Story of my 'PR in Writing'

Hi fellow PR interns,

This post is the first blog I’ve done so far in this unit. I do not have a habit of writing blogs, but as this is part of the grade of the PR internship, I plan to do this in four consecutive weeks (starting from today). My blogs will contain stories and thoughts I have collected and cherished in my head on my Public Relation experiences in Clubs WA – a not-for-profit organisation that associates and represent licenced clubs across the Western Australian region. <http://www.clubswa.com.au/>

I will now start into the topic with an introduction of my internship.

I first got my internship in Clubs WA, while looking for one in Gumtree.com. I got an interview, got in and one of the first jobs given to me is writing an article.

The article I had to write about is on the topic on ‘how a club can communicate and connect with their community by managing a Facebook page at a daily basis’. It is meant to be directed to club managers and would be published as part of the September bulletin. My supervisor wants the majority of the article to be emphasised on a professional business tips. So I was assigned to write and interview a business professional on pointing up the benefits of social media for clubs. I was given a week (8August to 15August) to finish it up.

After interviewing a number of club managers to support my article, I then looked for a business professional that I could interview. Coincidentally, I was helping out in my friend’s (Michelle Tran) Metier Connect’s networking event called the ‘Think-Tank Connect’, and one of the marketing mentor panellists is a Business Marketing professional. So after the Think-Tank Connect event finishes, I asked her for a very quick interview and got some answers.  The next day, I finished it and send the draft to my supervisor. I finished what I was assigned and was pretty much satisfied.

I would soon find out things were not that simple.

A week after that, my supervisor gave me back the article with lots of corrections – over paragraph forming mistakes and quote mistakes. There were also words that were not conveyed correctly; words that were too implicit; and such and so forth.

In addition to the corrections made, the quotes I got from the Marketing Professional I interviewed was not well-received by my supervisor. I would have to agree with my supervisor’s opinion; I did not find much helpful quotes, perhaps due to the rush preparation of the interview questions that produced weak quotes to my article.

It was then that my supervisor suggested the idea of interviewing a university professor in Public Relations. Liking the idea, I turn to none other than our beloved PR tutor, Jacinta Goerke. She has taught me in two classes (Corporate PR and PR Principles), and ever since, she has been one of my favourite teachers in my university years. So I made contact with her and asked if I can interview her as a business professional owner of Communicators International. With a new deadline on Monday 1 September, I was given four days (including the day I was reassigned on Friday 29 August) to fill the majority of the article with Jacinta’s quotes. I sent Jacinta an email containing a list of ten questions that she can answer over the weekend.

Jacinta is a great interviewee. Knowing the position I am in, she emailed me back with a 2,000 words document to my questions (and she did it in a night!). I was able to quote as many as I want and got them done on one whole Saturday evening until midnight. I finished it, and send it in right away on that Saturday, hoping that it would be published in the September bulletin on Monday 1 September. I got very tired that day and my restlessness did not wane for a few days afterwards.

Again, things did not go that simple as I thought it would.

It was a mix feeling of brokenness and optimism when I saw that the article I had rushed through was not in the article. My supervisor wanted it to be on the October bulletin, due to the rush of many things on the publishing day. I was given one more chance to edit my article, and besides, Jacinta wanted to check if I may have misquoted her in my article.

Jacinta is a great PR teacher. Not only has she given me her time for interview, but she also voluntarily toned up my article in a way that would enlarge her opinion on the theme of my article (social media for clubs). I was really grateful to her kindness, and she does indeed shows an immense amount of passion on the teachings and research of Public Relations. My internship experience was enriched greatly with Jacinta’s help.

So after all that, I sent in my draft and my supervisor finally received it with gladness. It has been confirmed that the article would be published on the October bulletin.

Overall, this writing experience has enriched me to the professional art of writing skills I would need to do an appropriate and professional job in my Public Relations career. The obstacles were there to challenge my skills and patience, but a true Public Relation person should indeed persevere through all the hardship. No wonder Marie-Louise in PR Consultancy class showed us the daily lives of a PR person to be pressured with hardship (especially when facing crises).

Some of the techniques I learnt from PR Techniques unit also came up in guiding my writing of an article, specifically on writing news release. Although the article I wrote does not necessarily apply with news articles writing techniques, the news release content came to mind to throttle my first words in the article. Truly, my learning experiences in Curtin has greatly prepared me for the profession of my intern job.

PR in writing is one experience I have acquired. I have more thoughts and stories to come on my experiences in Clubs WA that would hopefully share and enrich your experiences in your internships as well.

Stay tune for my next blog!