Online Newsroom Proposal

5 September 2021

Athelstone Football Club

An online newsroom will allow the Athelstone Football Club (AFC) to handle its own media strategy and create media suitable for journalists. The newsroom should be built into the AFC’s business plan, to increase community knowledge, improve accessibility, and facilitate traffic to its website with a focus on increasing memberships (Mahoney 2008, pp. 44-45).

The Athelstone Football Club’s (AFC) website is currently underutilised, and information is difficult to find or not available, therefore has difficulty communicating effectively to its stakeholders (Smith 2017, p. 221; Johnston 2018, p. 14).

A good example of a structured newsroom is the Australian Border Force website (Australian Border Force 2021). The newsroom is easily navigated and presents in a simple tabled format. The first column on the left contains searchable categories including archived content, contact and media details, subscription details, and social media links. The second or middle column displays news articles in chronological order that are regularly updated. Each article offers an option to download text, images, videos, and audio separately, and corresponding file sizes and resolution allows the journalist to acquire the correct format. At the bottom of the article, are contact details, and options to share, email or print to facilitate earned media. The third column on the right presents photos, videos, and audio. The media releases are searchable using tabs across the top of the page. The newsroom is detailed yet simple, and easy to navigate quickly (Smith 2017, pp. 221-224; Johnston & Rowney 2018, p. 14).

Contrastingly, the Adelaide Football Club’s newsroom is represented within a ‘latest’ tab and a drop-down list of ‘news’, ‘videos’, ‘photos’, and ‘Club Champion 2021’ (Adelaide Football Club 2021). The ‘news’ drop-down option displays a grid of tabulated media releases with large images that are chronologically ordered and regularly updated. Scrolling further down, the AFLW news is similarly displayed. Each article offers sharable options to Facebook and Twitter and a copy link tool. Large images and videos are presented within each media release as they are comprehended faster than text, however there is no ability to download. The media releases can be shared only and there are no contact details. Background information is found outside of the media tab, and located at the ‘Club’ tab, ‘Under Crows History Locker’. This is a link to another website, instead of being incorporated into the media page, as journalists would prefer. (Smith 2017, p. 221; Johnston & Rowney 2018, p. 17).

The AFC newsoom would benefit from a highly visual, searchable, and up-to-date newsroom in a table format. A communications or public relations officer should organise, create, and manage the information for the newsroom, and work on maintaining positive relationships with journalists (Mahoney 2008a, pp. 72, 85).

The newsroom would provide (Smith 2017, pp. 221-224):

  • information on current teams, players, committee members and coaches
  • statistics, history, and the club’s structure
  • images including size and quality
  • videos
  • fact sheets or background information
  • media releases or articles
  • media archives that can be used to correct inaccuracies
  • multi-media kits suitable for journalists
  • community interest topics and links
  • links to social media and other sporting clubs
  • contact details
  • an interview request form 
  • a calendar of events and activities
  • internal links.

Media releases should consider Journalists are time poor, and hence decisions on media releases’ newsworthiness are made usually within five seconds (Mahoney 2008a pp. 75, 85). Therefore, it’s important to write a media release in an inverted pyramid style within the email body without attachments to retain the journalist’s interest. Additionally, inserting a link to an embargoed password-protected media page within the newsroom (Smith 2017, p. 225) can provide the journalist with ‘multiple formats’ (text, video, images, infographics) to use across multi-media outlets (print, online and broadcast) (Mahoney 2008a, pp. 72-74; Weick 2015).

Media enquiries:

Julia Harold, Communications

m: 0000 444 333

e: abc@abc.com