So we've just been having a discussion here about traditional media monitoring and the fact that we are seeing more and more clients move away from it and towards news aggregation models instead.

It prompts the question, in the 'new media' age (where digital coverage seems almost endless when one takes into account CGM and so forth) isn't it time that PROs finally felt able to switch their focus from quantity to quality? i.e. focus on measures which go beyond a bursting clippings book and pay more attention to delivering the correct content, in the right place, at the right time and engaging the right audience often enough?

What is more, this is a very relevant point given the current economic climate... volumes of coverage (and therefore cost) can easily escalate when the monitoring brief takes in everything even though this very often leads to nothing much more but a pile of meaningless gumph (save the top ten percent or so).

Surely it is far more cost effective and insightful to limit monitoring and evaluation to key media and online sources. This can even negate the need for traditional media monitoring as news aggregation feeds replace them and arguably serve more purpose monitoring reputation and PR activity in a digital world working to a 24 hours news agenda.

It all makes a lot of sense to me with the only real issue being educating internal stakeholders that it is not always volume that constitutes successful PR... but then that is another issue...

Any and all thoughts welcome!