Media Monitoring Tracks Information

Once known as “clipping” services in the heyday of the print media, a media monitoring service scans the various media sources and provides copies of and links to relevant stories for their clients. Both individuals in the public spotlight and corporate entities may engage the services of a media monitoring firm in order to get a better sense of how their products or activities are being reported to their consumer base or constituency.

With the proliferation of media outlets in the twenty-first century – everything from traditional newspapers to online “e-zines” – media monitoring companies have become increasingly specialized by topic, profession, or part of the world. Some firms even make generalized media monitoring search engines available on their websites. For instance, an individual might be curious about the latest headlines in Great Britain and could use the specialized search engine on a media monitoring site to pull up links to news stories available online.

Another field of specialization in media monitoring is the broadcast monitor. Companies that specialize in this subset gather information from television stations and radio broadcasts. Most broadcast monitor companies offer their clients transcripts of the relevant material or copies of the actual sound or video file.

Any public relations or advertising professional will stress the importance of “keeping your finger on the pulse” of your audience. Whether that situation involves tracking the success of a product or of the activities of a public figure or a political candidate, the task of media monitoring grows more daunting every day.

Traditional a media monitor could expect to be working with a given number of newspapers, magazines, television broadcasts, and radio programs. Today, however, the Internet has changed the way in which information is shared and disseminated around the globe.

In particular the growing popularity and influence of online journals or blogs (a shortened version of “weblogs”) has made media monitoring more challenging than ever. Given the fact that a number of prominent political bloggers received press credentials at the 2004 presidential nominating conventions in the United States, the influence of this new media outlet is not to be underestimated. Some blogs receive tens of thousands of hits or visits a day and have fanatically faithful readers.

If you or your business is in a position of needing to know what’s been said or written about you, you most likely are in need of a media monitoring service. Although resources exist on the Internet to assist anyone with the tracking of this kind of information, the enormous number of media outlets and their continued expansion makes this task a job for professionals, not just casual surfers. Like everything else in the age of the Internet, the “clipping” services of old have, by necessity, become more sophisticated and better than every at targeting information and putting it in the hands of the people who need it.

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