42% of Journalists and Bloggers Report Using More Multimedia

As we prepared for the changes to PR Newswire for Journalists this week, we asked media professionals via LinkedIn and Twitter how their news content has evolved.

Half of the poll’s respondents indicated the biggest change has been an increased focus on a story’s popularity over news value. The second largest shift was in the importance of visual storytelling.

Forty-two percent of respondents indicated their outlets are using more images, videos, and other multimedia formats.

Given what we saw on many year-end “best of journalism” lists, we weren’t surprised by this response. Josh Stearns’ Best Online Storytelling and Journalism of 2013 highlighted pieces such as The New York Times’ Invisible Child and ProPublica’s Use Only As Directed which intertwined photography, videos, data visualization, and writing to tell more immersive stories.

Visual storytelling like The Guardian’s Firestorm connects with audiences and encourages participation in a way previous reporting couldn’t. Writer Jon Henley collaborated with a team of editors and designers to delve into the story behind a photo of a family caught in a bushfire. Through video interviews and images from before, during, and after the Tasmanian fire, audiences could better understand the fire’s devastation and the politics of rebuilding.

Now more than ever, images and videos are an essential part of every journalist and blogger’s toolbox. Many reporters are expected to produce or find visuals for their stories, and sites like The Multimedia Journalist and Poynter offer best practices and examples for those looking to broaden their expertise.

User-generated content and multimedia from non-news organizations also are becoming more prevalent in stories.

At PR Newswire, we frequently counsel organizations on how to make visuals more useful for media outlets by keeping branding and promotion in check and adopting the audience’s point of view when creating this content.

PR Newswire’s multimedia gallery always has been available for free to registered members of PR Newswire for Journalists, providing access to tens of thousands of images.

Like the rest of the site, our multimedia gallery has undergone improvements so that now it’s easier to:

• Search by keyword or topic categories for multimedia relevant to your story
• Quickly verify the content’s source and press contact information
• Download multimedia for use in a story or share via social media

You can browse images by logging onto PR Newswire for Journalists and clicking the Multimedia tab at the top of the site.

The display of our most recent multimedia is now fully responsive to the device you are on. The previous archive’s pagination also has been replaced by a scrolling navigation.

The gallery’s Advanced Search menu allows you to search for multimedia by geography, industry, date, and keywords in the caption.

When you click on an image’s thumbnail, you’ll find even more information about the photo than on our previous archive, as well as immediate access to related images and the ability to share the multimedia to your social networks.

Download event photos, company logos, product images, executive headshots, infographics, and more on PR Newswire for Journalists. Email us at [email protected] if you need help or have any questions about the multimedia gallery.

Amanda Hicken is a media relations manager at PR Newswire.  Follow her at @ADHicken where she tweets about the media, comic books, and her love of Cleveland, Ohio.