Session 3 is about to start. On tap:

Diane Hodges - CNN Producer, World Report
Jacki Levine - Managing Editor, Gainesville Sun
George Vazquez Jr. - PR Newswire

Same format, quick intros from the panel, then on to Q&A

Jacki Levine
Finding you way into the media is the topic in the Gainesville market. Jacki is tempering her remarks to the local market since the majority of people in the audience are from the local market.

Jacki is talking about the decline of circulation within the Gainesville Sun and how traffic is turning towards the web.

As a content provider the paper has a number of products, this includes Gaineville Magazine. As a content provider they are looking for content and PR can help provide that, but sometimes their wants and needs to not match what you are pitching. As PR practioners know what your options are, learn how your story can help one of our other publications. Pitch what is unique.

The new Gainesville portal web site is a 'content eating machine' it needs content. Chances are you might get on the web site but not in the other sources.

Keyword is 'empathy'. Put yourself in the shoes of the reporter. Of course they are busy, they think they are the busiest person on the planet. Provide them content they can quickly review and digest. Know the paper's deadlines, know the length requirements. The other side is forgiveness, we apologize that we don't get to everything.

It is key to become an expert on your topic.

Diane Hodges
You need to know your product and our (CNN's) product. Obviosuly TV needs pictures, think about the visual aspect of your story. She deals with World Report so don't pitch her local stories.

Everything at CNN is going digital. All taping, editing and playback is moving torwards digital. Some of the content is still tape. Since she deals with world media so she has a variety of format. She deals with PAL and NTSC formats. Once everything goes digital it will makes things much easier.

Satellite phone operations cost $12/minute.

Long story about how complex it is to feed video via satellite. Next step is internet delivery, but the average transfer rate is approx 1 hour per minute of video.

The internal routing of video between CNN affiliates is done via the internet, but it is a closed network.

George Vazquez
The future of course is digital. He used to be in media if he only had the digital tools that are available now. The power of digital (non-linear) editing is changing the speed of news.

Q&A
VNR's have been in the news recently, obviously the media needs to properly tag the VNR's provided by outside sources. George said that any local stations he worked for would always cut our any 'reporters' in a VNR and shoot their own intro/voiceover.

In some cases such as Univision or Telemundo there can be no outside footage used. All footage must be shot my their crew, this is a union issue and not a journalistic issue.

Convergance is a big trend in news, the big success story is the General Media property in Tampa where you have TV, Newspaper and Web all in the same location.

Discussion about the rise of the latino market in media. It's always been there, but the media and advertisers are just discovering it.