In an age of “instant news”, schools will need to respond in minutes, not hours or days to events that have, or will create media interest.
In the past, schools have responded to or reacted to events rather than having been proactive by shooting, editing, and posting their own news stories before media inquiries begin.
By reacting to news, schools have traditionally been playing ‘catch up’, rather than being the prime source for credible news in fast moving events. One only has to look at the recent past to see how devastating being simply reactive can be. Recent studies suggest that 92% of all media stories during the first hours of a crisis event contain major factual errors. Schools involved in those crises spend countless hours correcting the media’s erroneous reports, and more hours trying to field questions that easily could have been answered factually by the school district beforehand.
There is a true need for clear, concise, correct, conversational, and complete reporting from schools, not only during critical times, but in cases where the public simply needs to know about certain initiatives, programs, or events. This kind of reporting can and should come directly from the school district, edited for the media, and placed on a web-based platform for media access.
Further, most people today received their news within minutes during a crisis, not from networks or their local affiliates, but through social media internet connections. The news media itself, not only looks for video clips on the internet, but they also actively solicit the same, and update their regular broadcasts with their own webcasts.
The media, the way people receive their news, and perhaps most importantly, the way school districts deliver their news is rapidly changing. The day of the “news release”, which may take hours if not days to clear through channels, or faxing information to media outlets is over. If school districts truly want to see an accurate portrayal of events on the evening news, with facts and context instead of speculation, they must actively become engaged in producing their own “news” and make it available to all media outlets on their websites, within minutes of any event.
