Two Ways to Deliver a Finished News Item: Push or Pull

The two options on the table

Once an item is cut, captioned and checked, it still has to reach the gallery, and there are two sensible ways to do it. The first is push: we send the finished file straight to the person or system you name, in the format you asked for, and tell you when it has gone. The second is pull: we place the file in a shared folder and your team collects it when it suits them.

I am a lighting and studio technician, so I am not the one pressing the export button. But I sit in the same building as our editors, and during busy weeks I see which method leads to a calm hand-over and which leads to a phone call asking where the clip has got to.

Both methods are part of Rapid Edit and Delivery, and neither costs extra on its own. The difference is in who carries the responsibility for noticing that a file exists.

How push delivery works in practice

With push, the editor finishes the item, runs a final check on picture, sound and captions, and sends the file to your named contact or ingest point. A short message follows with the file name, running time and format. You do not have to watch a folder or remember to look.

The strength of push is certainty. A producer who is juggling three running orders does not want to hunt for a file, and a message that says it is with you removes one small task from a long list. It also gives a clear moment at which our work ends and yours begins.

The weakness is that a file can arrive when nobody is looking. If the gallery inbox is busy, or the person named is in a meeting, a perfectly good item can sit unnoticed. Push depends on your team reading what it is sent.

• Clear moment of hand-over
• Message with file name, running time and format
• Relies on someone reading the notice

How pull delivery works in practice

With pull, finished items go into a shared folder with a predictable naming pattern, and your team collects them. It suits newsrooms that already have a routine of checking an incoming location, because nothing new needs to be learned.

Pull is flexible. Several people can reach the same item, a late change of mind about format is easy to handle, and a revised version can sit alongside the first. When a story runs through the day in several versions, a folder keeps them in one place.

The cost is attention. Someone has to look, and if two colleagues each assume the other has collected the file, the item waits. We can note in the folder when something new has arrived, but we cannot make anyone open it.

Where each method goes wrong

The commonest fault with push is a wrong or out-of-date contact. An editor who has left, a shared mailbox nobody checks, a format that changed since the last booking: any of these turns a quick send into a lost afternoon. Confirm the recipient at the start of each commission.

The commonest fault with pull is silence. Nothing prompts the gallery, so the delay only shows when the slot is close. Naming conventions drift as well, and a folder with similar names for a first cut and a final version invites the wrong file going to air.

Neither problem is about technology. Both come from a missing agreement about who is watching. Settle that before the first item and most of the trouble disappears.

• Push fails on stale contacts
• Pull fails on nobody looking
• Both need a named person

Which suits which newsroom

For a bulletin with a fixed slot and a small team, push is the better choice. The producer has enough to do, and a direct send with a short note keeps the final stretch short. For a larger operation with an established ingest routine and several people handling output, pull fits better, since the folder is already part of the day.

Items that go to air within the hour lean towards push. Items prepared for later in the day, or for several outlets in different formats, lean towards pull. Few newsrooms are purely one or the other, and we can mix them within a single commission.

What matters is that you choose on purpose. Drifting into one method because it happened to be used last time is how files end up unseen.

My recommendation

If you have to pick one, pick push for anything with a deadline and keep pull as the back-up. A file sent to a named person with a short message is the harder one to miss, and the folder remains available if someone needs to find an earlier version.

When you book, tell us three things: who receives the file, what format and caption style you need, and whether you want the folder as well. That takes a minute to say and saves a good deal of time afterwards.

If your newsroom already has a routine that works, tell us and we will follow it. The best method is whichever one your team genuinely checks.