The Canadian Intellectual Property Office, an agency within Industry Canada, now has a newsroom at its site.
It's average-to-below-average as a resource for journalists.
There is no RSS feed for new information and no place to sign up for e-mail notification of new resources at the site. Do they really expect that journalists or anyone else interested in CIPO will drop in daily to see if there is anything new there? Note to PR practitioners: Push your stuff out to journalists. RSS is best; e-mail is a close second. Newswires are a distant third. Phone and fax failed to qualify.
The most important thing anyone setting up a Web site for the press can do is to put up a clearly labeled 'Media Contacts' section where they can find the name and phone number of someone they can right now (now means 'now' for the journalist. So if you're a North American West Coast journalist on deadline — say 5 pm PDT — that means there had better be media people answering the phones in New York at 8 pm New York time) for information. Web forms are no good. A journalist on deadline does not want a Web form when an editor is breathing down their neck. They want a real person who can answer their questions.
Journalists who want to contact CIPO have to do a little digging. There is no link at the 'Newsroom' that would direct a visitor to the name and number of a media contact. But journalists aren't (that) stupid. We simply open up a recent press release and, presto, down there at the bottom is a name and a phone number of a communications person.
Still, all I get is a name and phone number. Why doesn't CIPO and Industry Canada generally not include the e-mail address of the press contact. More often than not, all I need is clarification of a single fact on the release. Isn't that more efficiently and quickly handled via e-mail?