Practice makes perfect: Perfecting a Media Release

Throughout my time at Event and Conference Co. I have had few chances to write media releases. One of the main reasons I chose an event based internship for this placement was because I presumed there would be many opportunities to work on my media release writing. While I've been busy enjoying completing lots of other work, the lack of media release writing has meant I haven't had the opportunity to gain confidence in my writing and my ability.

This week, Event and Conference Co. has been working with the City of Armadale and Perth Kilt Run to host the 2015 Perth's Largest Kilt Run. I've been researching prices for prizes, announcers, completing risk management plans and, I wrote a media release!

The core of a media release and important information is quite easy to write, but the headline and lead paragraph? I struggled. As a journalist, I struggled not to write it in an unbiased and 'newsy' way. I would then over compensate and it would come across selling the event too hard. I worked hard and eventually submitted a copy my supervisor was very impressed with.

I found this article quite handy to look over while writing the media release.
5 tips to follow when writing press releases

It's was very satisfying feeling when my supervisor is happy with the work I produced. Did you find that too? I'd feel proud that it was up to industry standard.

Did you have more opportunities to write media releases? Do you think it helped your confidence in writing them?

Bridgette

#3: Picture talks

Hi guys,

As promised on my previous blog post, there will be more photos in this post. As pictures talks better than words, I decided to update you guys about the Councillor's monthly meeting and Meet-the-People session through photos I have taken using my camera phone. Hope you guys enjoy the pictures! 

Saw the standing lady in the picture? She is one of the officer in PR department. She was distributing meeting materials to the Councillors.

Now.. we are at the Councillors meeting room. Not everyone has the opportunity to sit in this room witnessing the progress of the Councillor's meeting you know! Do you noticed that everyone is wearing a blue tie? Do you know why is that? :)
The second man at the left is Miri's Mayor, Mr Lawrence Lai.

The standing man in the picture is my supervisor, Mr Tay. He was checking with the Mayor on the meeting materials before the meeting starts.

These are the Councillors of Miri. Look at their piles of meeting materials! The materials are prepared by PR department as well.

After the meeting has finished, the reporters from various media outlets took the chance to clarify their questions with the head of PR department and the Mayor.

The Meet-the-People session banner shows the details of when and where it will be held. It is hanged at the corridor of the One Stop Centre so the public can easily catch attention of the banner.

During the session, each department would allocate some representatives to receive complaints, suggestions and requests from the public. Each complaints would be taken care and the complainers will get update on their matters.

I am honour to be able to represent PR department and I have also recorded a citizen's request for help on his cracking wall due to the blocked drainage. He seemed so nervous and helpless while making the request that I can't help comfort him a bit by having a small chat while taking down his information. The man walked away with a satisfy smile on his face after he saw that I had record everything.

From the session, I have learnt that listening to your clients is very important. It helps you to build up good relationship as they feel that they are being listened and their voices are essential to the organisation. Apart from that, it helps to enhance an organisation's reputation as well. By listening carefully, you might get to learn an idea which can help to boost up the organisation's services that makes everyone satisfy, a win-win situation.

Have you ever experiencing the satisfaction of just listening to someone's complaints during your internship period? Let's share! =)

Cheers,

Keekee

Oopsie Daisy, Dixie

This week some of you may have seen the piece in The West's Inside Cover regarding the Mt Weld mine media release sent out by the Premier's office. (If not, here's a screen capture above. It may be a bit tricky to read, sorry!) It's a great example of a potentially damaging situation being fixed by a PR professional.

As the article says, the media release included quotes from the Premier, however it was later found one of these quotes regarding the 'rare earths' being mined in the area was actually a passage from the Lynas Corporation's website.

So firstly, a bit of context as to how state government releases work...

Sometimes as an electorate office we will recieve media statements drafted by the PR and media people at DPC (Department of Premier and Cabinet) for use in our electorate. Obviously if the issue is relevent to other electorates they will receive a copy as well, so the same release (or perhaps slightly changed) release will be sent out to more than one office for use. That means it's my job as the John's research officer in Kalamunda to make sure everything in that release is a) relevent and suitable for the area, and b) the quotes are cleared with John and if necessary new quotes are made by him. Whilst it's okay for the same information to be sent to multiple publications in multiple electorates, (you can't, and wouldn't, change information that is correct) we don't want the same quotes to be attributed to more than one politician. The releases of this nature are always labelled as drafts and are to be edited by us, but provide us with a great framework filled with first-hand information from reliable sources. While the release for the Mt Weld mine was not a release of this nature- it originate from the Premier's office for the sole use of the Premier, it's still good to understand how these things sometimes work. A lot of research goes in to everything sent out from State Government offices, and a lot of liaising with different offices and departments goes on behind the scenes to make sure information sent out to the public and the media is correct.

Dixie took the blame (very skillfully in my opinion) for the quote mix-up, and I think she did a great job of explaining the situation. The information in the release wasn't wrong, (in fact it was spot on) the mistake came when the quotation marks were put around the paragraph as a quote from the Premier. At least it goes to show she's gathering information for the release from the appropriate source!

As is often the mantra in our office- "We don't want John ending up in Inside Cover!" Thankfully we have a good record! Except for the City of Melville John Day/Malcolm Day mix up a few weeks ago where John was captioned as Malcolm Day - the Adultshop guy- in one of their press releases. A rather obvious mistake that Inside Cover (and we here in the office) had a bit of a laugh at!

Niki Comparti

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