JOURNALISTS looking to compile video or audio reports of a story are soon going to be able to guarantee delivery of their material into the heart of some of the country’s biggest media outlets.
It follows the ‘soft launching’ this week of Tradeclips, developed by the same people that provides – through its Newslink service – guaranteed delivery of text and still images into the ‘editorial baskets’ of signed-up recipient media organisations.
A full launch is due in October, with allmediascotland.com among the partner organisations scheduled to assist in the promotion drive.
Because Tradeclips can operate like a holding bay, it places no burdens on the IT systems of either the sender or the recipient.
What’s more, to upload or download material is free. A charge is only levied for the maximum amount of data which a customer has stored on the system in any one month, and is being promoted as an ideal method of secure storage for archiving material or using it as a multimedia library with a view to syndicating to others.
Just as Newslink is a service used not just by journalists but also people sending out media releases and announcements – including commercial PR agencies and police forces – so too Tradeclips will be available to the wider media sector.
It is expected to become increasingly popular as newspapers develop their own websites, to include multimedia content. Tradeclips is currently providing access to various newspaper and other media organisations.
The company’s business development manager is Iain Fleming, a former Scottish Sun, Scottish Daily Mail and Scottish Mail on Sunday reporter who has also spent more than 15 years as a PR manager.
He said: “Newspapers are now providing reporters with multimedia devices which incorporate mobile phones, cameras, video and audio recording functionality, and expecting them to provide whole multimedia ‘packages’ instead of just the story. The difficulty is in receiving and managing that content prior to publication, then storing it and possibly syndicating it to others.
“Likewise, while up until comparatively recently the PR industry was sending out still images with press releases, they are now using a variety of new media channels such as podcasts and video clips as well as employing social media distribution techniques such as Tweets.
“Managing these channels effectively, particularly ensuring the right type of content in the right format goes to the right destination is not only giving them headaches, but providing huge logistical challenges to the recipient.
“Sending a press release as a fully-formatted email complete with logos, or a non-compressed image file, is bad enough but sending audio and video files in the wrong format is completely different and leads to delay, confusion and ultimately frustration for both sender and recipient. That is why, for example, Tradeclips will automatically convert still and video files into industry-standard compressed formats such as JPEG or Flash Video.”
