And does it matter when it works so well?

So this is not a mindblowingly new idea, but we’ve started to provide press kit-like functionality to some of the releases on the Media Relations blog.

What do these releases look like? Well, they’re sort of like a normal physical world press kit. It’s focussed on a particular initiative, project, or person, and it brings together multiple resources useful to a reporter writing a story. So rather than Robin sending a reporter multiple links via email to background sources, she can send one link out to the online press kit, which nicely encapsulates resources for the story.

The Biodiesel kit, for example, combines the coverage we’ve received so far into an easy to scan format, and serves to highlight the great coverage we’ve already gotten on the biodiesel project: scanning down the coverage section you see that this is no small story. Additionally, some primary resources, like the 53 minute presentation the students gave on the project, are made available, as is the contact information for key people on the project. This two minute video describes how it’s structured (turn up your audio):

If you’ve spotted the fact that this is not that different from dialing up the web elements on a web-based press release, well, you’re sharp. It’s not. But it’s one more way we’re trying to reduce barriers to turning a great story we know about to a great story the world knows about.