66, that’s what I scored in my PR Techniques. I was struggling with the unit since day one and at that time, I thought, just how important was writing in PR? After all, most well known infamous PR professionals are known by their rebuttal skills. Alastair Campbell, for instance, is well known for his spin in accusing Saddam Hussien to have WMD, not his penning skills.
Of course, this thought was wrong. According to various surveys, writing is a highly prized skill in the PR industry. If Barack Obama did not have a good speech writer, his catch phrase of “yes we can” won’t exist.
I started my internship with the Department for Communities (DfC) a few weeks ago and most of my duties include writing. As boring as it sounds, I actually enjoyed it. The things that I’ve learned there was much more fulfilling than some of my previous internships, where I was better known as the photocopy master.
So far, I have written around 5 to 6 media releases for DfC’s internal communications. One of the things that I’ve learnt was a good article doesn’t mean being grammar free and using the right words. Instead, writing is about manipulating the psychology of the reader.
For instance, a simple sentence like, “Staff awarded by Minister”, is a straight no to journalists. The first mistake was using the word “by”, which according to my supervisors, a very passive word. The second mistake was the structure of it. As the Minister is of a higher position than the staff, the Minister’s name should be mentioned first. Hence, the sentence should be changed to “Minister awards staff”.
Perhaps another tough thing is writing in plain English, avoiding the use of flowery language when writing. If you’re like most students I know, you should know this is difficult as we all have the tendency to lengthen our writing just to fulfill the minimum requirement of the assignment’s word count limit.
Anyway, I hope everyone is having fun in their placement. I shall be posting more posts soon.
Hin
2 comments:
Hi Hin
I thought it was interesting how you wrote that you should avoid flowery language in a media release. As your media releases have been for an internal purpose, that makes sense, and I also remember being taught in PR techniques not to use flowery language. So having that drummed into me I also recently wrote a media release for Westfield shopping centre on shopping there for father's day. How wrong I was to write my media release with straight forward concise information! In the end the opening sentence (with the 5 W's) was kept and the rest was changed. So apparently depending on the situation, and depending on the target audience, techniques change!! - they never taught us that one! I suppose that's why we go on prac in the first place, so that when we actually enter the real world we have an idea of what we are actually expected to do, as well as the type of questions we are supposed to ask so that we don't complete work items looking like we walked in from the street with no degree at all!
I do agree with you that we are manipulating the psychology of the reader though, and that's where PR starts to incorporate /overlaps with its cousins - advertising and marketing. Obviously internally you're not intending to sell, market or advertise anything, however promotion is one of the marketing mix and PR is all about promoting or publicity...which I think are fairly similar..? And then you are also selling the story to an audience to read and that's why the title has to be so catchy/ interesting/ correct (or politically correct). What do you think? Good luck, your placement sounds very interesting! :)
Hi, Hin.
It is good even though wearisome to verify a press release by many people, for your case, 5. Thinking of it, I find it a good initiative as what a person has missed an error, another person will find it.
Indeed, I agree with you on the basis that at the time, we were doing PR techniques; we did not see much of the importance of this unit. Now, that we have seen insights of the PR world, all its values came to our mind. By the way, I also like the speech that President Barack Obama did for his campaign, it was really good. Very good PR person behind this success.
I am happy your internship is going on just fine and keeps it up.
Thanks for sharing those tips about the sentence structure.
I remember that I had to write an invitation of a press conference. I had to keep it short, but concise to attract the attention of journalist. Flowery language is to be avoided as it will only lengthen the invitation, but not impactful, which is the element that is needed.
Keep us updated.
Regards,
Joyce.
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