Hello everyone,
On the third week I was asked to do media monitoring. I did some newspaper clippings, which is more or less what I did in PR consultancy, it wasn’t all about cutting the clippings and leaving them there, I had to analyse it and give my supervisor. I monitored newspapers, magazines, TV, and Radio but I did TV and radio at home because important information was broadcast after work; for instances the news.
I was asked to focus on Botswana Television, Radio Botswana, The daily newspaper and the Voice newspaper. I had to check daily on what the competitors are doing to attract media and what tactics they use. I had to update my supervisor on what kind of information is disseminated to the audiences and whether it’s accurate and well received, to see if the intended communicated message is received and understood by audiences the way they are supposed to, so that if there are lies, the team does something about it.
I analysed the positive and negative information. Mostly the competitors appeared almost every day and I also checked what they do, and the type of coverage they got (positive or negative). It was clear that the media relations with the company needed some serious fixing, it was extremely poor.
6 comments:
Hi Susan,
I think it is great that you were given this task and were able to see what type of relationship your company had with the media. A fresh opionion from a student sounds exactly what they need and I think you are heading the right way in helping your company to begin developing better relations with the media.
hi susan
media is a vital tool for any company because it acts as an intermediary between the public and the company so i believe it is very important for a company to do media monitoring not only to check on the competition but also to find ways in which the company itself could improve in certain areas,looking at the fact that you were analyzing both positive and negative information. Hope your company does something to fix their media relations.
How I wish i did media monitoring too, i hear its interesting! May I know where you were attached at. I think this actually builds and encourages relationship between the supervisor and the intern, more that you had to give feedback daily. Hoping that your company`s media relations will be improved.
Yes media monitoring is very important for every organization as the media have more influence on the society.
Media monitoring was a daily work where I was attached, Princess Marina Hospital. As most of us from Botswana know, the hospital does not have good media reputation so we made it our daily work so as to know exactly what people mostly complain about and to know every pending case against the hospital.
We did print news monitoring whereby every morning newspapers from all the media houses were delivered to our public relations office for us to read and analyse any article that is written about our organisation and also made media clippings for future reference. The information we got was usually discussed in weekly meetings.
At Marina we believed that if we monitor the media accordingly it will help us to work with the journalists in cases where there was mis-communication or lack of facts and this really helped us in building media relations.
Hey there! I can understand where you're coming from when you say the hospital does not have the best reputation among the community and the media. I'm currently studying in Perth but back in my homecountry in Malaysia, government hospitals face the same situation. Because of the reputation that has been created over the years, government hospitals are left to deal with bad media coverage where every little mistake made is picked up by the media.
Media is the bridge between a certain organisation and the public, what they say and report defines and creates an understanding of what the organisation is. While more often than not hospitals face the media for only the "bad things", the concept used in Marina would be perfect - a constant contact with the media industry will ensure that journalist are clear about the happenings and don't end up reporting on things that are not true.
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