Keeping Up With The World

Media monitoring

Unfortunately, one of the most common tasks most interns will encounter throughout their experience is A LOT of media monitoring. Let’s be honest – media monitoring can be a long and tedious task. It resulted in me questioning the necessity of this task, particularly when it involves tracking the industries and competitors of your clients as well as the company itself. After this, the filing process is even longer as the details of each article is scanned, cropped, filed in several platforms, printed and calculated.

Each morning, I spend two hours flicking through various newspapers, scanning the articles for 23 names of clients, along with news concerning their industry and competition. Two ladies in our office have a job purely designated to newspaper monitoring – and they still need extra help in the mornings. Meanwhile, other workers in the office are scanning the online world for articles and news about their clients.

Fortunately, this means public relations has the opportunity to become extremely familiar with what’s going on in the world. I learnt to enjoy this task as I become familiar with events, politics and issues throughout Malaysia. 

Your public relations consultancy's client benefits from relevant news is filtered for them through to review without manually searching the media. The client also receives consistent updates with statistical analysis’s concerning the news value in print, online, broadcast and social media, allowing them to compare how the media is presenting their company from month to month.

Those interested in public relations should have an interest in the news and media, as well as a curiosity for the world’s activities maintains your interest through activities such as media monitoring.