Vacations on breaks

This past weekend I visited a couple of my high school friends down at Ball State in Muncie, IN where they go to college.  It was a really good time, catching up on things considering we haven’t seen each other since mid summer. 

Throughout my lifetime, I have had friends always talk of taking vacations to far off and exotic places when school breaks come around.  Usually it’s somewhere warm like Florida or a cruise in the Bahamas and it always sounds like they have a great time escaping the cold and snow of the Midwest.

However, I have never enjoyed such trips.  Of course my family would always take vacations over the summer, but we never were able to during the school year.  That’s partially because of two reasons.

The first reason is my mom is actually a college professor, and has always had different school breaks then my sister and me.  Not Christmas, but spring break is always a different week.  Secondly, my dad works third shift and has difficulty scheduling his vacation days to match ours.  Therefore, we are all rarely on break at the same time.

However, when visiting with my friends this past weekend, we decided to take a trip for spring break because we discovered we all share the same week.  We have no idea where we’re going yet, but I can definitely tell you I’m excited at the possibility of escaping Indiana in the first week of March and going somewhere warm. 

A good Press Release

This past Thursday, I attended a speech at ONU by David Trinko, a local Journalist who spoke about the importance of making pitches and press releases.  That is, doing pitches and press releases correctly.

From a public relations professional’s perspective (excuse the alliteration), if we contact a journalist with a well-crafted press release or are pitching them an idea or something we want them to run, we can’t understand why they don’t do it sometimes.  As Mr. Trinko explained, part of the reason is because they are barraged with emails and phone calls from every other PR professional who thinks the exact same thing. 

According to Trinko, he receives around 300 emails a day.  I can’t even fathom receiving that many emails in one week, let alone one day.  It also must be considered that these emails have to be evaluated and read through to see if there is valuable information that can be used as a story. 

Half the time (and everyone knows this is true) when we receive emails, there are specific ones that we automatically delete.  We know who sent the emails and what emails purposes are, but we don’t care.  Newsletters are a good example of this.  Anyway, imagine reading through and responding to at least 300 different emails a day, and then receiving follow up emails.

This is why PR professionals must make it easier on journalists who are on this incredible time crunch with an incredible amount of work to do.  Having the press release formatted correctly, giving the journalist the important information first, making sure they have all valuable details and making sure they know whom it’s from are a few examples of how to establish a positive relationship with a journalist.  

“Violence Erupts”

In case anyone didn’t hear, a grand jury has not indicted officer Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, after an incident in August when Brown was fatally shot. 

After intense rioting and violence in response to Officer Wilson not getting punished for the shooting, eruptions of protest had mostly ceased until tonight.  According to a CNN article found here police cars have had windows smashed in, objects were thrown at CNN’s own news crew and even buildings were caught on fire.

According to the prosecution, there was a full and complete investigation into the shooting.  Ballistic proof and a testimony from Officer Wilson himself were key evidence in the Jury’s decision, as it was found Brown did approach Wilson when he was shot and that he may in fact have struck him in the face twice before Wilson took the fatal shot. 

The question now is, when more details of the incident and the jury’s decision are brought to light in the next few days, how will the public respond?  Already, violence has occurred when the decision was announced today.  Also, how will the Missouri court system defend the decision?  These are all questions many people are yearning to know.

Of course, if forensic and ballistic proof is on the side of Officer Wilson and the support the jury’s decision, they should not have difficulty.  However, in light of what happened in the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, the African American community could feel a lack of justice for these two young men.

Video Reporting

Recently, I had to produce a video about one of my professors.  I interviewed Dr. Alisa Agozzino, both an alumni and proud professor of Ohio Northern University, to find out what it is she loves about teaching, her field of Public Relations and ONU as a school.  

For this video, I took the approach every interviewer should, which is "you can never have enough information."  Yes, video editing can take a very long time, especially if you have a significant amount of content.  However, if you do not have enough video or quality responses from the person of interest, the video will definitely lack in quality.  

Dr. Agozzino is a professor known for her difficult classes as much as she is for her love of Ohio Northern.  Of course, when I hear students complain about the workload or how difficult her classes can be, it makes me want to ask her both why she may do that and if she cares.  This is addressed in the video.  

When producing the video, I tried to give a wide range of information, even though it had a limit of one and a half minutes.  If you're interested in seeing the opinion of a Public Relations professor, have had Dr. Agozzino in class, or are interested in attending Ohio Northern University, I would check out this video.

You can watch the short video by following the link below. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgUj9lgFEyM

Social Media and Crisis Situations

This past weekend, when watching football on Sunday night with my roommate, I was turned onto a piece of knowledge I’m sure many people are not aware of.  This particular incident occurred in 1996 and has relevancy to some ongoing events in football today. 

Peyton Manning is one of the most beloved football players of the past 15 years and one of the most well respected by players, fans and coaches of all time.  However, back when he was in knowledge, the great Peyton (who I am admittedly a big fan of) was actually accused of sexual assault. 

Most people don’t even know this happened.  I was shocked myself and couldn’t believe one of the most high profile athletes in the world has something like this unknown about him.  Now, it must be said the incident with Manning was not nearly as bad as some cases.  It seemed like more of an ill-judged, irresponsible prank by a young man who thought he was on top of the world.  You can read about it here.

So, the question I began to ask was exactly how I didn’t know about this.  There are really multiple answers, but the development and rise of real-time media and social media especially have contributed negatively to the public perception of some athletes.  Granted, it has also helped shed light on some disturbing issues which otherwise would have gone unnoticed.  However, for a person like Manning, he benefited greatly from the absence of social media.

Social Media, where anyone can post anything at any time, makes it extremely difficult to manage a situation like this from a crisis standpoint.  It’s become nearly impossible to keep things quiet.  Perhaps some problems that the public has been exposed to recently in sports, such as steroid abuse in baseball and domestic violence problems in football, really have been problems for much longer.  Let’s just say some people have been very lucky social media wasn’t around in the 1990s, otherwise the public may have a very different perception of them. 

Almost there…

I know some people do suffer sometimes from homesickness while in college.  There’s nothing wrong with that, especially during spells of a couple months where people might not have the opportunity to visit.  I, luckily, haven’t had this problem while in college.  Yes, it’s always nice to go home and see family, but I enjoy the college atmosphere, too.  However, with the cold weather and snow just starting, I’ve found myself thinking repeatedly “almost there,” in reference to being close to break.  I’ve mentioned in previous blogs that I don’t think it’s good to wish time away because things will be over before you know it.  I’m already a junior in college when it seems like yesterday that I was applying.  Still, I’m about ready for turkey day.  

 But, as I look forward to both Thanksgiving and winter break, I’m reminded of all the work I have to do before I get there (specifically winter break).  There are exams, finals, final projects and presentations and of course more blogs to write.  I don’t mind the workload much really, but when it’s in the way of break I begin to resent it somewhat.  I know it’s only mid November (the 16^th to be exact), but Winter break is only one month away.  Hallelujah.  I guess in spite of the barrage of work all students are about to receive, there’s that to look forward too.