2/6/10

Week6: Engaging With The Media

In my opinion, media is indeed important to PR practitioners cause it is a very powerful tool that PR practitioners can reach out to the audience. According to the two-step flow theory, (Katz & Lazersfeld, 1995) stated that before we can reach out to our audience, we should first try to convince the opinion makers, in this case the media, as audience tend to listen to what the opinion maker states through the media. As human beings, we will tend to feel more convinced as we follow our opinion makers. As for controlled and uncontrolled communication, I feel that PR practitioners results in more uncontrolled communication because they can never guarantee how the story will be told or in what way will it be used. Controlled communication is somehow similar to advertising as there is a specific form to publish or reach out to the specific audience.

Similar to what Miss Tanya had shared with us, it is important for PR practitioners to maintain a good relationship with the gatekeepers as they are the ones who control if he/her story should be published. Undeniably, besides maintaining a good relationship, the story has to be interesting and must fit certain criteria as well. Also, convergences are happening fast. When I totally agree when the writer wrote that different types of media are used currently in today's society. Once again, like what we've shared in class, as people try to introduce Wii into the market, they allow people to test it out and see the advantages of the product themselves rather than just publishing news, posters about it. From here, we can witness that there are more ways to promoting and it is important for us to keep up with the trend.

I totally agree to the keys to success stated in the book. Of all the keys, I feel that having up-to-date databases is the most important. This is because we have to constantly be updated so as to be able to compete with other Public Relations firms. Also, it does widen our experience in some ways. Professionalism can be showed and prov
en as PR practitioners are constantly aware of changes and are clear of what they are trying to find or trying to tell.

However, I do feel that it is quite tedious to know what is news and what is not and I think that it is something that i should try to improve on as the years go. I do agree with (Stanton, 2007) when he advised that we should find an angle that localises the whole event. However, I do not think that it is easy to find that particular angle. This is an essential tool in writing a good media release that PR practitioners will most probably do in future.

Overall, there are seriously a lot of things to take note of when engaging with the media. conducting news conferences, having a spokesperson, dealing with legal and ethical issues, copyright issues and all. A lot of planning is needed and one must be patient to be able to deal with the above. Even if there seems to be a lot of effort that needs to be put in, we should always think of the end result and do our best.
Media owns the soul

2 comments:

  1. That is a nice picture to depict the influence media has in our lives! We are all surrounded by countless forms of media asserting its influence on us, such as advertisements and news coverage. It is important,as what you mentioned, to convince these opinion makers to stand on our side as PR practitioners.
    -Andy

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  2. Hey! the media is indeed a powerful tool that can be used to our advantage, especially for PR. At the same time we should also be careful with the media as we do not want to get on the wrong side of it. Things might just turn ugly for us practitioners.

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