Head of News, Deborah Harries, responds to the news that www.birminghamnewsroom.com won the Digital Innovation Award at The Midlands Media Awards 2010.
Hangovers aside, Birmingham City Council’s press office is pretty chuffed today after winning a gong at The Birmingham Press Club’s annual awards’ dinner last night – for this very site.
birminghamnewsroom.com was up against a handful of entries in the ‘Digital Innovation Award’, which is a new category in its second year at the Midlands Media Awards.
Congratulations also go to the other 19 winners, of categories ranging from TV/Radio Journalist of the Year to Headline of the Year, at the ninth awards run by the world’s oldest press club.
Press officers Shahid Naqvi, Hayley Meachin and Belinder Lidher took on the tough job of donning their glad rags and attending the dinner to see if a short listing would turn into a win. And a little after 11pm I received an amazingly sober and ungarbled text to say that we had.
So congratulations to the whole team, who have worked hard in the last year to develop and maintain an online news site to more effectively manage Birmingham City Council’s news.
Thanks go to both Geoff Coleman and Dalbir Thind who built the site for less than £150! And also to press officers Shahid, Hayley, Belinder, Simon Houltby and Kris Kowalewski who have quickly learned new skills to upload copy and images to the site, which now carries around 1500 stories.
However, welcome as this accolade is – and we have been short listed for two other national, local government and public relations awards – we didn’t launch this website to win awards. The main reason for developing birminghamnewsroom.com was to move Birmingham City Council’s press office into the 21st Century.
We soft launched the newsroom at the end of June last year, and as I say the aim was to manage our news more effectively, and this package of social media tools is helping us to get the council’s messages across in a variety of different ways and to a wider audience.
The way news is accessed and delivered has changed dramatically in recent years. For example, though the traditional news release has a part to play, social media will eventually kill it off.
Responding to the changing media world we use a number of social media tools including: Twitter – more than 1,300 followers; YouTube – 95 videos uploaded with over 19,500 views; Flickr – 764 photographs uploaded, with users adding their own contributions.
We’ve also used Google Maps and experimented with live blogging platform, CoveritLive, at the general and local elections last week. The website provides me and the press officers with a much more dynamic tool to issue news and rebut inaccurate stories.
But we all like a bit of recognition, and a pat on the back from time to time doesn’t go amiss. So thanks to the judges at the Midlands Media Awards.
Now we have to look at ways to continue developing the site – any ideas?
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