Nearly every media outlet has made the move to online editorial content. Sure, that makes sense; the web and today’s search engine capabilities make the Internet THE source of information today. If you want to read up on “Cloud Computing” for example, you no longer flip through the pages of every tech or business magazine that you subscribe to. Instead, you’d typically start with a web-based search.
Some publications like eWEEK have made clearer distinctions between online and print content. Others under the IDG network have specific online versus print editors. And then there are newspapers. Chris O’Brien, business reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, has been open about how there is very little overlap in their online versus print readership—some drawing a correlation between Generation X and Generation Y. If it’s a generational trend, don’t you wonder what the media landscape will look like when readership is predominantly made up of millennials?
In case you missed it, Fortune is taking a new spin and testing the digital media waters with a start-up called FLYP Media. Taking storytelling to a different level, select Fortune stories are being developed into multimedia features that combine text, video, audio, animation, and interactivity. "The idea isn’t just to write a story and then add a video or an audio piece…it’s to really figure out the best way to conceptualize these stories as multimedia pieces,” says senior editor, Matthew Schaeffer at FLYP.
It’s been interesting to see how different publishers are approaching, adapting, and evolving editorial content based on Internet trends. Changes in new media can present some interesting challenges in PR, but I think we’ll also find they present some exciting opportunities. The key is to not blur the lines between journalism and advertising. Strategic PR still relies on the basics: being creative, building relationships and not losing sight of what makes a story newsworthy.
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