I want to be a journalist and minor in public relations… I know that it is a very risky thing to do, especially for journalism but I am very determined. Hopefully I can get some pointers on journalism and just advice about how journalism and public relations can go hand in hand from someone with the same educational background or similiar.
I want to work with the media?
I want to be a journalist and minor in public relations… I know that it is a very risky thing to do, especially for journalism but I am very determined. Hopefully I can get some pointers on journalism and just advice about how journalism and public relations can go hand in hand from someone with the same educational background or similiar.
2 Responses
January 20th, 2010 at 6:12 am
A lot of journalists actually look down on PR folks; they’re kind of considered tools or even enemies.
If you want a PR position, you need to look into that field more than the journalism thing, because you won’t need journalistic skills for PR jobs. You’ll need management and “people” skills. You’d be better off taking acting classes, in all honesty.
If you want a journalism position, then go ahead and minor in whatever you want. The key is going to lie in writing that is both interesting and timely, with secondary importance on networking. You may also want to focus on speed writing, as most of what you end up writing for the first three years of your professional career will be inverted-pyramid five-liners.
Nothing frilly in either career path, so don’t bother with creative writing classes. Focus on technical.
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I used to be a journalist but shifted to public relations. I never regretted the decision because I’m doing PR work for a respectable company.
Journalism is a very good start if you want to move to public relations. You will get to learn how the industry works, how editors work, and how you should deal with them when you’re already in PR.
Journalism and PR actually go hand in hand. It’s just that over the years, some PR people just used it to do dirty work. But public relations is part of journalism and it’s even part of the journalism curriculum in many schools.
The basic definition of public relations is doing good and letting the public know about it. That is the essence of public relations. Some bad PR people just muddled the definition and used it in a negative way by defending companies with bad reputation.
PR is also advising your clients how to handle crisis. Example, if there are defective products in the market, a good PR person should advice the client to immediately recall the product and issue a statement that the company remains committed to providing high-quality products. A good PR person will advice the client to face up to the error, admit fault and repair the damage.
A bad PR person will tell the company not to admit anything.