Four Things You Should Consider When Comparing Media Monitoring Services (Plus a Digital Media Pop Quiz!)

Let’s face it – what all PR pros want from their media monitoring service is reliable retrieval of the news. There are several key elements that must be present in order to make that a reality. It all starts with content.

The importance of editing, as we discussed in our last newsletter, is essential if you want to avoid irrelevant articles, but common sense tells you that sources must first be read before any articles of yours will be found.

Consider the Source

What to look for in a source list, is dependent upon your needs. Start by closely evaluating both the content and the reach of your media monitoring service and make sure you understand the scope of the search.

Here are four components of a source list to consider:

Print Sources – Daily and non-daily newspapers; consumer and trade journals and magazines; newsletters and college publications all fall within this category. The kind of news you are generating for your organization will determine the publications that are of critical interest to you. Many of our clients work with organizations in many different industries and as such require robust and varied reading lists. They are pleased to learn that our industry-specific lists include all of their relevant sources. Clients are also interested to discover that BurrellesLuce is now reading Spanish language publications.

Electronic Sources and Social Media – More than ever before, the news that is posted to electronic publications and reflections that are noted in blog entries, as well as conversations that take place in chat rooms and other Web forums are a necessary dimension of your monitoring landscape.

BurrellesLuce began monitoring the electronic world of news when digital media first took hold and we have kept steady pace with its growth. Unless clients ask us to exclude electronic news, we are searching for their keywords in over 60,000 sources and forums and more than 50 million blogs.

Broadcast Sources – TV, cable and radio news programming has grown dramatically (especially when one realizes that television began with three major networks not too long ago) and if your news stories air anywhere, you’ll want to know about it. Do you need digital format or is it enough to get the transcript? BurrellesLuce provides both.

Geographic Coverage – Knowing the reach of your message will give you what you need to determine how far your monitoring efforts must extend. Clients of ours limit their reading instructions to as small an area as a city sometimes. More often they look for a much broader scope of monitoring and are pleased to find that we monitor news sources throughout the world and, thanks to arrangements that we have with other foreign press clipping bureaus, we are capable of retrieving their print coverage from around the globe as well.

Take the Digital Media Pop Quiz!

Many people are surprised to learn a few basic facts about how the world of print news relates to the digital world. Take this digital media pop quiz and see how you do. You'll find the answers - and some insight - below.

• True or False: The print version of a daily newspaper posts the same news in its electronic version.


• True or False: There is only one electronic version of each newspaper.


• True or False: To access all the news, I need to be a paid subscriber to the newspaper.


• True or False: If you use common search engines, you’ll find all of your electronic coverage.

• The print version of a daily newspaper posts the same news in its electronic version.

This is absolutely false. The electronic version of a newspaper has many levels. The one that is available to anyone who visits the newspaper’s Web site often carries many more syndicated articles than the print publication and omits much of the content found in the print version. Other electronic versions are accessible only to registered users or paid subscribers.



• There is only one electronic version of each newspaper.

False. A newspaper has many versions. Visitors to a newspaper’s Web site will see one version in which the content changes throughout the day. Another layer of the news is accessible only to registered users. One must usually be a paid subscriber to access content that is identical to the newspaper’s printed edition.

• To access all the news, I need to be a paid subscriber to the newspaper.

True. It is as simple as that. If you want to access all of the news, you must subscribe to the publication itself. BurrellesLuce is a paid subscriber to all of the newspapers it monitors and as such is able to monitor every level of news found on the Web.



• If you use common search engines, you’ll find all of your electronic coverage.

False. Not without a paid subscription to all of those print publications you won’t. But what you will get for sure is lots and lots of irrelevant hits and redundant articles.

Learn the truth about search engines.