Week 8

Three readings for this week. The focus is on media releases. The key aspects that I gained from the first reading, 'To contact.....or not?: Investigating journalists' assessments of public relations subsidies and contact preferences' by Sallot and Johnson include:

• "More than 160 studies since the 1960s confirm the crux of the news-gathering process is the transactional information exchanges between practitioners and journalists that often become the news of the day." An interesting point at the least, this really demonstrates the influence public relations (PR) practitioners have on journalists as news gatherers and communicators, thus emphasising the necessity of their reliance on each other for their own careers.



• The percentage of stories that rely on PR given information is 25-80%. It is obvious that PR aids journalists in their exposure of stories, helping to set the agenda.
  
  
• The text empahises the need for PR practitioners to know about how journalists work, including news values, deadlines and other news styles. One quote that was taken from the research states that a practitioner should "...know the nature of the beast, know the style of journalist, know how they write and what interests them, and the result will be mututally beneficial relationships." It is also important that the stories sent out by PR practitioners, focus on a local angle, thus appealing to the news value of proximity and providing a further relevant story to the publishers audience/readers.



• It is important to be appreciative of any publicity given to your organisation. The text states that non-profit organisations are more likely to credit journalists for inclusion in their papers then profit organisations are. The text expresses that "...absence of a profit motive leads journalists to evaluate practitioners' ethics and subsidies more favourably."



• Excellent news, the text states that it is helpul to have some experience as a journalist to bring into PR. This is good news for me as I am doing both PR and journalism for my degree.



• I found it interesting that 93% of journalists preferred/liked contact through email. I thought that a closer mode of contact such as phone or face-to-face contact would be more appealing as it allows the relationship to build better. I guess that jounalists would not have time to answer phones and have meetings with people all the time when they have important deadlines to meet.



• Probably the key point raised in this text is that practitioners need to know journalistics individually and personally to understand and appeal to their preferences when dealing with media relations. Not all journalists share the same view on appropriate contact techniques and it is important that practitioners do some research into the media outlets they are sending their media kits and media releases to, thus to give them further opportunity to gain from their efforts. I would just like to throw in a quote by Pam and Bob Austin in their text 'Getting Free Publicity'. They state that if you do your research, you will give "...an edge in the useability stakes, because some of the stuff that arrives on editors' desks is so aweful that it can only be described as 'crap copy'".

This text has enlightened my understanding of media relations to a large degree. Although I already knew that it is important for PR practitioners to know how and when to deal with journalists, this text is more detailed in it's approach and has given me insight into methods of dealing with journalists in media releases.

The second reading, Kurt Wise's 'The importance of Writing Skills' also helps PR practitioners understand suitable techniques for media relations. The focus in this text is the importance of writing skills for pr practitioners, quoting Tench 2003) in his statement; "Writing is one of the foundations of a successful public relations practitioner and the ability to communicate messages clealry and concisely is one of their differentiating skills." The text refers to a survey of 200 members of the Public Relations Society of America taken by Hardin and Pompper in 2004 based on the "education of aspiring public relations professionals." The results proved that 71% of their work revolved around writing. Interestingly enough the most common complaint towards PR writing was grammar. The text states that it is as important (maybe even more important) to be able to successfully and effectively write to the clients, because "...Frankly most of our communication is to the client." The key point in terms of writing to suit pr is versatility, to be able to write not just media releases, but front page stories and web pages. This particular test has developed my understanding of writing in pr, especially writing for clients which is probably the most important component of pr writing. I think that this text was included in our prescribed readings to encourage us to undertake more subjects that motivate us to practice writing, especially using grammar.

The third text from the PR News journal, 'How to...ten steps to press release perfection', bringing our study back to the level of media releases and the need for appropriate writing techniques for these when performing successful media relations. The points that I got from this text were that pr practitioners should:

• sell their story through journalistic methods such as the inverted pyramid, as opposed to simply sounding commerical in their release.
• It is important that the release is crafted for each particular audience or media type as one release will not suit a broad range of media outlets, each is different and a practitioner needs to identify the values and formats of each source.
• Make sure the release is short. The text states that the theme of the release should be said in the first sentence, which again draws it back to values of journalists in creating the news through the first sentence of a story, thus appealing to the busy work person.
• The release is often assessed by the heading and subheading, so it needs to be grabbing and appropriate.
• Do as much work for the journalists as possible, find out all the information that you think they would need to write the story. Think not about what they can do for you but what you can do for them.
• Provide a variety of contacts, and be sure to include two for each organisation to aid journalists in getting quotes and coverage of those contacts (just in case one does not respond to the journalists calls and contact.
• Make sure that you check your release after you have written it and before you send it, for grammar mistakes such as pubic relations.

I think that this text just reinforces the information that I have already learnt about media relations from a pr perspective so far in this course. Despite this i did not knos that it was important to have two contacts for each organisation or that the headline and subheading were important for journalists when choosing a release to cover, as I thought that healines were not often included, rather that a simple description of the story was placed there.

Again a tropical gathering of readings that have stimulated my learning experience.