Public Relations Practitioners now have the choice of using traditional or modern communication tools. 

Traditional tools include things such as newsletter, brochures, pamphlets, and more. Things that can be printed and handed out. 

Today, their modern tools are electronic. Modern communication tools are easier, cost less, and reach a wider audience. 

Instead of spending money on paper to print brochures and pamphlets, they can simply post something onto their website. They didn’t have to spend money on paper, ink, or pay the people to go around and hand them out. 

Not only is modern cost effective, it reaches way more people. Posts can be shared all over the world and reach people in different countries whereas your brochure might just reach people on one street. 

The relationship that public relations and the press have with one another is so important in the industry. These two sides have to work together in order to get out information in an effective manner.

As a practitioner, you want to release information that best suits what your company is doing. Whether this is an event, or just getting your name out there.

The press wants a constant flow of stories that keep their readers interested. When practitioner and the press have interesting stories to share, they are both happy.

Both sides need to be able to trust each other in the process too. If a practitioner gave information to the media to publish that was false information, it would fall on the press.

Then if the media released false information about a company, then they wouldn’t be trusted with information to be released. That practitioner would give their information to a different press and the original press would lose their amazing story.

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” – Robert Frost

In school, we were always taught the golden rule: “if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say it at all.”

As a kid, yes this is a good standard to live by to hold back anger from the kid who stole your favorite colored crayon. On the flip side, as we get older, constructive criticism is so important.

Throughout my life, I have had many relationships fail due to the lack of communication. Using effective communication is important. When two people aren’t able to communicate in an effective manner, either no work is going to get done or there is going to be no progress.

When I say communication, I mean effective communication. Like Robert Frost said, there are so many people who have nothing to say, but keep saying it anyway.

In the public relations profession, communication is power. Communication between the clients, journalist, editors, readers, and everyone within the community, is so vital.

In the beginning of Public Relations, we had a system of asymmetric communication in which we were not receiving feedback from the audience. Now, we have evolved to a symmetric system in which we listen to what our audience has to say. This has come around to being the most effective form of communication among practitioners and their audience.

If you never speak up about something, how do you know it wouldn’t change the world?

If you don’t share your heart and your mind, how do you know that whatever you’re thinking wouldn’t work or sway someone else?

You never know if you don’t communicate.

What makes a story newsworthy? According to the class textbook, there are nine different news values that make something story worthy: timeliness, impact, proximity, prominence, conflict, novelty, currency, affinity, and human interests.

1. Timeliness: This is being most concerned with when something happened. The sooner the story gets out, the better.
2. Impact: How are people being effected by the information? What big events or trends are happening that are making an impact on people?
3. Proximity: The closer the story is to home, the more relevant it is to us.
4. Prominence: What are important and high ranking people doing? If they have a high social status, we care if they are eating at a local cafe.
5. Conflict: Humans have a fascination with fights, arguments, and nastiness. We want to know all of the dirt.
6. Novelty: This value encompasses all of the absurd stories. What strange things have happened that we want to know about? Did a Florida man get arrested running from the police over a bag of potato chips? If so, we want to know about it!
7. Currency: We want to stay up to date with important issues.
8. Affinity: This value mainly focuses on animals. We want to feel sorry for those who can’t help themselves.
9. Human interests: We want to know about what other humans are going through, no matter who they are. Did someone’s house burn down? It doesn’t matter who they are, we just want to know about it.

The one news value that causes controversy is prominence. Does pop culture information classify as news?

Technically, the answer is yes.

Personally, I don’t care to “Keep up with the Kardashians,” but that does not mean other people don’t! I believe that the news value of prominence is newsworthy when it is also tied with another news value.

To explain, here’s an example of what I mean by this. Like I just said, I don’t care to read up on what the Kardashians are eating at for their Christmas dinner. When you tie a prominence news value with my example of human interests, I’m hooked.

If the Kardashians are donating to the Wilson family whose house just burned down, that is news.

Prominence and human interests are both values in this kind of story, and the human interests piece makes all the difference.

My name is Dakota Beever and I come from a small town of Thomasville, GA. I attend Georgia Southern University. My major is multi-media film and production and my minor is public relations. I am currently a senior and will be graduating in December of 2020.

During my junior year, I decided to add public relations as my minor study. I did this due to the fact that I was looking forward at my future career. Once I graduate from college and start applying for jobs, it is not going to be my dream documentary job, and that’s okay!

I understand that right out of college, I will probably be applying for jobs that are more in a public relations field. Due to this, I decided that I wanted some knowledge of public relations under my belt.

Having some background knowledge of public relations will set me aside from other film majors that are applying for the same assistant position. I will have more skills and more knowledge than my opponents.