So one thing that you learn at uni is you need to make connections and most importantly know or have a good relationship with the media. Yes, I used to read the newspapers back in Secondary school but back then id never need to take notice of which publication each paper was produced by or which journalist wrote each article. So in my first week I was told to create a media contact list for a pharmaceutical company. Audrey told me to look for specific journalist or editors that have written similar articles in that particular industry. You could imagine how lost I would have felt . Where do I start? Luckily enough Audrey knew that I have been away for about 3 years and decided to give me a hand just in the beginning.The links she handed me is what I would like to call my bibles at my internship.
1. Factiva
This is how the login page looks like. Factiva is a website you go to when you want to search for articles from the newspapers. Any newspaper such as The Straits Times, Today, Business Time etc.
This website is what saved me for most of my media monitoring tasks and searching for relevant journalist.
2. Singapore Press Centre
This particular page in the Singapore Press Centre website, Journalist Room, is where you can go to to find specific editors of specific sections in each newspaper such as the Life! section or Digital Life or Mind Your Body etc.
From these two websites I was able to slowly get a grip and my finger around what kind of media centres there were. I remember Audrey telling me that some times the contact details on the particular websites could be outdated so the best way to find a specific journalist or editor would be to "just pick up the phone and call".
That was one of the first things I learnt at my internship. Using this "bible" of mine, I was able to start putting together the media contact list. This was something I learnt in previous internships in Perth. This is when I realised, PR anywhere is going to be relatively similar.
So the next thing I learnt is to do media clippings. Yes they teach this to you at University, but I was taught that each client or company has a specific way they want their media coverage report to look like. Audrey also likes it in a particular format, for example whatever size it is in she likes it all to be compiled as one image. So this is when you use your "Paint" skills. So if it is a double page coverage in a magazine, you would have to scan it, crop it and save it as one image.
This was a full page article in The Business Times paper. I had to scan four sections and then crop it and then save it as one image. I had a bit of difficulty but I can proudly say that I am now a pro at doing media clippings.
The next thing I learnt was to do pitches. Practicing in class is one thing and actually doing it is another. I learnt to methods of pitching; an email pitch and a call pitch.
My email pitch was to bloggers; mum bloggers, lifestyle bloggers and technology bloggers. It was to get them to take a look at this device sold at tech@vogue called iBaby Monitor.
The call pitch was to Secondary School Teachers about a ex footballer cum author, PJ Roberts. You tend to be more nervous and pause a lot even though you're very prepared. I personally feel this is because you do not know the person on the other line. But I must say the teachers were very nice. My colleague, Grace, told me that the media are much more harder to talk to.
I definitely have learnt much more but these are the 3 most interesting things I have learnt so far.
- Sivapriya Suraindran
Curtin Singapore
