To contact....or not

I may have been a little late in accessing this article but from the first sentence I was intrigued. It was good to have something that looked at another aspect of PR and how PR is viewed by a stakeholder that holds a primary role in the function. The content of this course has concentrated on PR function, their publics and the organisation and has only briefly touched on the impact of other stakeholders. Journalists have, since the beginning of the PR function and Ivy Lee have had a controlling interest in the success or failure of a PR campaign and it was certainly refreshing to look at some research investigating how journalists perceive the PR function. It was good to see the explanation of the method and how questions were coded.

It made me think about PR in that…it gave an insight into how the PR practitioners are treated and how much (or how little) their work was respected by others outside the industry. The reading also made me think about how important networking skills are in the PR function and why it is necessary to develop relationships with journalists and news editors.

I think the most important part of the readings were….the reading illustrated how important it is too ensure that press releases are formatted correctly, this in turn will add to the usability of the press release. The authors also indicate the necessity for PR practitioners to build rapport with journalists which will help the practitioners develop news stories in a manner that reflects the journalists’ interests.

Sallot & Johnson’s (2006) was perhaps the most useful reading that I have been exposed to in CMNS1290 as it gave a subjective view of the function. For the entire semester we have been subjected to the [sometimes] vague and overly descriptive readings from the Johnson and Zawawi (2004) text and certainly gave a more informed view of how the PR function is positioned in an organisational sense.



References

Johnston, J. and Zawawi, C. 2004, Public relations: theory and practice. 2nd edition. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin

Sallot, L.M. & Johnson, E.A., 2006, To contact…or not? Investigating journalists’ assessments of public relations subsidies and contact preferences, Public Relations Review 32, pp83-86.

i commented on Kellie's blog re: this reading http://cmns1290kellieosullivan.blogspot.com/