News Coverage "Off the Beaten Path" - Relevant FreePint Resources
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

Robin Neidorf spotlights FreePint's resources covering media monitoring, traditional news aggregators, and non-English and regional news.

Item

We recently had a query from a FreePint Subscriber about our coverage of news suppliers. This customer asked about our choice of suppliers to review - she felt we were covering more of the "niche" and alternative offerings and less of the traditional aggregators.

We've certainly had a focus on "media monitoring" rather than "news supply" recently, for a few reasons. First, our analyst Chris Porter has been doing a terrific job of identifying and reviewing media monitoring companies, such as Brandwatch, CisionPoint, Digimind Social (reviewed by Aileen Marshall), Engage121, Precise MediaPlatform+ and PR Newswire's Agility.

At the same time, our coverage of the traditional news aggregators has shifted. In 2013, we were not able to conduct what has been our annual review of Factiva; our contacts at Dow Jones have assured us that they'll work with us to secure the next in-depth review - and coverage of DJX as well - as soon as it makes sense in their product development cycle. In the meantime we were able to interview Frank Filippo, general manager of Corporate Products for Dow Jones, and to publish two in-depth articles on the future of Factiva and DJX.

Meanwhile, at Nexis, product teams have been in the throes of a platform migration, bringing the North American and global offerings together into a single platform. I had a preview of this consolidated and enhanced platform during the SLA Annual Conference in June 2014, and I'm excited to set a researcher loose on it as soon as LexisNexis gives the go-ahead (hoping by the end of this year).

Non-English and Regional News

This customer also wanted insight regarding coverage of non-English-language sources, "If there was a way to also focus on non-English sources or even country/language-specific sources - that would be great.  It would help to even know what’s available in different countries or language..."

We do regularly check on Europresse and Eureka.cc, which have excellent coverage in French-language, European and Canadian news, as part of our "Source Update" feature. Here's the most recent update on Europresse's source list; we cover them every 90 to 120 days. Additionally, we last reviewed Eureka.cc in November 2013 (executive summary here).  

One of our periodic contributors, Perrin Kerravala, put together this useful summary in January of content that highlights foreign language or key market content. It's not about news per se, but it does highlight some of the products we've covered and reviewed that feature updates/news from emerging markets. For example, Perrin mentions EMISPRO, which we reviewed that month.  

We also have a blog item following later this week which specifically looks at resources relevant to China.

Looking Forward: How Best to Tackle Non-English and Regional News?  

This is a tricky challenge for us, for a couple of reasons:  

• We only publish in English and our analysts are, by and large, English-speaking (though most have business skills in at least one other language - usually French or German); this restricts our deeper awareness of products/vendors in other languages as well as our ability to test products.
  
  
• We have to ask ourselves if we should tackle this challenge by language/region, or by content type? It's a different project for us to say, for example, "Let's explore all the sources of information that provide insight on Latin America", than to say "Let's identify all the sources of news/media coverage in Arabic".

However, as director of research, I can commit to making a significant effort to do a better job of covering these issues in our upcoming FreePint Topic Series: News, and Beyond.

Are there other vendors/products in "news" you'd like us to include in that Series? The first planning meeting with its co-producers is taking place shortly, so this is a perfect time.

Email me at robin.neidorf@freepint.com, or submit your suggestions via our online Contact form.

Editor's Note

The FreePint Topic Series: News, and Beyond runs from October-December 2014. Register your interest now, and you'll also get a free PDF report with selected premium articles when it's published in December.

Order your FreePint Subscription and gain access to the full archive of FreePint Articles and Reports, plus have the ability to share these resources with anyone else at your organisation.

« Blog