E-Media Tidbits

picasa.google.com Google's Picasa is one of many online services where anyone (even PR reps) can share photos.

I was on the phone with a PR rep in Tel Aviv -- about one hour's ride (on a good day) from me in Jerusalem. We were discussing an upcoming event. She asked me if I would need photographs for a curtain-raiser story I'm writing. Yes, of course, I replied.

"Oh," she said. The [Israeli] postal service is on strike and I can't send you any pictures."

"OK, can you send them to me by e-mail?"

"We have so many, it would take me so much time to send them all," she said.

"Hmm... Are they posted anywhere, like Flickr, where I could just download them?"

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"Huh? No. The postal service is on strike," she repeated.

"Yeah," I grumped. "OK. We'll cut and paste photos from the organization's Web site."

Ugh! That's a lot of unnecessary work for me. Am I missing something, or should a good PR firm have (at least) an account on Flickr or Picasa where it can post photos and other files for media organizations to use?

Is this a one-off phenomenon of a poorly prepared PR agency, or is this still the common situation? Why doesn't this firm have an online newsroom I can access? Are we behind the times here in Israel, or am I generalizing too much from this incident?