Dagens Nyheter has signed an agreement with Newsdesk where the paper is paying Newsdesk to “manage all distribution of press information to Dagens Nyheter’s all news desks, editors and reporters”. Metro has signed a similar agreement, according to Resumé.
– We will sort the material in a relevant way for DN, says Kristofer Björkman at Newsdesk.
In a sales letter from DN and Newsdesk, press contacts are asked to send all press releases to a central email address at Newsdesk, but Newsdesk clarifies in an interview that it is still an acceptable procedure to send press releases directly to journalists.
I can understand that individual journalists might need help in filtering the flood of emails that are being sent to them, but I have some doubts as to whether this is the right method. But maybe I have completely misunderstood the purpose of this agreement?
Having worked almost a decade in PR I can tell that press releases rarely get picked up by journalists you have absolutely no relation to. What will happen is that PR practitioners will add the central address to their mailing lists and still continue to send press releases to their regular journalist contacts. PR people don’t want another layer between themselves and their audience. It is “bad enough” with having journalists as gatekeepers. Now the gatekeeper hires a gatekeeper? I’m not so sure. I prefer to look in the opposite direction by experimenting with a direct dialogue with the target audience as a complement, via blogs and RSS for corporate information.