Week 6: Media Relations

I think the key points to remember from this week's readings are that the skills needed in Public Relations is rather similar to journalists when it comes to media liaison and for writing media releases.

They both need to know the different levels of media, how they operate individually, what are their needs and wants, and who the contact person would be for each media level. Who is the target audience and how to effectively reach them also also very critical.

In writing media releases, there are 8 points that makes a news, 'newsworthy'. This was discussed in journalism classes on which makes the most impact, and usually news can have more than one factor that makes it newsworthy.

It is also interesting to note that while media releases are written in the inverted pyramid style, many of the media releases that i have read focuses on the wrong news factor.

What the PR practitioner thinks is news might not be the news focus that the journalists are looking for. For example, PSB Idol semi finals is coming up next week, and if the PR dept of student council decides to write a media release for the event, they might focus the news on the event itself that it is upcoming next week, that its current, and sensational since people are interested in singing events.

However, a journalist might view that the news factor is that among the top 5 favourite singers, only 1 of them is a Singaporean, with the rest being from all other countries. Or that through out the competition, there was a distinct lack of English songs, as most the songs are sung in the singer's native language.

So the focus of the news would be like “English is not the main language for the singing competition of PSB Academy.” This is what distinctively separates the media release that is written by the PR, and the news article written by the journalist.

The readings made me think more about the correlation of skills between the PR practitioner and the journalist, that to be adept in either field, sufficient knowledge and understanding of both fields must be present. This would result in better communication and increase the effectiveness of information exchange, promoting a better perception of each other's occupation.

As i was commenting in Pei Pei's blog, I think that the current reality is that there is a tendency for both journalists and PR practitioners to be independent of each other. I believe it is due to the misconception and inherent biasness that both sides would have.

The PR practitioner would be viewed negatively by the journalist as potential spin doctors whose main aim is to garner publicity in every way possible and hence that misconception would drive a wedge between communications from both sides.

On the other hand, journalists are commonly misunderstood as reporters who only care about sensational news and only wants to get a scoop of the latest happening. The idea of a journalist being civic minded and writing for the good of the public can be marred by the negative behaviors of the paparazzi.

Hence it is important to resolve this misconceptions and bad reputations, by having both sides clean up their act, adopt a code of ethics, actively demonstrate professionalism and maintain cordial relations with each other.