Week 7

I think the key points to remember from this week’s readings were:

• Media Relations can range from dealing with a few select contacts on a regular basis or to managing hundreds of media personnel at a national event.
• Dealing with the media is an integral part of much PR activity. The media is a powerful tool used by PR practitioners.
• Media Monopolies- 'Big Three'- In Australian media ownership- Fairfax, Murdoch and Packer. Fairfax has dominant shareholding in the Australian Associated Press (AAP), the news service that supplies stories to the media.
• Media reliance on info from PR outlets is increasing. Reliance on syndicated work, press agencies and news subsidies- material generated by organisations and channeled through PR practitioners. Becoming easier for PRs to gain access to the media due to lack of staff and funding for investigative journalism.
  
• PR has become one of the most important external influences on journalism as it is now practised- (Marshall and Kingsbury 1996, 127).
• Media monitoring is a type of feedback process for PR but it is this type of research that keeps them up to date with issues, events, changes, trends, legislation, debates and public opinion.
• 'Clippings Files' (from organisations such as Media Monitoring)- provide a useful record of the media coverage of organisations, events or issues (relating to them) and can be important for PR research when planning a campaign.
• News values should also be used by PR practitioners when weiting media releases. Impact, conflict, timeliness, proximity, prominence, currency, human interest and the unusual (Conley 2002, 42). Also sex, money, disaster, drugs and animals (Granato, 1991: 34).
• It is important to know the dead lines of the news rooms. Also that radio is most effective as it has immediacy, flexibility and the ability to be 'rip-and-read' news.
• PR practitioners must know the newsroom hierarchy. The Editor is the most important then the chief-of-staff and then the Rounds people (who are an integral part of most news outlets). Rounds include politics, courts, health etc.
  
• You should get to know journalists by name, foster a positive working relationship, know the needs of the medium your using (providing pics, VRNs).
• The best known communication tool for PR is the media release/ press release/ news release. For these, write in news style as previously covered.
  
• Media kits- made up of fact sheets(easy reference guides which list key attributes of an organisation or event), Backgrounders (background/ historical info to an event/organisation), Feature Articles (less formal than news stories), Profiles or 'blog' and other items such as business cards.
• The online readings were about how to prepare an oral presentation and speaking as part of a group. They were very helpful. Students should follow these!!!!
  

The readings made me think about Public Relations in that it incorporates both technical aspects, in writing media releases and compiling media kits as well as advising senior staff of an organisation working with the media. I have learnt that media relations calls on the key attributes of writing, organisation and planning, as well as keen interpersonal skills and good knowledge of news.