Newsmaster Flash

In the world of PR, we generally want to feel like we are Master of the News.

Not in an arrogant, "Masters of the Universe" sense.  Despite popular opinions about PR, most of the people in the field that I know don’t harbor illusions that we can shape or control the tide of news in any large way.

Yet we want to have some sense of being aware and in control – being on top of what is happening in the marketplace of news and ideas, instead of the other way around.

This is no small task, and is becoming harder and harder, with the proliferation of news, opinion and chatter, both online and off.

The communications battles will increasingly be dominated by those who are most adept at corralling and making sense of the fire hose of information – winnowing what is important from the noise, spotting groundswells of debate, and tuning in and listening to the influencers and dialogs that count the most.

Being a Master of the News also means acquiring newsmastering skills and tools (collaboration expert Robin Good has written extensively on this topic) .   In this context, this means being able to mix, rip, burn and repurpose the news of the day for reporting, analysis, and PR tracking and planning.  The "repurpose" part of the equation  means being able to publish news (generally harvested via RSS feeds, and provided as a headline, abstract and link back to the original site and story) in a variety of formats – email, html, etc. – for a variety of purposes.

This series will describe the tools that are out there to help you become a Master of the News.

I will start out by taking a look at RSS, a technology that is changing and improving the info consumption habits of news junkies everywhere.

I will of course cover search and its various flavors – persistent, full text, blog vs. Web searching.

I will also explore so-called meme trackers, the sites that purport to take over the heavy lifting of spotting the hot emerging stories and industry buzz.

The series will finish with a spotlight on newsmastering solutions: software that can turn you into a veritable mixing, burning, mashing, pulping, pureeing, shaking, stirring Newsmaster Flash.