The readings this week suggest that there is a lot to consider when conducting relations with the media. This is emphasised in the reading “writing a media release” (Tymson, Lazar and Lazar, 2006). In summary, the key points I learnt from this week's readings was that media release are the most used method of media relations. It was highlighted that in order for a media release to be successful it had to be newsworthy in regards to angle, interest, emotion and achievement. Before reading the set text I was unaware that there was such thing as hard news and soft news. Hard news refers to stories that a deemed serious and usually occupy the front pages of newspapers and soft news refers to human interest stories that can be amusing or entertaining (Tymson, Lazar & Lazar, 2006).
When writing news release it is vital that you target the correct media for your message, structure your release following the rules of the inverted pyramid, choose your method of distribution wisely and conform to media deadlines. My learning builds upon previous learning about public relations in that although these are all desired when writing news releases it isn’t always the case. This is exemplified in Sallot and Johnson’s reading where out of the 156 coded journalist reports analysed for the article, 115 of the journalists “complained of practitioners lack of news sense and values, accuracy, timeliness and style of presentation- such as the inverted pyramid” (Sallot & Johnson, 2005).
I found it particularly interesting to note that in Sallot and Johnson’s reading 93% of journalists preferred or liked being contacted by email. This is why it is imperative to understand the internet as a medium when creating media relations. I learnt that when emailing it is important to never bulk address, leave out any fancy formatting, keep it simple, subject your headline and preface and personalise the email (Tymson, Lazar & Lazar, 2006). I found the email checklist and pros and cons table extremely helpful when considering what is appropriate for emailing.
1 comment:
Jo,
Your entry summaries the key points in writing a media release well. Your points about the popularity of email with journalists and the importance of keeping emails simple are good. I was also unaware of the hard/soft news although they are now easily identifiable.
Post a Comment