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At a recent Boston-area PR/media event, one of the reporters mentioned that they really like the newfangled Social Media News Releases.  That's heartening to hear.  While one of the major goals of a SMNR is to increase news distribution into the blogosphere, it's never been anyone's intent to bypass traditional media: all SMNR advocates have been crossing their fingers that the "new" press release will, as hoped, make life easier for journalists and be embraced.

The reporter's comment led me to wonder about other journalists' reactions to the dawning standard (above and beyond Mr. Foremski's own advocacy).  If I could turn the tables on a number of respected journalists and ask them a few questions, here are a few that come to mind...

• "Why might a social media news release make life easier/harder for a journalist?"
• "What aspects of a SMNR are most/least useful to a journalist?"
• "Would a journalist like/dislike the inclusion of del.icio.us links to outside data sources and articles, to facilitate research (or would they view it as an attempt to subvert their own research)?"
• "Would a journalist be inclined to add an RSS feed specific to industry issues vs. company-specific news feeds?"
• "How much/often are you using Technorati and/or memetrackers like Tailrank or PopURL, to look into trends bubbling up in CGM?"
• "Are you using social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us to save story ideas and research notes?"
• "Digg: budding competitor, or, story idea generator?"
• "How would you feel if you rejected a story idea based on a news release, but subsequently saw that it had been 'digg'd' hundreds of times?  Would it make you more/less likely to reconsider your decision to write a story?"

If you are a journalist, or are friendly-enough with a kindly reporter to send these questions along, I'd love to hear some responses.

In other news, I was interviewed recently by Farrell Kramer of the "Talking Communications" podcast.  If you're looking for a basic primer on the "what's" and "why's" of SMNRs, have a listen.

Tags: hrelease, social+media, social+media+news+release, social+media+release, pr+2.0, public+relations, farrell+kramer