Public Relations Writing Class

This class has definitely been one of the most helpful classes I have taken, that I can actually apply what I have learned into my field.  Being a Communication major, we have to take ridiculous amounts of classes that consist of theory and culture and communicating, and although a few things might be interesting, they real seem to me like a waste of my time in school.  Like I don't care about theory as much as I do about how to write a press release or take a conference call.  PR writing has taught me a lot about things I actually will be doing for the rest of my career.  I think now that I have a little more of a hands on approach of how PR works and the inner workings of a campaign, I have learned what my strengths and weaknesses are.  I think the more work I do in this field the sooner I will get an idea of where I want to take my interests in this field.  I enjoy the writing aspects the best, but I feel like when I do assignments, or work on the projects, it is much more enjoyable to be working on a topic that you actually care about, because that is when you want to make an impact, and you get creative.  If I could get an internship working for a company that interests me, I would be very lucky and excited to get started.  I really would like to do more writing maybe for magazines like glamour or something that involves a lot of PR, I think that would be really cool.  Anyway, yea PR writing was a tonnn of work but in the long run I am glad I took the class, because for once it was a class that I really did need to take.  It is almost over though...... finally!!!!! I am sooo done with school this semester!!!

Our Group Project

I had a group project for the semester that was using PR to spread awareness about the NJSPCA.  Now that the semester is winding down, we are almost done with all of our final work, and watching everything come into effect. I definitely feel like we had to do a whole lot of work for the project, and it has been very stressful at times, it is well worth it in the end. 

I feel like now that I have had to do so much work for this project, and all of it relates to the concepts that we discussed in lessons throughout the class. Yes we get bookwork here and there, but once we had to relate these assignments to real life clients, I got a much better understand of what PR really is.  We are starting to see that some of our work is being published, and we also got some time slots on popular radio stations.  We have been emailing and calling all sorts of people, drafting and writing endless releases and documents, but it is rewarding to see that all of our hard work is actually doing some good.

I'm so used to having group projects and presentations that are about so much content, but nothing ever as real as this group project.  It is almost like it is a job, and it is seriously real life.  It is definitely a good start to a career in this field.

My Spring Slump

Sooo I know I keep complaining about the winter weather, and now that its finally over I thought my troubles would be also.... but nope I have even more things to complain about now. Not much complaining but more stressing out! I am verrry verry happy about the weather becoming more warm, but I really hope my work ethic becomes better and not worse! I have been so lazy lately with procrastinating homework, and not going to the gym! I need to get back in gear and I can’t figure out what my problem is haha! I really hope that the nice weather will give me more energy because the last thing I need is to pick up spring fever!


Also, I got a little puppy dog! He is the cutest thing ever!! He is a little 4 month old brindle pit-bull boy, aha and his name is Bubba! I did not name him that, he came with the name, but once I started yelling at him all the time, "Bubba NO!" it kind of stuck with me n my roommates. He is also, ALOT of work and a HUGE responsibility. I just really cant go out anymore or leave my apartment too often because he hates being left alone, and needs a lot of attention. We really want to make sure we train him well so that he doesn’t become one of those mean, nasty pit bulls that so many people related with the breed. But he is also such a great, unbelievably cute dog, and me and my roommates love taking him on walks so I think he will be good for us.

So besides all the pressure from school and a new puppy, I also have been freaking out because of work! The tiki bar is finally about to open, so yayyyy I get to make good money again, butt its going to be a lot of long hours squeezed into my schedule. I thought we were opening the bar in two weeks, but we have a work meeting the other day, and since it is going to be so nice towards the end of the week they decided that they will be opening the bar TOMORROW and I get to work it! Hopefully it will be nice out because I need to make money, and pay Verizon since apparently they think I owe them my entire life in order to have a blackberry! I really do love my job though and so I am really exciting to start off yet another summer there.

I also am going to be starting off my horseback riding season in a month, so I REALLY need to start riding and practicing again before we start competing. My pony is so out of shape and she is going to be so slow and misbehaved if I don’t get back on her. I rode the other day for the first time in a month, when everyone else (the die-hards) rides like 4 times a week :-/, aha and I was sooo sore from it. When you don’t ride for a while all those leg mussels go unused, so after you get back on a few weeks later, so literally can barely walk the next day. And my arms were soo sore too because my pony is a little nut and since I haven’t ridden her in so long, she was a little out of control and I have to keep pulling her back like tug of war when I was riding.

Ok, so I think I'm done venting and complaining now. Aha this doesn’t seem so bad anymore, I just cannot be lazy and I need to keep my head up. This could all potentially be very fun, and spring is not so bad, because that means SUMMMER is just around the corner and then there is nooo room for whining.

Opinion Pieces

Soo opinion peices? As much as I would like to say I read often, that would be a lie.  But since I dislike reading alot, I can definitely say that I read newspapers and magezines more than anything else, but normally only if I'm bored at work or need something to entertain my ADD at times.  When I read the newpapers I always skip to the things I actually care about, meaning what can entertain me.  I actually enjoy opinion peices becuase although that arent "newsworthy" all of the time, they do seem to teach you alot about a wide variety of random subjects.  Some people may think of it as useless information, but I would like to refer to it as "qulaity life information".  You will have to listen to peoples opions about whatever given topic it is, but some people bring up excellent points about things that you would have never thought to pay attention to before, and so you can learn something!  Anyway, I think more people should pay attention to opinion pieces in media outlets becuase we need to keep the more personal aspect of the media alive so that we all dont become so maintstream and boring!

ABC Controversy

I think ABC definitely decided to go back on the air because of a bad PR decision. The Academy Awards is one of this channels most important programs a year, and it would be completely foolish is they decided not let it be available to as many as all of cablevisions users. It was a good decision on ABC’s part to allow Cablevision customers to watch the Oscars, only missing an hour of the Award Ceremony. Not showing the Oscars would be a bad more for ABC because it would lose a lot of respect for viewers and cause bad publicity for this family based channel for years to come. It is a better decision to allow themselves to look like the victims in this situation since cablevision has had its power trip. By turning their airtime back on they made viewers seem important since they chose its reliability rather than just money purposes. Cablevision is becoming a monopoly so we all know that the customers were the ones affected by Cablevisions money hungry antics, so its not fair to punish the customers.  It was also a good decision because it makes them look like the bigger better person over Cablevision.  

Cablevision has been making themselves look very bad, with a lot of recent issuses they have been starting with subscriptions with other TV networks and have resulted in the pulling of programming. Cablevision had a recent issue with  the Scripps network, which is on the Food Network channel. In this sitation, similiar to the ABC dispute, Scripps pulled their programming from Cablevision. Two serious issues in such a short time looks very bad for their repuation.  That is why this recent programming issue was more of a concern for  Cablevision more than ABC. Cablevision profited  $8 billion last year, and are still charging customers obsene amounts of money, but yet still cant seem to get what they pay for. Cablevision is trying to start all of this drama with everyone's contracts and refusing to pay anymore money but yet its customers bills keep going up.  They need some serious PR work after this one!

Group Project So Far

So our group is the NJSPCA, which is the New Jersey chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. This is a not for profit organization and is based out of New Brunswick. Our group assignment is to generate more awareness of the organization, and overall get more funding available. We had a little bit of a technicality the first week because we were all supposed to have met with clients and created a brief to hand in. Our client happened to be on vacation for the week we were doing the assignment, so we actually got an extension.

Since we had to complete our briefs the following week, it was a little hectic because everyone already had prior arrangements since it is spring break. We arranged to meet with our client over the phone, and had the opportunity to do our first conference call ever. I think we were pretty successful with our call, and we did get a lot of the information we needed in order to do our brief. It was very awkward at first, and we didn’t really get the proper format for a conference call, like if we all had to introduce ourselves, and we were a little unorganized with what types of questions we needed to ask the man. I think we did a good job thought and I feel like we pulled a successful conference call with the little time we prepared.

As for writing the brief, I feel like we didn’t really know what we were doing, and if our format was correct. I think what we created was a good start, but we will definitely need some editing and insight from our professor before we send the brief back to our client. I feel like the overall project is going to be fun because I really care about animals, and I like knowing that I will be learning a lot from this experience, and am finally getting a chance to do my schoolwork for real life situations. The only thing I am a little bit bummed about is that we were not assigned to create any type of event; we were assigned just to generate awareness. I feel like we will need to do some person to person situations, but I still was looking forward to actually coordinating something. But we will see!!!!!

Media Anxiety?

There are a lot of things that scare me about working with the media! I think anyone in my shoes probably feels the same way.  I am very inexperianced with all of this, considering the fact that I am a student, so all of my assignments are basically fake and I have never really gotten in touch with the media in first hand.  I think the thing I am just really scared of is that I am just going to do something to mess up and screw over either my client, or just my entire career in general.  The media is scarey becuase they are heartless out there, and you just need to try and do your best without stepping on any toes.  I just hope that I am creative enough to reach out to them and have them actually be interested in what I have to say.

 Theres so many different kinds of work that someone has to do in the PR world, and I just hope when I finally get a chance to work in this industry, that I am first broken in easy.  I want to be able to handle my clients or assignments I wouldnt say with ease, but I definitely want to feel more comfortable and confident with what I am doing, or who I am writing to.  I understand that in order to succeed you need to have a tough spine, and the only way to get that is to put yourself in those stressful situations and work throught it.  I just really want to make sure I dont mess up royaly in the beginning, becuase I feel like once I really get started and get the hang of things, I wont be so afraid and confused. 

Also, I am really horrible at creating media outlet lists.. Maybe it was just for this first client assignment we had, but I really could not figure out which sources to reach out to.  I hope that in the future when I am assigned these type of things for my job in real life, that I will be able to get more feild experiance, or understand the background of my client better, so that when I am asked to create a media outlet list, that I will not have to sit around for hours thinking of who I could possibly pitch this to.  It should come natural and obvious for who you need to speak with to get what you want, and the more you are familiar with your client.  I guess it will be easier once I get more experiance also becuase once you do it a bunch of times, you kind of have a greater understanding of who is out there, the right people to talk to, and you will begin to have established relationships with some of these people the longer you stick around.

AHa I sound like a mess and like I am afraid of everything after just re-reading this.  Hopefully I really am not the only one that feels this way!