It's the early bird...

“The Guardian’s daily ‘agenda’ setting meeting now takes place at 9am”, declared The Guardian’s head of business Dan Roberts at an event Eloqui attended last week. “In the past for papers that moment was at 5pm, and until six months ago it was at lunchtime”, he continued, also saying that company communications strategy on big days was not always reflecting this change. There is no doubt there has been a relentless march backwards of news deadlines. The big stories of the day, and many of the smaller ones, are now all usually established by 9am in the morning, latest. Roberts says one problem with this condensed timetable is that journalists have less time to form a considered opinion on complex stories. Here at Eloqui we think another increasing issue for media will be achieving constant and meaningful refreshment of that news agenda throughout the day. (Roberts also highlighted this conundrum.)Media outlets are busy proclaiming how they are providing more news over more channels, when very often it feels like constantly repeating news, even if delivered earlier in the day.

Joanne Milroy