Chapters 11 and 12

Chapter 11

This chapter covered News Releases. It starts by saying that they can be both good and bad for newspapers because they give information straight to reporters, but the information isn't always complete and accurate. No matter what though, news releases always have the capability to lead you toward a good story. It's what you do with the information presented to you that really matters.

There are three different types of news releases: announcements, information about a cause, and information that's used to make someone or something look better. Announcements and cause-promoting releases are pretty straightforward and not a lot of bad can come from them. The image-building releases though have a different motivation. They are used to primarily make a person or an organization have a better image. "They desire as much free publicity as they can get," says the text book.

It makes sense to rewrite a news release when given to you. It makes your job easier if you immediately change everything to AP style and it almost guarantees that you won't have the same exact story as another publication. As you rewrite them you must look for human interest to find why someone would want to read the story. And obviously you have to be very careful when rewriting the image-promoting releases. First, you have to almost decipher what the news is in the release and not just what the person wants you to write. Then you have to find where all the information comes from and need to be able to put it all into context.

Lastly, the section on how to actually write a news release, and not how to write from one, would be very helpful to someone looking into public relations. I like how they say to write in AP style so that reporters won't have to change it later after a whole section about how you will have to change everything in the news release to AP style.


Chapter 12

Chapter 12 was about speeches, news conferences, and meetings. The chapter begins with stating the importance of preparing before anything. It makes clear that you must make sure of the correct middle initial of a person's name or you can get basically screwed.

It also says that it is necessary to be a good note taker whether or not you use a recorder. It then goes into how to take notes...quite literally. For example, write clearly and use abbreviations. I feel like these are things you quickly learn on your own and don't need a book to spell it out for you.

It then goes into how to cover the audience and the participants of the event. In short, it says that it is not just important to get what the speaker says but the environment in which the event took place and how the audience reacts to everything that goes on.

Arrive early.

The rest of the chapter covers how to write about the event you attended. It uses good examples to capture the essence of writing about a specific type of event.