Unit 1: Producing the News: The Role of Media Relations
What specific reasons might there be for an organization such as yours to seek attention from the news media, or to avoid it?
Discuss how these reasons may differ in crisis situations as opposed to day-to-day operations.
Choose several of the day’s news stories appearing in your local media. Decide which ones are likely to have resulted from proactive media relations and which from reactive approaches by reporters. Give reasons for your decisions based on your readings.
What are some of the reasons a media relations practitioner might choose the Internet to distribute a message or information? Suggest a particular story or item of information about your organization (real or imagined) that would be most effectively presented in this medium, and explain why.
Where do you get most of your news and why? Do you read more hard news, soft news, or opinion?
What do your choices suggest about your membership in a particular target audience? How do they support or challenge your preferred world view? (Include what your world view is, in general.)
Unit 2: News Media and Public Relations: A Mutual Evolution How can we ensure that we are not solely relying on mass media to define our realities?
In what ways do mass media, and news media in particular, make our lives better? In what ways do they make our lives worse? Provide personal examples.
Reflect on how the mass media that you consume affect your life in the eight spheres of activity outlined by Lorimer and Gasher.
Effective Media Relations: No Accident
Conduct a mini-SWOT analysis on your organization, or on a non-profit organization that you volunteer for or are familiar with, in relation to its preparedness to conduct both reactive and proactive media relations. List the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as they relate to possible media interest and the organization’s readiness to talk to the media. Identify the top three issues that need to be addressed—whether in the organization’s operations, which could be embarrassing or positive and helpful if made public in the news—and the organization’s media preparedness overall.
2. Looking at the news in your local or nearest daily newspaper’s front section, analyze at least five of the major stories for the following factors. Please include either links or a summary for each story.
Which stories have quotes from organizational representatives or other speakers in them?
Do you think the story is the result of proactive or reactive media relations, and why do you draw this conclusion?
Would you rate the story as positive (no information that undermines the positive), negative (no information to counteract the negative), or neutral (both positive and negative information and/or quotes)?
3. Go to the media relations policy sites listed below, and then compare and contrast each with regard to: type of organization, approach to media relations (proactive, reactive), who speaks to the media and restrictions and limitations
