Reading For Week 8

Sallot and Johnson's article (2006) explored the preferences of journalists and their expectations for PR practitioners. For example according to this study journalists often prefer to be contacted by email than phone, but it mentions that preferences also varied from journalist to journalist.


Kurt Wise's article relied heavily on quotes and feedback from the participants involved in the study conducted. I felt it may have depended too much on the actual quotes, as opposed to including a few and reflecting upon them with the other feedback.

I was interested in the discussion of what skills were considered most important for a journalist, as it mentions "some participants suggested it was the ability to tackle different types of writing tasks".

Then there was Ten Steps To Press Release Perfection. Maybe it's the inner lazy spirit in me, but I've always been a fan of 10 step articles heh. It's refreshing to have everything summarised and set out of you in a clear and concise point by point analysis.

I personally felt the most helpful tips were:

3. Don't think one size fits all.

and,

7. Do the reporter's job for them.

These were the most useful to me as they explored points I hadn't given too much thought. To me, points like 'keep it succinct' and 'check and double-check' were givens. Overall I found the majority of the content offered nothing especially new to help me with PR and was relatively basic and simplified... but then again that was the intention.