Media release

Before reading this particular chapter (Chapter 11 - Engaging with the media), I do not really know how to write a media release. I have tried writing before for a certain module but still, I do not really know how to do so. The reading gave me tips on how to write a good media release. It is somewhat like a news story but it contains more details on one point. The media release is summarised into a news story.

An example of a bad media release:

Stolkin publishes paper in elite journal

Rustam Stolkin, Research Assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, has recently lead-authored and published a paper in the Institute of Physics Publishing’s journal, Measurement Science and Technology.

A focus of Dr. Stolkin’s research is robotic vision, developing algorithms which enable computers to make sense of the world by “looking” at it through video cameras. One important use of these techniques is to enable a robot to navigate by visually determining its position with respect to an observed object or scene.
To properly test these algorithms, one needs video sequences for which the camera’s true position at every frame has already been measured. These “ground-truth” positions can then be compared with the estimated positions created by the robotic vision algorithm, to see if they are correct. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to generate such ground-truth video sequences, making it difficult for robot vision researchers to prove that their algorithms actually work.

Dr. Stolkin and his collaborators have solved this problem by using a robot arm to move a video camera, filming a variety of video sequences along identical camera trajectories. Some of these sequences feature visually interesting scenes which are fed to the vision algorithm. Other sequences feature black “calibration targets” containing grids of white dots. By analyzing the position of the dots in each image, the camera’s position can be calculated. These positions can then be used as ground-truth for corresponding images in the visually interesting sequences used to test the vision algorithm.

The paper appears in the current online edition and is available free online at http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/-ffissn=0957-0233/-ff30=all/0957-0233/17/10/026. It will be featured in the October 2006 print version of MST.

The link to the article: http://www.stevensnewsservice.com/pr/pr802.htm

This media release is bad because it has too much information in the first paragraph. I may start it off by saying about the importance of the paper and what is the paper about. Later on, provide background information about the writer.

Of course, I am not quite sure still on what makes a good media release. From this media release though, I find that the writer has mentioned many difficult terms such as “vision algorithm” and the steps taken to solve the problem seems complicated. I do not understand the steps.

The writer may improve this by highlighting the significance of this research and how it can impact the public. He should take a different approach in writing the media release. Instead of summarizing what the paper is about, he should relate the paper with the daily lives of the public. This can simplify the entire media release and make it easier to understand.