A media monitoring service, a press clipping service or a clipping service as known in earlier times, provides clients with copies of media content, which is of specific interest to them and subject to changing demand; what they provide may include documentation, content, analysis, or editorial opinion, specifically or widely. These services tend to specialize their coverage by subject, industry, size, geography, publication, journalist, or editor. The printed sources, which could be readily monitored, greatly expanded with the advent of

telegraphy Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

and submarine cables in the mid- to late-19th century; the various types of media now available proliferated in the 20th century, with the development of

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

, the

photocopier A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers u ...

and the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

. Though media monitoring is generally used for capturing content or editorial opinion, it also may be used to capture advertising content. Media monitoring services have been variously termed over time, as new players entered the market, new forms of media were created, and as new uses from available content developed. An existing group may provide such a monitoring service, as it relates to their main purpose, while a monitoring agency generally provides such as their main business. Alternative terms for these monitoring services as well as the information they provide include: *Press clipping service or agency *Media cutting service or agency *

Information logistics Information Logistics (IL) deals with the flow of information between human and / or machine actors within or between any number of organizations that in turn form a value creating network (see, e.g.). IL is closely related to information management ...

service *

Media intelligence Media intelligence uses data mining and data science to analyze public, social and editorial media content. It refers to marketing systems that synthesize billions of online conversations into relevant information. This allow organizations to me ...

*Media information services

History

Since

mass media Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets. Broadcast media transmit information ...

traditionally was limited solely to print media, naturally the monitoring was also limited to these media. The world's first press clipping agency was established in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 1852 by a Polish newsagent named Romeike. Actors, writers, musicians and artists would visit his shop to look for articles about themselves in his Continental stock. It was then that Romeike realised that he could turn this into a profitable business. An agency named "L'Argus de la presse" was established in Paris in 1879 by Alfred Cherie, who offered a press-clipping service to Parisian actors, enabling them to buy reviews of their work rather than purchasing the whole newspaper. As

and later

broadcasting were introduced in the 20th century, press clipping agencies began to expand their services into the monitoring of these broadcast media, and this task was greatly facilitated by the development of commercial audio and video tape recording systems in the 1950s and 1960s. With the growth of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

in the 1990s, media monitoring service extended their services to the monitoring of online information sources using new digital search and scan technologies to provide output of interest to their clients. Then, in 1998, the now defunct WebClippingWebClipping website
/ref> website was the first firm to start monitoring Internet based news media, moving the industry toward tracking digital news quickly. Typically, individual or organisational clients – e. g. private companies and corporations, charities, government departments and ministries – will subscribe to a media monitoring service to keep track of what is being said about them, their field of operations, their competitors, or other specified topics of interest.

Industry

The news monitoring industry provides government agencies, corporations, public relations professionals, and other organizations access to news information created by the media. Generally monitoring print, broadcast, and internet

content Content or contents may refer to: Media * Content (media), information or experience provided to audience or end-users by publishers or media producers ** Content industry, an umbrella term that encompasses companies owning and providing mas ...

for any mention of specific subjects of interest, a news monitoring company will analyze and provide feedback to their client in the form of press clippings, monitoring reports, and media analysis.

Evolution

From a cut and clip service, media clipping today has expanded to incorporate technology with information. Media monitoring clients can now opt to include print, broadcast and online to capture all their media exposure. While this technology has allowed some of the process to be automated, many media monitoring agencies still offer the services of trained professionals to review and validate results. Service delivery happens at three fronts. Clients may get their original hard copy clips through traditional means (mail/overnight delivery) or may opt for digital delivery. Digital delivery allows the end user to receive via email all the relevant news of the company, competition and industry daily, with updates as they break. The same news may also be indexed (as allowed by copyright laws) in a searchable database to be accessed by subscribers. Another option of this service is auto-analysis, wherein the data can be viewed & compared in different formats. Every organization that uses PR invariably uses news monitoring as well. In addition to tracking their own publicity, self-generated or otherwise, news monitoring clients also use the service to track competition or industry specific trends or legislation, to build a contact base of reporters, experts, leaders for future reference, to audit the effectiveness of their PR campaigns, to verify that PR,

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

and sales messages are in sync, and to measure impact on their target market. City, State, and Federal agencies use news monitoring services to stay informed in regions they otherwise would not be able to monitor themselves and to verify that the public information disseminated is accurate, accessible in multiple formats and available to the public. Some monitoring services specialize in one or more areas of press clipping, TV and radio monitoring, or

internet tracking Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, re-purposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Pri ...

. Media analysis is also offered by most news monitoring services. Television news monitoring companies, especially in the United States, capture and index

closed captioning Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information. Both are typically used as a transcription of the audio por ...

text and search it for client references. Some TV monitoring companies employ human monitors who review and abstract program content; other services rely on automated search programs to search and index stories. Online media monitoring services utilize automated software called

spiders Spiders ( order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species dive ...

or robots (bots) to automatically monitor the content of free online news sources including newspapers, magazines, trade journals, TV station and news syndication services. Online services generally provide links but may also provide text versions of the articles. Results may or may not be verified for accuracy by the online monitoring service. Most newspapers do not include all of their print content online and some have web content that does not appear in print. In the United States, there are trade associations formed to share best practices which include the North American Conference of Press Clipping Services and the International Association of Broadcast Monitors.

Language and media – the big challenges

In English speaking countries, the service of media monitoring, collation and dissemination is fairly simple and most organizations which use

Public Relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. P ...

also use media monitoring. However, in multi-language & multi-dialect countries the challenge of collating data locally and disseminating in a

translated Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

language of business (usually English) is a daunting task. The situation in other multi-language countries is no different. The second large challenge for Information Logistics is the growing number of media and the media types. For example, in a country like

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

there are over 50,000 registered print publications, 250+ TV channels, a growing number of relevant internet sites and several hundred new blogs that need to be captured every day. Several of these need to be translated for a 'heads-up' and analysis needs to be constant and real-time.

Illustrative examples

An author that recently published a book and who has a strong interest in tracking how well the book is received by

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...

s may hire a media monitoring service. The service will have a method by which they extract any information about the author and their book from newly printed

magazine A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...

s, radio programs, television programs and so on. The author will receive a printed bundle of ''clippings'', i.e., the pages of the magazines and

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...

s relating to them and their book. They may also receive recordings of any radio reviews, television programs and so on, which refer to his book. Most major companies and corporations subscribe to media monitoring services to keep track of any reports or comments in the media. A fast food company, for example, would receive summaries of coverage and/or copies of material drawn from a wide range of sources, including TV and radio news reports, commentaries on TV and radio shows, newspaper opinion/commentary columns, magazine articles and internet

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

s. The material collected would include any media items that relate to the company's commercial operations, its corporate reputation or its media image. This would include reports about or discussions of the

fast food industry Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. It is a commercial term, limited to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredient ...

in general, and any media item that specifically mentions the company, its clients and suppliers, its competitors or related interest groups or other specified subjects of interest, such as food/health regulations.

Trade groups

The International Association of Broadcast Monitors (IABM) is a worldwide

trade association A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific Industry (economics), industry. An industry tra ...

made up of news retrieval services which record, monitor and archive broadcast news sources including television, radio and internet. It acts as a "clearinghouse" or "forum" for discussion on topics of collective concerns and acts as a united voice for the news monitoring industry.

Professional organization

FIBEP (Federation Internationale des Bureaux d’Extraits de Presse/International Federation of the Press Clipping Services) is a professional media monitoring organization. The FIBEP was established in 1953 in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

and has close to 100 members from 44 countries. Every 18 months, the members of FIBEP members organize a three-day FIBEP-Congress. In work groups, workshops, reports and discussion circles, members discuss market trends.

Law cases

Two parallel cases developed in 2012, one in the United States, and one in the United Kingdom. In each case, the legality of temporary copies and the online media monitoring service offered to clients, was in dispute. Essentially the two cases covered the same issue (media clippings shown to clients online) and with the same defendant, Meltwater Group. The plaintiff differed, being a UK copyright collection society (UK) rather than

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

(US), but upon parallel grounds. The activity was ruled unlawful in the US (under the " fair use" doctrine). In the UK under UK and EU copyright law, service providers need a licence. Users are also licensed. If users only viewed the original source without getting a headline or snippet or printing the article this is not an infringement, and temporary copies to enable a lawful purpose are themselves lawful, but in practice services for business do not work this way.