Hi again guys,
Nearly a third of the way through my internship and learning more each day that I spend with Alison.
I know I said I would talk about the things that I have been doing around the office but first I would like to tell you a little about working for a major organisation, as I am not sure how many of you will have had this opportunity.
BHP Billiton is an international mining giant, with offices and sites in many locations across the world. Any information about BHP Billiton that will be entering the public domain needs to go through thorough checking processes.
Within Nickel West this information has to circulate through a number of people for review and approvals before being sent to the head office over east. It can be a long process so any media releases needed to be at least drafted up around a month in advance. While it can be quite time-consuming, the checking process means that your work is totally verified and generally of a very high quality.
Considering the approvals process was important when I wrote a media release about the partnership between the Clontarf Foundation and BHP Billiton Nickel West. Alison and I were approached by Louanne Munz, Principal Advisor Community, to write a press release for the West Australian about the launch of continued and advanced sponsorship of the Clontarf Foundation.
It was interesting to see that the skills we have focussed on a lot in class are relevant to work in the real world. I think that writing media releases is a really important skill and before you finish uni if you haven’t perfected that skill I would definitely recommend doing some more work to improve your skills!
Having also done a Journalism major I found that writing media releases quite easy, but trying to find a hook for the release that will encourage the paper to print it was quite hard. In contrast to journalism where stories are provided by the news and what’s going on, in PR you have to make your story fit in with what’s in the news.
It was good that this story was to be released shortly after the truancy figures were released and caused uproar in the media, which meant that we could hook the story in with that – The Clontarf Academy is helping to combat truancy in teenage Aboriginal boys across WA and the Northern Territory (for more info: www.clontarffootball.com) – however, the event was postponed and the article also had to be and now a new hook needs to be found.
I also wrote a media release for the local paper in the Kwinana area about training programs at the Kwinana Nickel Refinery. This release wasn’t targeted at The West Australian because this paper is more exclusive and should only be targeted with really important newsworthy information. Local papers are almost guaranteed to print your articles but if you bombard them with media releases they will stop printing the media releases – I am sure that we have been told this in class but it is something I payed more attention to in my work experience and I think it is an important aspect to consider when in the workplace – especially since a lot of the PR plan assignments I have read recommend sending out media releases to every community paper and all of the releases they have planned – this wouldn’t be feasible in reality. Also important to note is giving papers an exclusive on the story – obviously this isn’t always relevant – but it is quite a handy tool.
So that’s my blog about media releases, hope you are all learning as much from your placements as I have been,
Until next time,
Jordan Pieterse
13635084
Curtin University Bentley Campus
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