Professional corporate website development
in Washington, D.C.

Corporate newsrooms are often built for the company rather than for the people who read them, with press releases in date order, a logo download and a contact form. Reporters arrive with a deadline and leave without what they needed.

Start with the questions a journalist brings: who the spokesperson is, how to reach them today, what the company said about a topic last year and where the approved images are. The page should answer each of those in seconds.

Media contacts need names, direct routes and response hours. A general inbox signals that nobody is responsible. If contacts change by region or topic, say so on the page.

Statements deserve their own place. Short responses to events are often more useful to reporters than full releases, and they are the hardest thing to find later.

The archive should be searchable and filterable by topic as well as by year. Old releases also need context. A release about a product that was later withdrawn should say so, instead of standing unchanged as if nothing happened.

Assets need usage notes, including photographs with captions and credits, logos in formats that work in print and online, and executive portraits that are current. Out-of-date headshots are one of the most common errors in coverage.

Publishing has to be fast. When a statement is needed within the hour, the newsroom cannot wait for a developer. Communications staff should be able to publish, update and correct without help.

Finally, offer a subscription. Journalists covering a sector want notice of new releases, and a simple email or feed option keeps the company in front of the people most likely to write about it.

Accessibility is part of this too. Statements are often published as PDFs that screen readers cannot parse. Publish the text on the page itself and offer the document as a download. Reporters copy quotes from the page, and so does everyone else.