A non-profit or profit organization may
have the best strategies, goals, ideas in place, but if these ambitions and
goals are not conveyed to the public, it serves half-the purpose. Hence as PR
professionals, it is very important to build a rapport with media to
communicate the organization's goals and ambitions (Epperly, J). As the name suggests, public relations is
about building relationship with the public, but it is equally important to
build relationships with the media to be able to reach out to the public.
Dennis Rutzou from PR Blog says that
just building media contacts and relation is not enough. It is more important
to churn out newsworthy and convincing stories that your media contacts will be
ready to publish (Rutzou, D. 2011). According to Rutzou, media is always on
the lookout of news content that is competitive with their competition and
there is no way that they will publish your story because they have a good
relation with you.
Media relations have many benefits. It
can help with raising funds for research, help get offers of consultancy and
helps promote brand name (E.S.R.C.). Media attention can
also raise the public profile of the organizations discipline and in turn
increase public discussions.
A study Examining Modern Media Relations: An Exploratory Study of the Effect of
Twitter on the Public Relations – Journalist Relationship, author Drew
Wilson says that Twitter has changed the traditional relationship between PR
and media professionals. It has changed the way practitioners and journalists
interact. The traditional forms of writing a press release and sending it to
journalists is becoming outdated. Social media has opened public platforms for
public relations professionally to reach out to the public. And the need to the
media is slowly dying. Public Relations don’t really need the media anymore to
reach out to the public (Wilson, D. 2013).
Thus looking at all the studies and
expert opinion on the relationship between PR and journalist practitioners, it
can be seen that public relations is slowly weaning off from being dependent on
journalists to get their stories out to the public. Thanks to the internet and
new technology like Twitter and Facebook, public relations practitioners can
reach out to the public themselves.
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