PETA gone wild?
I found this image here.
Well Lindsay Lohan is in rehab again, not so surprising in know, but this time it is different. From unknown sources it is saying that Lohan cannot pay the $50,000 price tag to stay at the Betty Ford Rehabilitation Center. So instead of going to jail Lohan knew that she needs to find a way to stay in rehab. PETA, The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, sent Lohan a letter stating that they will pay the bill on one condition, NO MEAT. PETA has said that they will front the bill is Lohan will become vegan. So become a vegan or go to jail? Hmm that seems like a tough decision.
What do you think? Is PETA just doing this for the publicity or because they feel bad for the young girl? Do you think Lohan should do it? Do you think she can do it?
PR OpenMic
Topic of the Week #9
Comm 4333
When I started looking around the PR OpenMic website I was in awe. The site had so much to look at. You get to meet and network with so many PR people. The first way describe to someone what PR OpenMic is it’s like a Facebook for all of the awesome people in the PR world. Once you sign up for an account you can connect with the people you know or search the website for interesting articles. The page features blogs, videos, events, internships and a wide variety of other things.
The first thing that caught my eye was the link to the jobs and internships tab. Within the tab you are given a list of jobs and internships all over the United States. It also gives you other useful links to websites that will help if you are in search of a job or internship.
The next tab I went onto was for blogs. I find this to be very useful because I can use it when searching for PR blogs and I can even use these blogs to comment on for this class. Out of the few blogs I read over they all seem to be very clean and respectful.
The final section I’m going to talk about is the members section. You can find students, teachers and practitioners. Clicking on this I found a lot of the people I am currently in classes with here at SEU. I think it is so neat that us PR people can have this little world where we can all connect together.
While the website is still very small you can still do so much on it. Something else I find very cool is that a PR Professor created it. There are only a little over 6,000 members but it seems to be growing very fast. Everything stays so up to date because it was created that way.
The Lead Lab
Topic of the Week #8 & #9
Comm 4333 & 2322
What did you learn?
The course helped me learn how to better my leads in stories. I found it to be very helpful. It reminded me the important small things that you always seem to forget about. One of the very important things when it comes to lead stories is to start with the five W’s and H:
- What happened?
- Who did it happen to?
- Where did it happen?
- When did it happen?
- How did it happen?
With this knowledge you next must logically zero in on the two basic focusing questions:
- Whats the new?
- What’s this story about?You must also always remember how to get the right lead for you story. It depends on three things:
- Your news organization
- The news
- The timing of publication
What surprised you?The course didn’t seem to surprise me to much. A lot of the information I already knew but it was very helpful to be refreshed in this course. I like the way the course stayed interactive by clicking on the different things. It made the course different but still fun. The information was split up very well and made it seem small and kept the reading very manageable.
What do you want to know more about?
I found the myths about leads pretty interesting. There were four different ones that they mentioned in this article, they were:- Leads must never begin with a quote.
- Leads must always contain attribution.
- A good lead is never more than three or four lines long.
- A lead must sum up the story in a paragraph.
Newsworthy Stories
Topic of the Week #6
Comm 4333
What makes a story newsworthy? While there are many stories that are released everyday that doesn’t make them all newsworthy. I know that a majority of stories that are released are not that interesting. I decided to do some research and I found an interesting article on how to make your story more newsworthy.
Mediacollege.com posted these tips on their website on how to make a story more newsworthy:
Timing
The word news means exactly that – things which are new. Topics which are current are good news. Consumers are used to receiving the latest updates, and there is so much news about that old news is quickly discarded.A story with only average interest needs to be told quickly if it is to be told at all. If it happened today, it’s news. If the same thing happened last week, it’s no longer interesting.
Significance
The number of people affected by the story is important. A plane crash in which hundreds of people died is more significant than a crash killing a dozen.
Proximity
Stories which happen near to us have more significance. The closer the story to home, the more newsworthy it is. For someone living in France, a major plane crash in the USA has a similar news value to a small plane crash near Paris.
Prominence
Famous people get more coverage just because they are famous. If you break your arm it won’t make the news, but if the Queen of England breaks her arm it’s big news.
Human Intrest
They often disregard the main rules of newsworthiness; for example, they don’t date as quickly, they need not affect a large number of people, and it may not matter where in the world the story takes place. Human interest stories appeal to emotion. They aim to evoke responses such as amusement or sadness.
It is our responsibility to have reliable, new, interesting, and factual news. Once we have this we have done our job correctly. We must make sure that it’s news the affects the people it is reaching.
Sam Mooty Digital Media Blog 