Week 8

I think the important points to remember from this week's readings were that good writing skills in public relations is an invaluable asset when entering the workforce as a graduate, and also throughout your career. As tench says in the Wise reading,

“Writing is one of the foundations of a successful public relations practitioner and the ability to communicate messages clearly and concisely is one of their differentiating skills.”

This statement is regarding who is chosen for first year graduate positions in the public relations field. Thus the ability to deliver this is something we as undergrads should hope to obtain by the completion of our degree. Overall I think these readings are trying to get us to understand that as public relations practitioners our jobs are to publicise and control the information dispersed about an company, so it is imperative that we present insightful, informative and interesting documents for the journalists, for without their assistance we would be out of a job. Thus framing is very important. Knowing how to frame a piece for a certain audience will ultimately aid in getting your information getting printed. Also knowing what format to distribute information, for example by web or by printed medium will also effect whether a journalist will use it or discard it. Though this skill, of knowing how to deliver the information is highly personal as Sallot and Johnson state,

“It is obvious that journalists’ preferences are highly individualistic.”

This is where relationship building skills will help you have the knowledge of what to send to what journalist.


The readings made me think more about public relations theory/practice in that while I chose to do public relations instead of journalism because I thought there would be less writing involved and that the writing would not expected to be of such a high level. In fact the effort and thought put into writing for public relations may be more in depth than journalism, because with every piece of information we disperse we need to be pushing for it to get published over the other information which may be just as important as our own.