Rick Dunham, the Hearst Washington Bureau Chief, recently created a highly useful list of ten mistakes reporters make when using polls.  This list covers everything from misunderstanding basic statistics, to question bias, to improperly comparing similar, but not identical, questions.  I highly recommend a read of this list, as it should help prevent common mistakes involving coverage of polls in the future.

Rick Dunham's Read more…

Increasingly, the mainstream media monitors the social media for story ideas, information that might not be obtained from any other source and trends. Of course, non-profits also use social media to "push" their stories out onto the mainstream. On Thursday, April 12th the Thompson Reuters news service is sponsoring a free webinar on "How Journalists Use Social Media To Uncover Today's Stories." Read more…

Increasingly, the mainstream media monitors the social media for story ideas, information that might not be obtained from any other source and trends. Of course, non-profits also use social media to "push" their stories out onto the mainstream. On Thursday, April 12th the Thompson Reuters news service is sponsoring a free webinar on "How Journalists Use Social Media To Uncover Today's Stories." Read more…

If you've ever struggled to create content for your blog, Facebook page or Twitter feed, you're not alone. But there are simple steps to overcome writer's block and write good content promoting your organization's messages.

Nonprofit marketing expert Kivi Leroux Miller offers seven ways to come up with your next post or article. Click here to read her article. 

Vocus, a provider of on-demand software for public relations management, has released the State of the Media Report 2011. The report covers the four traditional media segments including newspapers, magazines, television and radio, and finds that the media industry has revived in the last 12 months and it continues to experiment with new digital and mobile distribution models. Read more…

When implementing a social media plan, it's important to evaluate your results and see what impact you have had. There are several tools available to measure social media outcomes. Some useful tools include: Read more…

Americans are spending more time with the news than over much of the past decade. Digital platforms are playing a larger role in news consumption, and they seem to be more than making up for modest declines in the audience for traditional platforms. As a result, the average time Americans spend with the news on a given day is as high as it was in the mid-1990s, when audiences for traditional news sources were much larger. Read more…

The 2010 AP Stylebook is available as a printed spiral-bound book, a fully searchable online version and as a mobile application for your smart phone.

Updated every year, the 2010 edition includes the addition of Great Recession, tea party and The Conference Board. The new Stylebook features a social media section with terms like app, smart phone, Blu-ray and metadata. Read more…

Many organizations are in such a rush to create an online presence that they create social media profiles without a strategy behind them.

Steve Richards of E-consultancy writes why that underlying strategy is essential, and how to create one.

Read his article to find out why social media should be treated similarly to traditional marketing efforts and how to target your efforts.