Print media?

“Keep up to date with what is happening in the media, listen to alternative radio stations and read a broad range of publications…” our lecturers tell us. How many publications must an upcoming PR professional be familiar with and how much detail should one know about each publication in order to be successful in PR? Is keeping up to date and flicking through the covers of a few different publications enough to work with print media? My internship experience so far leads me to believe that this is not the case. After only a few weeks, the importance of knowing the print media in your industry inside out, as well as the value building relationships with journalists to a point where they come to you for stories has been highlighted significantly!

My two main assignments during my internship at The Strategist Group have been to help deliver the first of a series of TEDx events for the company and to develop a full media kit and media list from scratch. For both of these assignments, the opportunity to write and submit some press releases has come up, however due to my limited understanding about the print media and no pre-existing journalist relationships in the industry, I was not successful in having anything published. Knowing your print media and building networks with journalists is something that anyone in PR will tell you is the bread and butter of the profession. However I was shocked to discover how difficult it was to execute these two fundamental things in PR.

What I have concluded from my experience so far is that knowing the names, target readership, circulation and key story types of a publication is not enough. In order to be successful in using print media, we must pay attention to the language that difference publications use, the perception of the publications by its’ readers, the publication’s creditability, take note of the topics that are being debated, who is being quoted, the names of the journalists who are writing in the industry and the story pitching etiquette for each publication. However, even if all of this can be understood about the different print media publications, unless you have a strong relationship with the journalists, it is unlikely that you will be successful in getting anything published.

I cannot fully express in worlds how happy I am to have this learning now and not after I finish my degree. Furthermore these realisations have caused me to read publications that I would never have looked at before and read them with completely different eyes. When I read now, I no longer read to just have a generic understanding of what is going on. I read with an eye for opportunities to contribute valuable information to the media and to communicate to my company’s message to their publics. I am really looking forward to picking up the phone and starting to build network’s with journalists in the coming weeks. I feel that I have done my research and that I have a better chance now of getting something published before I finish my internship.

Curious to know if anyone else has experienced a similar realisation during their internship and if anyone has any tips in moving forward with building relationships with journalists??