Carla Collado has made the transition from print journalism to PR at Olmstead Williams Communications over the past year.
By Carla Collado
Olmstead Williams Communications
In the nine months since I crossed over to the “dark side,” that is, made my transition from newspaper reporting to public relations, I’ve already discovered some surprising similarities between both jobs. I say “surprising” because I think there’s a widespread notion that journalism and public relations are on opposite ends of the communications spectrum – reporters are striving to be objective and tell all sides of a story, public relations people are promoting a specific client, product or cause and are supposed to be as subjective as possible.
While, yes, there is truth to those differences, I’d like to focus on some of the elements that both professions inevitably share. These are things that seem obvious to me now, but that I never would have thought about when I was working at the newspaper.
1. Finding a good angle, enticing the reader: A reporter has to find the right angle to their story – not only to answer the question, “why does the reader care about this?”, but also to grab the reader and keep their attention for the duration of the article or story (ideally). A PR person has to do the same, but rather to entice the reporter or media representative to whom they are pitching their story idea.
2. Quickly becoming experts in a new field, being informative: Like a reporter, a PR professional has to do some digging to get specific facts and accurate information before putting together a press release, pitch or any other materials for the media. Most of the time they’re learning something from scratch and having to become experts on an issue in one day, in time to get it to the media for the next day’s news.
3. Following current events, news and media trends: For reporters, this one is an obvious must. Reporters need to follow current news to be able to inform the public of the most important issues and events going on in their communities and around the world. PR people need to be up-to-speed on the news so they can pitch reporters the appropriate experts and story angles based on what topics are generating the most “buzz” in the media at the time.
4. Researching, double-checking facts: Researching information – and more importantly, getting that information from trustworthy, credible sources – is a key part of both journalism and public relations. Constantly faced with new subjects to write about or promote, both media and PR professionals need to make sure they’re well-versed on those subjects and have their facts straight. The latter is especially crucial considering that their articles/press releases could potentially reach very large audiences. One wrong fact or bit of data in a story sent out over the Internet can not only misinform up to millions of readers, but can also seriously damage a person or institution’s reputation.
5. Mastering sharp writing skills: It’s not enough to simply be good at grammar and spelling. All communications professionals should learn the art of tight, concise writing to effectively deliver their messages. If the first few lines of an email, press release, news article or broadcast story don’t hook the audience and give them a reason to continue reading, watching or listening, they most likely won’t.
