Over the last few years many of us have been amazed by the variable quality of Bitcoin press coverage. Some journalists really understand what this is all about and go deep, others simply regurgitate whatever was already written or seem to deliberately search for a negative spin.
This has not been especially surprising to me, because in my time working at a large software company I've seen how press stories get written. There is a really strong reason why all large corporations have a dedicated team of PR staff, and it's because helping journalists write good stories is a full time job. In this case by "good" I mean, accurate and balanced, not necessarily product-pimping positive fluff.
Bitcoin does not have any dedicated PR people, nor should it. But we can do the next best thing by providing a really good self-serve press center on the website. My ideal press center would have:
- The "we use coins" video, along with the original MPEG-4 sources suitable for embedding straight into TV feeds.
- High quality, re-usable art assets. The pictures from Mike Caldwell of his coins are superb and widely used, recently there was a beautiful 3D rendering of a Bitcoin posted to reddit. There were some nice pictures from the Berlin "Bitcoin Keiz" of happy shop owners accepting coins, etc.
- A list of previous articles that act as exemplars - articles we feel hit a particularly high quality bar. Again that doesn't mean rambling hyperbolic fluff pieces on peoples blogs, it means articles in mainstream publications that were fair and balanced.
- An FAQ just for the press that skips most of the technical detail and responds to talking points that we see come up over and over again (the "crash" of 2011, what about crime/drugs, who is satoshi, who is using it, etc).
- A very brief description of future applications and benefits of the technology, along with possible impacts on society, for instance reference to the EU banking crises and how Bitcoin allows people to reduce their dependence on banks. I.E. something for journalists who want to write more thoughtful longer term pieces or find a new spin to an article they're writing about the ongoing mainstream financial problems.
- A set of quotes attributed to developers and key stakeholders that can be copy/pasted into stories, so in case a journalist can't/won't get in touch with a real person for their story they can still quote people.
- A small group of people, distributed around the world, who are able to give quotes and quick interviews to people at short notice. We already have a mailing list for this but I think it's not mentioned on the website anymore. Although it sounds insane, my company has a 24/7 PR team that works in shifts because stories frequently get written and published in a matter of hours. If you don't respond to their emails in time, the story goes out with something like "The Bitcoin Group had no comment" which sounds shady. We already have some people who routinely give out relatively mild, non-extreme interviews and quotes (Gavin, Stefan/justmoon, etc) but getting a bit more organized and reliably responsive would be good. It can be as simple as promoting the existing mailing list a bit more.
Thanks to Saivann we have a spiffy new website that already goes into detail on Bitcoin's many benefits. I think the press center could be a new section at the top (either next to or replacing enthusiasts).
I can't do all this myself because right now I'm heads down on shipping the next round of SPV performance improvements, but I'll start looking for volunteers soon. If you want to take part, please let me know! You can either send me a message here, post a reply or email
[email protected] 
