Garmin : Archiving discrimination

Unequal attention suggests one audience is favoured over another.

The Site

Garmin, a leading producer of global positioning systems, has separate news release archives in the Investor Relations and Pressroom areas of its Company information that offer contrasting levels of maintenance.

The service within Investor Relations is titled Press Releases, with a page of current releases showing all those for the current year in reverse date order (i.e most recent first) and an annual archive covering each year from 1999 to 2006.

Pressroom also has a page of current releases, titled News Releases, but these run back to August 2004. An Archives section lists options for the years 1999-2004 only; however, the 2004 selection turns out to cover the period 2003-2007 in reverse chronological order. This archive is also the page that opens if the News Releases option is clicked on Pressroom’s internal menu – complete with an introduction explaining it relates specifically to 2004. Users have to enter Pressroom from other parts of the site to see the current releases page, which is the default landing page.

The Takeaway

Garmin is following established good practice in providing a separate news release service for investors, but the way it goes about the archiving suggests it has less time to spare for its non-investor news audience.

Separate provision makes sense on two counts: it avoids the potential inconvenience to anyone searching the archives of being switched to whichever section houses the collection; and it helpfully tailors the investor-related selection for an audience that contains analysts as well as financial journalists. However, while Garmin diligently maintains its investor Press Releases archive, a contrasting level of upkeep is adopted for Pressroom’s News Releases. The change of title is perhaps a clue that different standards apply, though not to why.

First published on 26 April, 2007