When people look for news online, they want the latest update. The 24-hour news cycle is dead. Welcome to the instant news cycle, when people hit reload on their browser to find the latest update to whatever is happening in the Middle East or Hollywood or NFL draft-day news.
People don't read the morning paper, then wait until tomorrow to find out more. It's the age of instant news.
That's why news aggregators are becoming so important. Sites like google news and Huffington Post collect the latest news from around the world and update it in real time.
And now these news aggregators are starting to use their growing audiences and ad revenues to muscle into the news gathering business themselves.
How should public relations pros deal with all these new outlets for news?
Do you give preference to traditional reporters differently than all these new outlets, many of which use unpaid bloggers who don't have a journalism background? It makes sense to pay more attention to established reporters and media outlets.
However, putting that idea into practice is tougher than it sounds. Most press releases get put into the slush pile. Traditional media outlets drown in them.
New bloggers and online reporters, on the other hand, aren't swimming in press releases. They're usually calling up trying to get on distribution lists, to get access to public figures that mainstream reporters take for granted.
There aren't hard-and-fast rules for dealing with news aggregators. Some are fly-by-night operations. Others are one-person shops that have turned into internet behemoths -- think the Drudge Report, Andrew Sullivan's blog and sites like Fark, which don't sound like serious sources of news -- but get millions of hits every month.
With mainstream media, you can treat sources roughly the same. A newspaper is a newspaper. A news radio station in Seattle isn't that different than one in San Francisco.
These news aggregators are quite different.
Some are quite popular and national, or international. Others are hyper-local. Many have a non-journalistic bent, happily taking strong stands and opinions rather than the traditional journalistic objectivity.
It's hard to say whether a newly hatched news aggregator will become the next sensation, grow into medium-sized respectability or sit in a little-known corner of the web in obscurity.
Giving access, even if it's putting your client or boss on the phone with these new outlets, poses great rewards and risks.
Great rewards because these new media outlets will likely be more responsive and publish stories. Great risks because you don't know how they'll handle things compared to mainstream reporters.
Will they know what you mean when you say something is not for attribution, off the record or on background? Will they do a straight news interview that they turn into a heated opinion piece?
You can't predict what will happen with these new outlets, or treat them as a group. But they are coming. They are getting audiences. And they can't be ignored.