Submitting a press release to the right people in the hierarchy will ensure its timeliness. Time factor is very important as it gives depth to the scale of its importance. It also ensures the relevance of the press release.
Choosing the right media tactic is important as well because the level of importance of the press release demands a certain medium. For example, if the matter is pressing at hand, a press conference may be called for to address the woes of the public.
The readings made me think about public relations theory/practice in that a PR practitioner can only do his best to effectively compose the media release because thereafter he has limited or no control over how it is delivered to the public. A PR practitioner's use of promotional language may be excessively undermined by the journalist's use of formal hard news language which may not heighten the company's image as well as intended by the PR practitioner. This conflicting nature of the two jobs has often caused misunderstandings between the two. Nonetheless, both have to cooperate fully because they are mutually interdependent. Furthermore, most of the news stories actually come from media releases.
2 comments:
Firstly, I agree on your point of knowing the right people to contact to release the message the the publics. After all, we do not want our audience to receive a distorted message. However, I believe this takes years of experience to build up a PR practitioner's reputation before journalists would want to take on what we have to say to the public.
On another note, our lecturer, Tanya also reminded us that these journalists owe PR practitioners nothing, therefore having the mindset and expectation of being favoured by them is most definitely undesirable. That explains the "conflicting nature of the the two jobs..."
I believe PR practitioner must have the skills and knowledge to effectively capture journalists' attention,in particular of those intending to write on our 'stories'.
In order to do so, like Tanya has mentioned, our first 2 paragraphs has to be exciting and captivating. At the same time, I believe, it must not be exaggerated to the point where the real meaning of the message has been manipulated.
What IS the real meaning of the message? In my opinion exaggeration helps to elevate the extent of promotional value attached to the message. Exaggeration does not keep the truth from people. Maybe the real concern is making sure that the media release we submit is not a word vomit rather a valuable message that can create a huge impact on the target audience.
The challenge is reaching out to the minority who makes up the core of your target audience because journalists may feel that the message does not bear a huge significance to it. Therefore, PR practitioners should make it as newsworthy as possible.
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