So I don’t know if anyone read my blog from
Friday about my time at the Shenton Park Dogs’ Refuge supervising a photo shoot
for the corporate volunteering day… If you didn’t you might want to read it
before I go on…because it’s amazing how much can change in 24 hours.
So on Friday I was relishing the fact that
the story I wrote a media release for and supervised a photo shoot for, made
page 3 of the The Post newspaper.
When my supervisor told me this news I was absolutely thrilled and she sent me
a copy of it, though because I was at university I just gave it a quick glance
and moved on.
Because I was the one who wrote the media
release for the story, I was also the person who contacted and did interviews
with all those involved in the volunteering day, including the husband and wife
who donated the $10,000 worth of turf for the refuge. This was all so that I
could write up a media release to be sent to journalists who may want to write
the story in their newspaper.
To my dismay however, on Saturday I
received a text message from the wife who donated the turf saying she was
disappointed because some of the facts of the story were wrong. I then told her
to give me five minutes so that I could read over the story and then give her a
call. I read it and realised that she was correct, a lot of the facts did
actually get mixed up. It wasn’t anything too bad just a few simple errors but
still it seemed to mean a lot to her so I gave her a call and said I would try
and see what I could do.
I started to panic a little because I felt
terrible and went over the media release I sent out to the journalists and
realised that no, all of my facts were correct and the error was actually on
behalf of the journalist who wrote the story- who was actually my second year
journalism tutor.
The first thing I wanted to do was ring up
my previous tutor David Cohen and say: “Remember all those times you told us to
always check the facts and be accurate with whatever we are reporting? Well ha!
You made errors in your story so there!”
Obviously my brain got the better of me and I didn’t, and decided to
contact my supervisor to ask her what to do.
So I did this and she explained to me that
the errors were only really minor and the story still put the husband and wife
who donated the turf in a really positive light, and it was really great media
coverage for the dogs’ home. She then went on to explain to me how the
journalists and newspaper are actually doing us a favour by putting our story
into the paper, and especially on page 3 because it really is free
advertisement for both the refuge and also the turf company. She also said how
asking for an apology might jeopardise the already really stable relationship
our consultancy has with The Post
newspaper and said if we were to criticize them they may not put our stories in
at all in the future.
Because The
Post comes out on Friday, all journalists must file their stories by 12:30pm
on Thursday. As we did the photo shoot on Thursday at 11:30 the journalist only
had little time to go back and file it and so this is where the errors must
have occurred.
I thought about all of this and knew she
was right. Although I felt terrible for the wife, at the end of the day it was
a really great story and gave our client some really good media coverage. I now
just had to ring the wife and try and explain this to her in the nicest
possible way.
My supervisor Ruth helped me come up with
some phrases because frankly I was a little bit scared of ‘getting my head
bitten off’ in case the wife was still unhappy. I really wanted to say to my
supervisor “No can’t you do it? She’ll listen to you more” but then I thought
to myself “No, if I want to show to Ruth I can handle crisis situations and act
calm then this is something I have to do myself”. And so I did.
I planned out everything I was going to say
on a piece of paper and gave the wife a call. I told her I understood her and
said it was really unfortunate but explained to her how well the story did by
getting in a paper and on page three as well and how positive the article
talked of her and her husband and that this was the most important thing to
focus on here. At the end of the day, regardless of the few mistakes the
article made, it publicised the refuge in a really positive way and also showed
of the kind hearts of these generous people who I said are an inspiration to everyone.
This whole situation taught me that
journalists are very time constrained, and although these situations aren’t our
fault, there is nothing we can really do about them because yes, they are doing
us public relations professionals a favour by helping us put our clients’
articles in their newspapers.
It also taught me of the important
relationships public relations practitioners have with journalists. Without
journalists there is essentially no media coverage for our clients and hence no
publicity for their respective companies. Although journalists may at times get
information and facts wrong it is always best to keep them on your good side
because you never know when you will need them next. This was definitely a
lesson learnt for me and even though it was unfortunate I am really glad it
happened because I will know for next time what to do and how to calmly handle
situations such as this.
