I have a quick request. Go to your local newspaper or broadcaster’s Web site and try to submit a news release, preferably with a photo.

We’re not talking about citizen journalism here, but the dirty secret that we depend on that stream of professional news releases and other content to help fill out the news report or just generate ideas.

Have you found how to submit that release and photo yet? Remember, I did say “quick.”

In doing seminars for groups on how to get their messages out in this modern media world, I scan lots of media sites. And I’m struck by how many newsrooms looking to otherwise streamline things make it much too hard to get information to them.

If I were a betting man, I’d wager you still haven’t found the way to do it on most newspaper and broadcast Web sites, and if you have, you have very little information about what the newsroom wants, in what form, etc.

Why do we make it so hard for news sources to get us things in ways that would minimize our need to process them at a time when increased computer processing of routine information will be the norm?

Start with the ubiquitous “contact us” button. That’s OK if I want to deal with your accounting department. But why not “send us news”? (After all, most sites now have a “place an ad” button – some more than one.)

On the relatively few sites with a “send news” button, most often it’s buried in the clutter and aimed at citizen journalists, and too often it leads to just an e-mail link or a nondescript form. (On one site, the form was covered by an ad until I clicked the ad away. That sends an interesting message.)

I sometimes wonder about the poor soul who has to sort through that e-mail, which has to be one of the more inefficient ways to get material ready for actual publication.

I’m suggesting something more formal, aimed at the PR and marketing professionals and organizations in your area (but also available to those citizen journalists, if you want), and with clear specifications on how and what to submit.

Cut and paste from Word, for instance? No problem – our system automatically will remove those funky codes. Have a basic meeting announcement? Click on the meeting form and fill in the blanks (where, when, who, etc.) and the system can automatically stitch a brief together. Business promotion announcement? Here’s another form. You could probably come up with a half-dozen or so that would cover 90 percent of the situations, with a “miscellaneous” thrown in.

Want to submit a photo? Here is the size and density we need (with a helpful tutorial link).

Am I suggesting these folks do much of your work for you? You bet.

Editorial time has become too precious to spend it dealing with such routine material, much of which can be handled digitally leaving it needing only one “touch” by a final-approval editor. (After all, we already have programs that can write basic sports stories from stats.)

Let’s use our heads to both encourage the submission of such routine material but also automate as much of its handling as possible. Then we can focus our diminished resources on producing compelling content to draw readers in.

Doug Fisher, a former AP news editor, teaches journalism at the University of South Carolina and can be reached at fisherdj@mailbox.sc.edu or 803-777-3315.