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In The News

August 5, 2002

Get 'Em While They're Hot

New Daybook helps PR Pros Think Like Editors, Antcipate Timely News

If you haven't worked in a newsroom, it's hard to understand-or replicate-the crystal-ball-gazing process of guessing what will be hot news a week, a month, or six months from now. AScribe (www.ascribe.org), a newswire service for the nonprofit world, is hoping to make it easier for PR people to get inside the heads of forward-thinking editors.

AScribe's AdvanceEdition, a twice-monthly daybook-style newsletter launched earlier this year, provides PR people with leads and ideas about what's gripping the media. (The cost is $240 per year for AScribe members, $500 per year for nonmembers.)

"The PR world has diverged so much from the newsroom," says Ron Wolf, vice president and CFO of AScribe, and a former reporter for The (San Jose) Mercury News and the Philadelphia Inquirer. "There are very few people in an agency who've ever set foot in a newsroom."

Without that newsroom seasoning, Wolf says, it's tough to train yourself to think far into the future. "We'd noticed that public information people didn't anticipate the news nearly as well as editors did," Wolf explains. "So they'd chronically miss the boat."

AdvanceEdition supplies the skinny on stories that are just beginning to come up on the media's radar, timely events that might trigger coverage and long-simmering stories that are still getting the media's attention. Wolf says the newsletter is compiled by monitoring media wire services and a wide variety of news sources.

Each issue of AdvanceEdition includes Emerging Issues, Key Dates & Events, Timely Topics, and Continuing Coverage. Here's a rundown on the stories the AScribe staff thinks will have staying power throughout the summer:

• FBI on campus. Expect to see renewed attention to one of the big stories of the 1960s and '70s: the secret activities of the FBI on the nation's campuses. "The re-examination has been touched off by a blockbuster report in the San Francisco Chronicle [in mid-June]. Investigative reporter Seth Rosenfeld labored for the last 17 years to get FBI records of the agency's activity at the University of California during the era of the Free Speech Movement É. Investigative reporters around the country form a loose fraternity. The Internet has made it easy for them to monitor the work of their colleagues and to exchange tips. Rosenfeld's work will cause other reporters to ask what else was Hoover doing at other universities."

• Defending the FOIA. Access to government records is being restricted at a frightening rate as the nation seeks to bolster domestic security, AdvanceEdition reports. "Every day there are new reports of local, state and federal officials refusing to grant the public and the press access to documents that had previously been open for inspection," according to the daybook. "There will be many opportunities in the months ahead for experts in law, journalism, civil rights, privacy and security to provide comment on individual case and the overall campaign to defend the Freedom of Information Act."

• Nursing shortage. "The toughest stories for the media to cover are those that involve a slow-motion crisis," the daybook reports. "The nursing shortage is just such a crisis. The facts are compelling: There are about 126,000 nursing jobs unfilled in the United States, or about 12 percent of capacity, according to the American Hospital Association. We think the media will be receptive to more stories on how providers of health care are coping with the shortage. One good way to get coverage is to identify those milestone events that can dramatize the extent of the crisis."

• The next generation of reality TV. Survivor and Big Brother triggered an onslaught of "reality TV" programming a couple of years ago. "This genre seemed to lose some of its appeal after the events of Sept. 11," AdvanceEdition reports. "With the recent popularity of shows such as The Bachelor and The Osbournes, reality TV appears to be experiencing a rebirth. Psychologists and sociologists, as well as specialists in pop culture and the media, can have a field day explaining what the newer forms of reality TV say about celebrities, media, privacy and the role of TV."

• Terrorism insurance: "Mention the subject of property and casualty insurance and you're not likely to make heads turn - until you mention the sums that may be at stake," AdvanceEdition reports. "Measured by that yardstick, one of biggest business stories around is the state of the P&C insurance industry and its customers in the wake of Sept. 11. Insured losses have not been calculated, but Fortune reports the total may be between $30 billion and $70 billion in commercial property."

• Vaccine shortage: In mid-June, the Senate Government Affairs Committee held a hearing on the monthslong severe shortage of childhood vaccines. "It now appears that many students will be entering high school this fall without receiving a standard tetanus-diphtheria booster shot," AdvanceEdition reports.

For more information on AdvanceEdition, go to http://www.ascribe.org:2201/AdvanceEdition/about.html.