American University's Center for Social Media recently announced the release of a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. This document, created by a team of scholars, lawyers, and new media enthusiast from leading universities, is "a clear statement about what constitutes fair use in online video." Before the code's release, there were no adequate documents on this issue.
I'm currently developing a social media news release (SMNR) that will spread the word on the code of best practices. The traditional, mainstream press release for the code can be found here. My first draft of the SMNR for the Center for Social Media, which is a "work in progress" (it will have sidebars, not so many pages) looks like this:
And here is a simple flaw chart:
SMNR is a new revamped version of the traditional news release. It serves the same purpose as the traditional one--to spread the news about any relevant event, product, etc .
After more than 100 years of being used in the same, standard format, in 2006/2008 (thanks to Todd Defren from the SHIFT communications who offered the first and second SMNR template and Tom Foremski and his famous blog post "Die! Press Release! Die!") traditional press release evolved and started to assimilate some social media components. It became less narrative, more visual, and easier to share among the online communities. The new release is comprised of short bulleted facts, multimedia (images, video, audio), links, quotes, and tags. With the 2008 version, SMNR became even more interactive, with embedded links for comments.
I'm still looking for the best template/software for my SMNR so if you have any suggestions and experience in developing SMNR do let me know!
