The humble news release has long been under scrutiny and criticism. It’s a PR tactic unchanged in many years despite the fact that many journalists prefer to ignore them. With the advent of bloggers as a new audience, the news release is stretched still further, perhaps to breaking point. Some have suggested it’s time for a rethink. Todd Defren has pulled together many of the facets this new vehicle might take in his ‘social media press release‘. This multimedia format might introduce images, audio, video, tags, RSS, links, comments, trackbacks to the traditional news content.

The format had a warm reception and sparked quite a conversation among PR bloggers, who we’d assume would be the early adopters. But the fact remains that the newswires in the US are ill-equipped to handle such a format. And clients, particularly listed firms, may be cautious about changing their PR mechanisms, particularly since some believe news releases are also aimed at end-users.

So the question is, when will the ‘social media release’ become the norm?

[For those reading this via a newsreader, there is an AJAX-based poll pasted below which may not appear in this post via RSS. Please vote on the site – thanks].