PR Writing class

This class has been extremely helpful in both my degree and my future. It gave me real world experience with a client, deadlines, deliverables, the media, and working as a team. It has been stressful and difficult being in college and having 4 other classes along with this project AND other homework due for the class, but overall I think my group did as well as it could and we have a lot to show for our hard work. The assignments along the way were helpful towards the project as well, and helped give me the background knowledge I needed to write press releases, features, letters to the editor, etc. Overall I feel like I've learned a lot in this class, and I know it will help me in my internship, my last year of school, and my career.

Group Project

This group project has been stressful and exciting at the same time. It's been very difficult to coordinate all 4 people in order to get work done, so some people ended up doing a lot more work than others in the process. I'm one of those "take charge and get it done" type of people so I didn't like waiting around to hear if someone else was going to go ahead and do something. But overall it was a really good experience and helped me learn a lot about what my future career is going to be like. The actual work involved was challenging but I am happy to be able to build my portfolio. It was very exciting to see our work directly in papers/websites. I hope our efforts were enough to raise more awareness for the organization!

How Time Flies...

It's crazy to me that we're already over halfway through this semester. It never fails, every semester and year in school I have ended up saying, "Man this semester/year/marking period flew!" It's almost scary how fast time is going. Before I know it I will be graduating with a degree and hopefully a job and then comes an apartment, a house, a family, and old age. I've been told by many adults to enjoy this part of my life, because everyday is exciting and new and you don't have all the responsibilities that you do as an adult. I just hope it doesn't go too fast, because I'm certainly enjoying being young :)

Opinion Pieces

I enjoy reading opinion pieces in various media outlets, especially my local newspaper. I find it interesting to see what other people think about certain subjects and I like that different from typical news that tries to be objective, opinion pieces are...opinions! I have always loved to write and have thought about doing an opinion piece or two myself. It is always eye-opening to me to read what is going through other individuals' minds about subjects that range from everyday and somewhat mundane, to strange and timely. I like talking to people about what I read as well, to try to start a conversation about the topic.

Group Project

What do you think of your group project so far?

I think it is going fairly well. We had a slight delay in getting our brief completed because the person we needed to contact was on vacation, however this morning we were able to speak to him and received good information. He seemed like a very down-to-earth guy and was very helpful. We have a good idea now about what the company is about and what he wants to achieve with our help. I'm optimistic that the rest of the project is going to go well.

ABC & Cablevision's feud

Yes, I think fear of negative PR influenced ABC’s decision to continue having its programming on Cablevision until they work out their contract. According to an article from The Wall Street Journal, “Walt Disney Co. and Cablevision Systems Corp. struck a last-minute accord late Sunday to restore Disney's blacked-out ABC stations to millions of New York-area homes just minutes into ABC's Academy Awards broadcast.” The blackout had lasted about 21 hours and was the result of financial disagreements over monthly subscription fees. Both Disney and Cablevision drew consumers into their feud. Consumers were well aware of what was going on between them, and I’m sure the blackout caused a major stir. ABC made a good decision to put its programming back on, especially in time for the Academy Awards, a program that reaches millions of viewers. The backlash that they would have gotten had they left ABC blacked-out would have followed them for years, and nobody wants that kind of negative PR. People are very devoted to TV, and would definitely cause a stir had the programming they’re used to seeing gone black forever.

The media

What scares me the most about working with the media is pitching the wrong thing to the wrong person and having them and my supervisor think I'm totally incompetent. I think that I am afraid that as much research as I'll do, I will still end up wasting someone's time and my own. And I know how precious time is, so I do not want to do that. I'm sure this will happen at some point in my life, at least once, but I want to try my best to avoid it. I guess it is something that you get better with over time and after building your media list, you will know exactly who to go to with what. But at this point, I can't imagine being completely comfortable with that.