operating system like iOS or Android, but there is nothing inherent in the app that makes it more dangerous than the standard Facebook app.”

However, he still urges users to be particularly aware of their privacy settings, because they will be engaging with the Facebook Home app constantly and passively. “Users may be okay sharing certain data, like their location, when they have to launch an app and take an action to share the data — but it is a different story if Facebook Home is always sharing that data whenever they turn on their phone.”

MEDIAware, PR Newswire’s Audience Research Department newsletter, features recent media news and job changes in the industry. Here is a sampling of this month’s edition:

Fort Lauderdale’s South Florida Sun Sentinel (http://www.sun-sentinel.com) won the prestitgious 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its outstanding series “Above the Law: Speeding Cops”.  The series led to numerous police officers being suspended and one who got fired for his excessive abuse of speed. Investigative Reporter Sally Kestin, Investigative Editor John Dahlburg and Database Editor John Maines were part of an entire team at the Sun Sentinel that worked on this series. You can read the winning series here: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/speeding-cops/

The Denver Post (http://www.denverpost.com) won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News with its coverage of the Aurora Movie Theater mass shooting last year.  The Pulitzer cited the Post’s use of social media, video and the written word in their winning coverage of the story. You can check out their winning coverage here: http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2013-Breaking-News-Reporting

The Alcohol Professor (http://AlcoholProfessor.com) is a new blog about liquor, spirits & ale. It was started by beverage connoisseur Adam Levy (https://twitter.com/AlcoholProfessr) who also founded the New York International Beverage Competitions. The sites main contact is Senior Editor-in-Chief Amanda Schuster (alcoholprofamanda@gmail.com).

Minneapolis’ Star Tribune (http://www.startribune.com) won two 2013 Pulitzer Prizes for Local News and Ediorial Cartooning. Glenn Howatt, Brad Schrade and Jeremy Olson won the Local News Pulitzer for their work on a series about the rise in infant deaths at Minnesota day-care centers. You can read that series here: http://www.startribune.com/local/150283965.html. And Steve Sack won the Editorial Cartooning award. You can view a bunch of his great political cartoons here: http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2013-Editorial-Cartooning

Columnist Daniel Ruth and Editorial Editor Tim Nickens won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for the Tampa Bay Times (http://www.tampabay.com). Their op-ed pieces and columns were a campaign that helped reverse a decision to take fluoridation out of the water system in the area. You can check out pieces of their work here: http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2013-Editorial-Writing

The New York Times has made its own crossover as for the first time ever, they have published an article in Spanish. “A Drug War Informer in No Man’s Land” will go down in NYT history.
You can read it in Spanish here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/us/mexico-dea-fugitive.html or in English here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/us/us-mexico-dea-informant.html?pagewanted=all 

Representing The New York Times in the category of Investigative Journalism, David Barstow (barstow@nytimes.com) and Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab were selected as Pulitzer Prize winners for their year and a half long project which centered on Walmart’s interests in Mexico. The journalists investigated the Multinational Retail Corporation’s use of coercion as a means to gain a competitive advantage in Mexico. Eventually, the exposé led to an investigation by the Justice Department into whether Walmart violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

A series of 10 articles which covered the business practices of Apple and other technology companies, won a group of journalists at The New York Times a Pulitzer Prize in the category of Explanatory Journalism. The series focused on the question of whether or not the United States could be considered a lucrative place for innovators to manufacture new products. Apple’s choice to employ cheaper manufacturers in China, passing over the opportunity to invest in the United States’ turbulent job market, was one example used in the series. The reporters included Keith Bradsher (https://twitter.com/KeithBradsher), David Barboza (barboza@nytimes.com), Charles Duhigg (duhigg@nytimes.com), David Kocieniewski (kocieniewski@nytimes.com), Steve Lohr (lohr@nytimes.com), John Markoff (https://twitter.com/markoff), David Segal, David Streitfeld (https://twitter.com/DavidStreitfeld), Hiroko Tabuchi (https://twitter.com/HirokoTabuchi), and Bill Vlasic (vlasic@nytimes.com).

The Pulitzer Prize in the category of International Reporting was given to David Barboza (https://twitter.com/DavidBarboza2), Shanghai Bureau Chief of The New York Times. Barboza composed a series of articles that focused on the overwhelming wealth which many of China’s top leaders have kept in hiding. According to Barboza, over the span of a year he “pieced together hundreds of names and a web of connections among more than 100 companies found in China’s official financial records.”

Sports Reporter for The New York Times John Branch (https://twitter.com/JohnBranchNYT) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in the category of Feature Writing. Branch composed an article entitled “Snow Fall: the avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” about a fatal avalanche in the Washington Cascades. Branch combined text, online video and graphics to vividly illustrate what took place.

The Pilot newspaper in Southern Pines, N.C. is launching yet another magazine. It already publishes PineStraw and O. Henry. Now it adds Salt magazine to its line-up of cultural publications. As with the other magazines, Jim Dodson will head up Salt as Editor. The free, monthly magazine is scheduled to launch later this month with a distribution of 18,000.

Following up on a Charlotte, N.C. story previously reported on in MEDIAware, the FCC gave final approval on the sale of WYMT-TV and WJYZ-TV to Fox Television. With the ruling, the stations were free to hire more personnel. Lynda Grahl was chosen as VP of Finance and Jay Abbattista was added as VP of Sales. Both report to the previously hired GM Karen Adams. As a result of this purchase by Fox, another local Charlotte station, WCCB-TV, will switch affiliations from Fox to the CW this summer.

There have been two personnel changes at the Cooking Channel and Food Network. VP of Digital for Emerging Brands Mark Levine (mlevine@scrippsnetworks.com) has been promoted to VP of Programming and Multiplatform. And new to the stations is Todd Weiser, who was hired as VP of Programming and Development. He arrives from Animal Planet, where he was previously Director of Development.

After 21 years in print, The Rhinocerous Times (http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com) is now an endangered species. The publication originally had two editions: Greensboro and Charlotte. It folded the Charlotte edition back in 2008. Now with a growing debt, the Greensboro edition is closing as well. The website will remain but for how long is not known.

Culture Critic Philip Kendicott of The Washington Post won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In one of the articles submitted for the award Philip examined the use of controversial photographs in the media. You can read the piece here: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-27/entertainment/36016736_1_images-subway-track-pleasure

Aereo (https://www.aereo.com)has been hit with a copyright lawsuit by almost every major network trying to prevent Aereo from creating a free streaming of their content. This is something to keep an eye on, as it can change the way networks will distribute its content if Aereo wins the case.

KSL-TV, the Salt Lake City NBC affiliate, has announced on its Facebook page as well as its website that it will no longer air episodes of the network series “Hannibal.” This decision was made due to the extensive graphic nature of this show. The time slot will be replaced with a special edition of KSL 5 News at 9 pm. “Hannibal” is a TV show about serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a literary character created by author Thomas Harris and initially made famous by the movie “The Silence of the Lambs.”

KMOV-TV in St.Louis won the 2012 Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. Craig Cheatham and Jim Thomas won in the category of “Ware Zone: The Destruction of an All-American City.” Read more at http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/kmov-wfaa-win-ire-awards_b86802

Mike Herrera, Long-time New Orleans broadcaster, passed on April 6 at the age of 66. Herrera who for the last five years served as an engineer at WWL-TV previously worked as a staff announcer, Weathercaster and Producer/Director at WVUE-TV for more than four decades.

William Glaberson says farewell to The New York Times. His 25-year career at the newspaper came to a halt on April 26th. He most recently served as Court Reporter, throughout these 25 years he covered Guantanamo Bay and the Crown-Heights trail.

Highly respected Chicago Sun-Times Movie Critic Roger Ebert has passed away. Over the course of his expansive career, Ebert hosted various television programs such as “Sneak Previews”, “At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert”, “Siskel and Ebert and The Movies”, alongside Gene Siskel, and the series “Ebert & Roeper & the Movies”. He also produced his most recent show, “Ebert Presents: At the Movies”. Ebert was an author of more than 20 books and won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Nils Larsen has stepped down as CEO at the Tribune Company. He managed Tribune local stations, WGN America and WGN Radio. Jonathan Wax has been named Senior Vice President of scripted programming for WGN America. Wax currently serves as Vice President of drama development at Twentieth Century Fox, Inc.

Edible Milwaukee, a new magazine set to launch its May issue, will focus on the production, distribution and consumption of food in the greater Milwaukee area. The magazine reaches out to the local and regional food consumers and buyers who are zealous about food quality. Jen Ede will serve as Publisher and Editor for the quarterly. You may reach her at jen@ediblemilwaukee.com or http://ediblemilwaukee.com.

You can view the whole May issue of MEDIAware here: http://www.prnewswire.com/knowledge-center/mediaware/

And all of the Regional Updates here: http://www.prnewswire.com/knowledge-center/mediaware/May-2013-Updates-By-Region.html

You can also follow all of the latest media moves and news from PR Newswire’s Audience Research Department on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/PRNmedia

First, a little background.  When we’re talking about web site user experience, we’re referring to all the different aspects of content, structure and navigation that enable a site visitor to do the things he or she wants to do, whether that means reading a white paper, registering for an event, browsing information or purchasing things.  Poor UXD means that something on the site prevents the visitor from doing what he or she intended to do.

This blog post was actually inspired by a press release I reviewed for a client last week.  It was long, wandering from topic to topic.    It tried to tell the story of a new product along with the story of the product pipeline as well as the story of a successful acquisition.  It tried to achieve too much, and as I read through it, I really wanted to stop reading.  And that is exactly what we don’t want our readers to do.

As we’re drafting press releases, we should be thinking about what exactly we want our readers to do, and then structure the content accordingly.  But how do we design press releases (and other content, for that matter) to encourage readers to move forward, to the outcome we want them to take?  Here are a few ideas.

1.  Identify the specific outcome you want your primary audience to take.  In most cases, you’ll want other constituents to read the story, too. But trying to serve all audiences in one message is tough to do.  Focus the content on one audience, and one outcome, such as getting industry media and bloggers to write a particular story, generating social shares of an image or getting readers to click on a specific link.
2. Focus the content of every paragraph on leading the reader to that outcome.  If your writing starts to veer from the path, so will your reader.  Stay focused on the key message.   Other messages will need their own separate vehicles, whether that means another press release or something else, such as a blog post or inclusion in a customer newsletter.
3. Structure the content to enable the reader to get to the desired outcome.  It’s important to assume that most readers do not read all the way through a piece of content, unless it is meeting their needs and hooking their interest every single step of the way.  This means that in addition to keeping the message focused, you need to put links where people will click them – such as right after the first paragraph, rather than at the very end of the copy where they could be easily overlooked.   Weave links and access to supporting information throughout the content.

As writers, we need to think first about what our readers want to read and accomplish, rather than what messages our organizations want to convey.   Press releases should march the reader straight to the key points of the story and wrap up with an inevitable conclusion.  Just as marketers strive to prevent their sales funnels from leaking, and webmasters focus on increasing the time visitors spend on the site, writers need to be thinking about maintaining reader attention as they author content.

 Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .