Building the brand newsroom of the future

One thing I miss about working in a newsroom is the squawk of the police scanner, the banter of the photographers and the mad scramble on deadline to get breaking news onto the front page of the newspaper.

By contrast, a media relations agency can seem tame and one-dimensional. Some days lack an immediacy of a newsroom where a complete newspaper had to go out the door each day, replete with photography, design, editing and writing.

I have noticed something the longer I work in media relations. While newspapers are going through their own painful transition, media relations companies are morphing into a strikingly similar version of a media newsroom. I have seen a steady transition from pitching and press release writing to multimedia brand journalism, which requires something similar to the old newsroom of yore. It’s becoming the media relations newsroom of the future.

The magic of a newsroom is the eclectic mix of talents and personalities confined to one small space. When a newsroom is humming along, over-organized designers grumble about often-late photographers, reporters work the phones and sweat through deadline, and copy editors comb through each phrase and fact.