Journalist and PR Practitioners

Definition of public relations: mutually beneficial relationships

When I started taking PR classes at Ohio Northern University, my professors stressed the importance of developing relationships with news media. At first, I was totally confused by it. Why did it matter? What was the big deal? But, as I thought about it a bit more, it made more sense. 

There is a deep connection between journalism and public relations. Public relations practitioners have to develop a relationship with the media in order to successfully access their customers through them. Journalist also need public relations practitioners to help develop content for their different news channels. In my internships, I had to send out press releases and PSAs to journalists about events or news relevant to them. Journalist I had a relationships with were the ones that published our content. The other journalists didn't see the importance of publishing material from a company they didn't know. 

As a professional working in PR, your relationship with journalists is very important. Imagine there is a crisis in your organization, you need to follow your crisis communications plan and the media is an important part of it. Having an establish relationship with journalists covering the crisis will be important to coming out of a crisis in a positive light. The media has the ability to show an organization in a positive and a negative way and it affects how current or potential customers see your organization.