The Art of Making News Relevant

The Art of Making News Relevant 

The main projects I have been working on at the Department of Sport and Recreation have been news stories, eNewsletters and Media releases. These have been about new programs and events which are on. Whilst this work sounds very routine, I have learnt something new from it. At uni we are taught about all communications material needs a message, which was easy enough as I could make up my own message. Out in the workforce, you have to capture someone else's message and aim for their program they made. Again this may not sound as hard as you may think, but because not everyone works in communications, not everyone knows how to write a message. 

This is where my learning begun. I had to learn how to read in between the lines. I get given the information, and from that I need to try to understand what it is they are really trying to say. I really learnt the importance of making something exciting to your audience. One of the stories I was working on was development programs for volunteers. This was very exciting news at the Department of Sport and Recreation, as it was another great way to support community sport. The issue was how I convince a volunteer, who already has a job, has kids and needs to do the food shopping, to give up a night to come to a development program to benefit their sports club they volunteer for on the weekends. I suddenly realised just because it is free and benefit the volunteer, I still need to convey the development programs worth. 

At first I struggled a little with wrapping my head around all the different programs, and who I should be targeting. I had to do a lot of research and really learn what the programs were about and what they were trying to achieve. Once I did this, I spoke to my boss to clarify that the aims and messaging I had come up with, matched what the intended benefits of the programs were. In the end we worked together on it for a little bit and came up with a clear message for each target group. This is a link to the general news story promoting the online page promoting the new events.

Community Volunteers Project
This has been a very valuable lesson as it is important to be able to communicate to your target market the value in your news.  

My first internship: Welcome to the world of PR

Hello everyone!

I’m Justine Lai, currently pursuing my final semester as an undergraduate for BA in Marketing and Public Relations.

This is my 15^th week with Porter Novelli Singapore (PN) and so far it’s been a really great experience working here. One thing I’ve learnt as a Public Relations (PR) intern is that time really flies without knowing during work, because there’s never really having nothing to do. There are never ending tasks, millions of news published around the world to read about, and so many skills and theories to pick up in PR. And I think every PR professional all started out as blur as I am, hit many obstacles and crawled up step by step before reaching the position they’re in today.

I started sourcing out for internship opportunities three months before the start of my semester, and it was really quite an experience as I went for four interviews before landing in PN. Unacceptable job scopes, different timings, I shall not bore you with details.

I felt really lucky when I received a call to attend an interview with PN (I sent out my resume two months before receiving the call so I was extremely surprised). I prepped myself from top to bottom - goggled for successful interview tips, worked on my speech, collated my reports and did my best to make sure I was fully prepared. I met Jimmy, the Vice-President for Consumer and Lifestyle, and Gabriel Wong, then Vice-President for Technology, during the one-hour long interview (Yes it was that long, I can’t remember what we talked about either), and I thought I fumbled a lot. I received another call from Jimmy the very next day and I was accepted (in my head, I was throwing confetti and hopping around with joy.)

To be honest, I was quite stressed out before beginning my internship. I heard about the heavy responsibilities that the previous intern was undertaking and I doubt my capabilities of handling them. On my very first day, I felt like a total amateur – I took more than an hour to monitor the newspapers, explored Microsoft Outlook for the very first time and I couldn’t even speak properly during the supposedly relaxed lunch outing with Jimmy and Gabriel. I guess my colleagues were all looking at me speculatively.

Thankfully, the work environment at PN was really comforting, and despite my awkwardness, I blended in and adapted to the working culture with ease. Everyone was nice and guided me with patience and sincerity, and I began to focus on my work effectively.

This internship gave me a huge exposure to many industries, from consumer and lifestyle, to corporate and technology. I supported several accounts such as Mercedes-Benz, HP Singapore, Bosch Home Appliances, Imedeen, SKF, Yahoo! and a few others. My job scope entitles me to draft press releases, research content for conversational calendars, liaise with media, compile media lists, collate monthly and quarterly reports, and other responsibilities. It was definitely an awesome experience which broadens my knowledge on media relations, corporate cultures, industry markets, client servicing and many other useful insights.

I’ve come to the realization that learning PR and applying PR are two very different things. However, the reason to everything that we do still dials down to the theories that we learnt during our academic semesters, which people often neglect during their hectic schedules, such as the implementation of Two-way symmetrical model by Grunig that is shaping the current industry now. 

Overall, I think the PR world is really diverse, and you can really learn a lot by being in this industry. Nevertheless, there’ll be occasions where people start to get bored or frustrated with their work load, but I think these can be overcome with the right attitude and a balanced life style.

Till the next, have a great internship!

Best Regards,

Justine Lai

15215640

Curtin Singapore