The Fifth Week.

Chapter 11: Facing the Media.

I am pretty excited with this chapter because the media has always been an industry I wanted to understand. I learnt that the Public Relations role involves looking for opportunities to publish newsworthy stories about their organization that will support their objectives. That is to increase awareness, improve community relations, attract people to an event, and even to minimize concern about something that is not working so well.

“Presenting the public face of an organization is a key role of the public relations practitioner.” (Hamish McLean & Richard Phillipps, 2009).

I also read that most media relations work results in uncontrolled communication, in which the public relations practitioner cannot guarantee that the story will be used in what form. I remember Ms Tanya talking to us about this. When you are new in the PR industry, you should be very careful; journalists who have been working in the industry for a long time would take your story and make it something else. So good relations and follow-up is very important in knowing what will come out in The Straits Times front page tomorrow.

I learnt that gatekeepers, such as the editors, director of news, or chiefs of staff are the ones who make the decision on whether to accept or reject your story based on how interesting the story is, whether this story can win the competition at the newsstand, or whether it is more exciting than the news they have on hand already. They each have different ideas of what are the right news items to select, depending on the news values.

I found that media releases are the key tool in media relations, but to be effective they must contain news, not hype. And that in reality, the media relies on the PR practitioners as sources of news to a great extent. How’s that for journalists being so proud and bullying new PR professionals.

I am excited as I have the keys to success! Building relationships with journalists and editors, getting to know the journalists, know how newsrooms are organized, develop a media strategy, and always meet my deadlines.

Now am I ready to be a PR practitioner?