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Newspapers, Radio, Blogs: Nobody Quoted Me, But That's OK
I have recently participated as a speaker at several press events: a traditional press conference with newspaper reporters; a recorded over-the-telephone radio interview; and a call-in event for bloggers. While my role was to provide background on higher profile guests, it was educational this time around to be a speaker rather than an organizer.
The topic was similar in all cases -- specific cases of entrepreneurship and environmental action around the world. The results, and in particular the online results, have been interestingly distinct.
The traditional press conference resulted in three reporters contacting me afterwards, and inviting feedback on the stories they were writing. Two of these were subsequently published online -- and to my surprise, in more than one venue, such as this one from Voice of America. In addition, two bloggers showed up and took advantage of the in-person venue to record a short video interview which they published same-day.
The radio interviews were split up into four pieces, but we cannot access these since they will not be posted online until all have aired on the radio -- and we don't know when that will be since the radio station is using them as "filler" when needed.
The call-in blogging event, in which 15 pre-invited bloggers listened and emailed in questions for real-time answers, produced coverage in at least three blogs, such as Social Earth. Sending out a recording of this event, via MP3, was clearly a good idea. One blogger's cell phone battery died in the middle of the call, but she was later able to weave the rest of the story together by listening to the sound file. Another was attending the Global Philanthropy Forum that day but listened to the sound file later, and then blogged about it in Philanthropy 2173.
All the coverage is great to see, of course. In particular, the coverage from the traditional press conference helps me show broad-based interest in the work, while the blogger-event content most directly reached my priority audiences, because particular bloggers were invited in advance.
