We recently had a chance to sit down and discuss press releases with two high-profile bloggers — Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher and John Biggs of CrunchGear.  Here are a few things we learned:

First, guess what folks? In spite of all the rhetoric out there, these bloggers like press releases. John Biggs noted that press releases are the first source they go to when searching for stories. “As soon as I get one I will basically use it as a jumping off point for a post or something.  They’re basically like our little peanuts in the Cracker Jack in the early morning so we don’t have to go out searching for stories.”

We asked them if it bothers them when they receive press releases from people they don't know. “No it doesn’t,” said Foremski.  “We get this all the time. So, it’s not a problem at all.” He noted that bloggers who don’t have a media background are more likely to get “bent out of shape” but suspects that they’ll soon get used to it.  Biggs replied, “We don’t specifically mind being inundated.  What we do mind is getting a press release maybe 12 hours after it’s been announced somewhere else.” Biggs noted that ideally people would shoot him an email and confirm that he wanted future releases.

Not surprisingly, they want their releases via email. Per Foremski, “We live in an on-line world.  We live in a digital world.  I don’t think there’s room for anything other than an electronic press release.”

And most of all, they want content, content, content! John Biggs points out that “the real key is to have images....  I mean direct link, not ‘go to this website and you might find it somewhere’ which has been happening far too often recently.  A specific link to the actual images is really important for bloggers in this case… even in my work at the New York Times it’s really useful to have press release images.”  And Foremski pointed out that “It should be a many media release.” And that “a press release should be in a format that helps me do my job so that things are clearly labeled… there should be some images for example so I can choose an image if I want to.  There should be a section on factual information, when the company was founded and so on… And in this day and age where newsrooms are really, really hard pressed, in terms of resources, to have a news release that is organized in a way that helps us do our job just seems to make so much sense… give me a lot of resources I can pick and choose from.”

Biggs also noted that timing is especially key for bloggers: “It’s very time sensitive especially for us.  I mean, for standard journalism you basically have a nice 5 hour lead time or whatever.  Even at the Times you still have to run through copy editors, you still have to run through editors and things. Whereas our lead time is approximately 30 seconds so as soon as it comes out we need to know.”

We enjoyed our conversations and appreciate the message: make it digital, make it rich, make it timely and make it relevant!

You can listen to/download the transcript of the interviews here.