AgNewsWire.AgWired.com vs. NFBS?

Chuck Zimmerman

I’m often asked what the difference is between our AgNewsWire.AgWired.com service and the NAFB member service called NFBS. Then today I received an email from a client of ours that contained a report from the NFBS showing which NAFB members (by name and company) downloaded their audio files. This client wondered if we could provide the same information. The short answer is “no.”

Since we started our AgNewsWire.AgWired.com/Talking News Release service we have viewed the download identity of the journalists we email news releases to as confidential. To start with, we polled several journalists for their opinion and were told that if we ever identified them personally to our client and they found out it would be the last time they ever used releases sent by us. No other newswire service I know of reports this either. Additionally, although I understand why companies and organizations want to know who downloaded their release or any multi-media files that are included, there’s a danger to the journalist of that information being used to reward or punish their station, magazine or website.

So, there’s one difference between our service and NAFB’s member service. We will supply our client with the number of times an audio file, picture file or release document is downloaded. That doesn’t violate anyone’s privacy. Also, after trying to measure opens/click thru’s with our current system we’re moving to a new system that promises to do this efficiently for us.

Some other differences between the two services include; the fact that we individually email news releases to the inbox of the journalists on our list; the fact that we email to NAFB members as well as other broadcasters who aren’t members; the fact that we also email to a comprehensive list of publication and online editors which our clients have helped us develop; the fact that we post all releases to AgNewsWire.AgWired.com.com, a highly search engine-optimized website where they are archived for future retrieval and publicly available; the fact that we distribute more than just text and audio (images, video, etc.).

I hope this helps answer this question. I’ve been asked it several times just in the last week so I guess it’s part of that fall public relations planning process.

By the way, our AgNewsWire.AgWired.com.com site is about to undergo a facelift just like AgWired did a couple weeks ago. I hope you like it when it’s done.

Media, NAFB