Nicholas D. Allen

from Knight Digital Media Center Online Journalism Review, via Romenesko

E-mail remains a great way to communicate with readers who prefer that medium. Many readers love to get regular updates on what is available on a website, so that they can keep in touch no matter whether they’re able to check the site on their own or not. And e-mail’s also an excellent choice to let readers know about enterprise stories or other exclusives that the news organization is breaking.

But doing as Buttry described, and sending a “breaking news alert” hours after everyone from Helsinki to Honolulu has been tweeting the news just embarrasses the news organization. There’s no better way to reinforce the message, “Hi, just to remind you: We’re clueless and slow!”

More broadly, news is all about putting you in-touch with the world.  If you look out of touch with how people use technology, it sends a bad message about your news brand.

This is also why links are so important.  Links in some case literaly put people in touch with the news.  Failing to link is incredibly destructive to media brands.  Failure to recognize this will destroy news outlets.