Exciting news!

I have just secured a part-time job as a result of my internship. Yay! Two days a week I will be balancing uni and work as a Junior Consultant at Shine Communications (I get my own email address and everything, it’s very exciting). My boss, Ruth, works from home north of Perth so it’s a bit of a commute, but will definitely be worth it for the experience and to pop on the old resume.

In further exciting news, two media releases that Ruth and I have been working on found their way into The West Australian. This is exciting because the majority of our clients are not-for-profits who will generally only get a run in community newspapers. It is much harder to create a strong enough angle for The West to run a story. The first was for aged care provider Amana Living who announced a joint initiative with the McCusker foundation, for a McCusker nurse who will provide comprehensive advice and support for those living with dementia and their families.

The link to the media release is http://www.amanaliving.com.au/Whats_On/Media_Releases/Documents/Amana%20Living%20-%20McCusker%20Nurse%20media%20release.pdf (although it was in the paper, it didn’t make it’s way onto the West’s online page, therefore no link).

I wrote the majority of this media release with only minimal tweaking from Ruth. When she has made changes to any of my work she sends it back to me, which is really helpful because I see what changes need to be made, where my wording is a little off or where I haven’t properly addressed all the key messages.

The second release which made it into The West (which I also mostly wrote) was for the YMCA’s HQ youth program, and was about a group of teenage refugees who made a giant foosball table as part of an arts program. In this case, the story got a run in The West mainly because of the fantastic photo opportunity it presented. Ruth (my boss) will often organise a photo journalist from the paper to come and take a photo themselves rather than just providing one, the logic being that if the paper is willing to invest their own staff in following the story, there is a pretty good chance it will get run. And for the most part it seems to work. She also tells me that sometimes if pitching a release or story idea to an editor or journalist is not working, it can be worthwhile to pitch the story to the photo editor, because if they don’t have many good photo opportunities, this could be your way in!

The placement is going very well so far, and I’m really enjoying the work. However I do feel there is a big emphasis at Shine on media relations, perhaps this is just because the type of client we are working with has budget constraints but it would be good to maybe bring a fresh new angle to some of the work we do, and try out different avenues like social media or events.