Importance of gathering media clippings

When I applied to an advertising company for an internship position in their public relations department, I was told that there was only vacancy at the media section and media is not public relations. It was only after I started doing internship in the media section of Limkokwing University that I realized how wrong the person was to tell me that media is not public relations as building and maintaining good relationships with the media is important for the success of any organization especially an educational institution like Limkokwing University which has at the moment 25,000 students from 145 countries undertaking a variety of courses in its various campuses across Asia, Europe and Africa. Hence, it needs the media to generate favourable news coverage and to highlight, publicise and raise awareness for its public relations programmes to its targeted audience.

This is where media monitoring helps as gathering media clippings can help the PR practitioner keep abreast of the news being printed or broadcast about the organization, build a database of what is being reported in the media and track public perception of the organization hence the importance of the role of media clippings and media monitoring in public relations must not be overlooked.

A person who is not familiar with PR practices would regard tasks like gathering media clippings as unimportant but as I carried out the daily task of monitoring the print media for news coverage and advertisements on the university and applying the PR theories I have learnt about their importance, I began to realize that it is actually a very fundamental thing that any public relations department have to carry out hence I consider it as an important part of the learning process.

At first, I thought that the task would be an easy one but how wrong I was as it turned out to be rather time consuming. Since Limkokwing University news and advertisements do not always get reported or published everyday, I had to go through the newspapers thoroughly so as not to miss out any important news since media clippings are such an important media tracking source.

Apart from gathering media clippings, I also had to photocopy, scan and save the media clippings which may be needed to be included in the media journal or saved for publication on the university’s website. The media clippings would be summarized and any issues raised can be analysed and determined whether a response is appropriate.

Many journalists make use of an organisation’s website as a basic research tool, hence, the news saved on the website will provide a ‘pull’ approach to providing information to the media and the university’s key publics.