Day One and Day Two

Hello fellow bloggers! My I'm Anna, and I'm final year International relations major (politics, essentially) with PR. I was really excited to be doing a prac at long last, to finally put my skills to work! I was lucky enough to get my placement which combined the best of both worlds of my degree, which I'm really grateful for!! I'm currently in day 2 of 20 at Julie Bishop's Perth offices, in Subiaco. Am LOVING it!! My first day (Thursday March 10th) was nothing spectacular, I did a lot of typing - researching and replying to some constituent emails/letters, and flicked through a couple of local papers to pick out some local people to write 'congratulations' letters to on behalf of Julie. It was actually kind of fun, and I think it says a lot about how Julie likes to be 'in touch' with her constituents. It's a good quality, and a friendly 'institution' is a good one! Doing my first reply was a little scary, I didn't exactly know where to start in terms of research, but I asked for some help - I.e. where would I find some Liberal Party media releases/Party Policies - and after that I was straight on track! It's all about confidence hey? Sometimes it's ok to ask for help, right?? :) My second day (Tuesday, 15th March - which is today) was the complete opposite! I walked in only to rush out again to my first media real conference. I met Julie today, which was a really cool experience on it's own, let alone seeing her 'on the job'. Tony Abbott joined Julie in chatting to Dale Alcock at a construction site in Doubleview, and they talked about how the Gillard Government proposed Carbon tax would affect the housing industry. Which was quite interesting to listen to! All the major media outlets were there - ABC and SkyNews were doing live streams, Ch 9, Ch7 and Ch 10 were there with camera crews, and journalists from the POST were there as well. I was chatting to one of the journalists, and he gave me his card/contact details saying to contact him if I had a 'scoop'. One journalistic contact and counting!! Georgina, one of Julie's Media staff, who has been overseeing me and my work thus far, gave me a voice recorder and told me to go hold it up to the microphones when Tony and Julie were giving statements to the media. Which was pretty amazing, standing less than 2 metres from two significant federal MPs. It was all a bit surreal to encounter all that media, the atmosphere and the people all in one place! It was a big of an 'event' because Mr Abbott was visiting WA. That said, it was a really good taste of what a media conference is like, particularly in politics. I was standing right there when Tony Abbott made the comments published on the encolsed link with this post. That article appeared just over an hour after the media conference! Amazing! Something I noticed was there were lots of aides/photographers for the people present, taking photos throughout. I asked Gerogina what the photos would be used for, and she said they were for Tony and Julie's websites - (there were of course, photographers for papers and news outlets there 'snapping away' as well). All that action in one morning! How exciting! For the rest of that day, I did some more constituent letters, which I'm getting alright at! Looking forward to the rest of the week! Love, Anna xx

working for a political party is actually fun!

Good morning everyone
I would like to share something interesting but before that, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Siti Sarah bt Abdurlahim and I'm doing my internship with a political party in my hometown,Miri and the political party is called Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP). Since I'm doing Public Relation internship, they put me under Publicity & Information department and I'll be dealing with medias and event planning.

So my first task was to capture photos of our Chairman of the party, YB Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Dr. George Chan Hong Nam when he meets his people and attends function. I admit that at first it's not easy to take photo of a politician because he will be walking; surrounded by many people around him, shaking hands with people, and I'm not the only camera person taking his photos in every event, there are about 7 to 10 photographers of newspapers company struggling together to take good shot of him. Not to mention that we have to make him look good in every photo and we have to try to shoot him at every angle that suits his height, body gesture and face structure. With the suitable angle, for example using low angle, he will look superior and charismatic. However, this kind of shot cannot be used too often and will only suitable for certain situation. I have always thought that being a political photographer is an easy job but I'm totally wrong about it. In fact, it is tiring because I need to follow him everywhere he goes and capture every moment so that I won't miss a single moment because there are some photos that might change their thought about our leader, in a good way of course.

Overall, I enjoy working here for SUPP because not only they changed my perspective about politics but they are very open to suggestion on how to get the young adults into politics. It is getting more and more interesting working here because the things that are taught by my lecturer such as writing a feature article, manage an event, working on PR strategy etc, I am actually doing it here in SUPP. So I'm grateful that I actually pay attention in my class and when I'm not so sure about something, I can always look back at my lecture notes and previous assignments. So that's all for now. I will update more interesting task next time. Have fun working guys!