The Media Release is not dead

It’s interesting when you are trying to bring what you have learned in class to the real world, and realize that the two are miles apart.

Having been through the various PR units, PR Media, PR techniques, and thinking that yes, finally I will be able to send out media releases and fingers crossed hoping that it would make it to the papers.

Unfortunately that’s not how it works here. I have done up a media release and began picking up the phone to make calls to the local community newspapers to send it off, now the reality of the real world hits, when the journalists don’t give two hoots about what you are trying to say and nope, they don’t want any media releases. They just want an email detailing what the event is about and they will have a think about if they are interested or not.

Although I do understand the demand and the make up of the industry, with which we all (pr students, that is) have been exposed to through the many guest lecturers about how the media is interested in groundbreaking news and the attributes of news ( human interest etc), as much as I believe that the media release is not dead, and there is still a place for media releases, in terms of bigger agencies and corporations, I can’t help but think that in the real world, getting an article in the papers, requires more than an interesting angled media release. I can not emphasize strongly enough how important relationships with journalists are, that’s why we managed to get an article in the West (Health & Medicine section, hooray!). Read a copy of it here.

A brief update about the organization that I doing my placement with, The Independent Living Centre of WA is an information and equipment advisory resource centre, providing information on assistive technology (AT) to the elderly and people with disabilities. Assistive technology is a new term to me when I first started here too. My guess is not many people would know about it too, I might be wrong.

Anyway in short, AT is a term for any device that allows an individual to perform daily tasks that where formerly difficult or impossible to accomplish such the task of carrying a hot kettle or opening cans and cartons for the elderly.

The whole purpose of the Open Day event is really to inform the public and the local community that such technology does exist to help improve their quality of life. It’s happening this Wednesday 10 September, from 10am to 3.30pm! If you have grandparents or if you know people with disabilities, I strongly encourage you to get them to come for an hour or two. It will definitely benefit them heaps.

As for the local media, I’m off to send them an invite to the event too. If they aren’t interested in media releases, I will just have to think out of the box to reach them. Keeping my fingers crossed that they will be interested in the event!

Hope I have good news to share in the next entry.
alison