End of Semester In-Class Presentation . . .

Public relations practitioners should be comfortable in both written and verbal communication. Presentation skills are essential for the PR pro, who'll often be responsible for speaking before one group or another.

The final course project is an approx. 10-minute presentation. It'll be good experience, despite that annoyingly agonizing fact that public speaking is the No. 1 fear among most human beings! If you feel a bit nervous about giving oral presentations, you are SO not alone.

Here are the key elements of the assignment, presented via bullets:

* You can choose virtually any topic. That's right -- just about anything. But you need to get it approved by me first (I don't want talks about how to make brownies, for example).

* The topic should be one that lends itself to a "persuasive argument." What I mean is that you should approach this as if you're hoping to persuade your audience (class members) that, after watching your presentation, they ought to be interested in seeking more information about your topic. Or, they'll better accept your "proposition."

For example, you might talk about why you believe gangster rap has specific social benefits. You thus need to convince (persuade) your audience that your proposition is true -- by supporting it with facts, examples, etc.

* Choose a topic you're PASSIONATE about. It could be a hobby, a sport, a musical artist, a field of study, an artist -- just about anything. But, again, your task is to make a persuasive, convincing argument that would lead your audience to adopt your point of view; better appreciate a musical artist; desire to seek more information about your subject.

* You do not have to use Power Point. You may, of course. But if you do, be sure to use it only as an aid. Please do not turn your back on us and merely read everything on your slides. That is not how to make a persuasive, engaging presentation. Let it support your talk, but the main information should come from you -- eyeball to eyeball with your audience. So you should know your subject pretty thoroughly.

* You can certainly use notes to guide you. A kind of outline. That's fine. But make a personal connection with the audience. It's far more persuasive than simply reading something.

* What will I be looking for? Three key things: a clear statement up-front of what your objective is -- what you're setting out to do; a solid set of facts, illustrations, examples, explanations, etc., that support your objective; a closing that reinforces your main point, summarizes and "wraps things up," and that perhaps leaves the audience with something tangible (hand-outs, etc.).

* This is not a public speaking course. But public relations does involve good, clear, well-organized, purposeful communication -- oral as well as written. You'll be evaluated on how clear your objective is, how well you substantiate it, and how you leave the audience wanting more! In other words, you've hopefully succeeded in getting their attention and persuading them that they ought to want to find out more.

* Please talk to me about your topic, or submit it to me in writing. The last two days of the semester (prior to finals week) will be devoted to your presentations. In effect, this assignment is in lieu of a final exam. 

News Release due Tues., Feb. 19, 2013

Graded News Release Assignment:

Write a straight news release - using a one-sentence Summary Lead
paragraph - based on the following information. It's intended for a
Buffalo-area audience.



WHAT: A new hypnosis group formed

WHO: Western New York Hypnosis Society

WHAT: First meeting of this newly formed group will be: Saturday, March 4, 1
p.m. to 3 p.m.

WHERE: Amherst Community Center. Location: 1200 Harlem Rd., Amherst

WHY: An open forum for anyone interest in the subject of hypnosis. They can
be professional or amateur.

WHO: Mark L. Summer, Ph.D., hypnotherapist, will lead discussions. Quote him
about the group's purpose, objectives, etc. Add information as you see fit
about the popularity of hypnosis; statistics that may be relevant; doubts
some may have - whatever. You may wish to do some research via the Internet
about hypnosis.

Also: Let readers know what they can do for more information. Meetings are
admission-free.

BOILER PLATE: Come up with one.

Assignment due Tues., Feb. 5, 2013...

Assignment due Tues., Feb. 5, 2013: Try your hand at a hypothetical news release about YOU being appointed to some position. Include a summary lede; include responsibilities of position; what you were doing professionally before this appointment; something about your general professional/educational background; a quote from you and/or someone connected to the story.

 

(This is a non-graded exercise.)

Syllabus: Intro. to Public Relations

Syllabus

 

Introduction to Public Relations

PR322

Spring 2013

Instructor: Prof. Paul Chimera

Preferred e-mail: chimera1@verizon.net

Secondary: pchimera@daemen.edu

During business hours: 839.5282

Office hours: arranged as needed

Blog on which certain course info. is posted: www.professorchimera.blogspot.com

 

 

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION

 

“Introduction to Public Relations” is likely to include information far different from what many people presume public relations or PR is all about. At the core of public relations as a profession is solid communication skills – verbal and most especially via the written word.

 

This course is essentially divided into the “technician” side of PR, and the bigger-picture, management & strategy side of PR. Both skill sets are key to understanding and practicing public relations, and both will be covered in this course. (There is likely to be some overlap between parts of what will be covered in this course and what some of you may have dealt with, if you took my courses in “Writing for the Media” and “Promotional Writing.”  A measure of “cross-sell” is inevitable, since there are some undeniable similarities in these media-related courses.)

 

Through chapter readings, discussions, assignments, and – hopefully – a guest speaker sometime during the semester, students will have the opportunity to get a solid, practical introduction to the basics of public relations as a marketing management function.

 

COURSE EXPECTATIONS

 

There will be a number of writing assignments dealing with both the PR technician’s tools, and with activities involving PR strategy and issues management. Because presentation skills are also very important in practicing public relations, one assignment will be an oral report that promises to actually be fun as well as skill- and confidence-building. There will be a mid-term, but no final exam per se. In effect, the end-of-semester presentation will be your “final.”

 

 

LATE WORK

 

We’re going to run the course like a business. After all, you’re being prepared to graduate at some point and eventually enter the workplace full-time in your chosen career. Excuses for why reports and other work aren’t in on time don’t cut it in the business world. They also don’t fly here. Assignments turned in later than the end of the class session at which they’re due will be dropped one full letter grade for every day past deadline. Only bona fide doctor’s excuses will serve as an exception to this rule.

 

GRADING

 

I use numeric grades, with 90 – 100 (A); 80 – 89 (B); 70 – 79 (C); 60-69 (D); under 60 (F).

Participation is very big with me. So is attendance. These things show interest and ambition, and help create an enriching learning atmosphere for everyone. While attendance will not be mandatory; i.e., you will not be directly penalized for absence from class, what you miss by not being in class can never be fully recovered. If you can find someone from whom you can get notes, that’s terrific, but please don’t ask me to tell you what you missed. They just don’t pay me to teach it twice! And guess whose responsibility it is to be here? You know the answer to that one. It’s suggested you immediately get to know a classmate and exchange phone numbers and/or e-mail addresses, in case you need to get notes and assignment information, due to your absence.

 

Assignments will be described on a separate sheet, distributed early in the semester (or, in lieu of this, they’ll appear at: www.professorchimera.blogspot.com). Due dates may or may not be included at the time the sheet is distributed (or blog notices posted), but they’ll be communicated to you shortly thereafter. You’ll know what’s due and when. But missing in-class instruction, including occasions of in-class writing or other exercises, is something that can’t be recovered. Bottom line: miss class at your own peril. As comedian Woody Allen famously said, “Ninety percent of success is just showing up!”

 

Finally, with respect to grading . . .

 

In some cases, I may have you write two assignments of the same basic style (e.g., two press releases) and I’ll take the better of the two to serve as your grade in that unit. However, you must do both, in order for me to take the better one as your final grade in that unit. If you don’t do one of them, then that becomes a zero, which gets averaged with the grade you receive on the other assignment.

 

 

RUBRICS

 

All written assignments will be evaluated on (1) how well you understood the intent or purpose of the assignment; (2) its completeness, where nothing crucial is omitted; (3) the strength of your argument (when writing more “essay-style” assignments); and (4) their “technical” proficiency; i.e., grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. I do not, however, assign a precise number of points for each of these categories. Rather, each assignment is expected to conform to these areas of evaluation. Then I make an ultimate judgment on whether the work would be considered “average” from a professional, entry-level job point of view; above average; or below average.

 

Do not depend on spell-check! Do yourself a huge favor and get into the habit of carefully reading your work out loud. We read with our ears as well as our eyes. You’ll often catch things when you hear them that you don’t when you read them silently. I cannot judge the quality of your work on what you meant to write; I must do so on what you turned in. Even simple typos remain a concern, because they suggest a lack of diligent proofing.

 

No paper can achieve “A” status if it has more than perhaps one fundamental error. For example, a great paper that has two run-on sentences is almost assured of not receive an “A,” no matter how much of the rest of the paper was excellent. Basic writing skills MUST be mastered here in college. It’s truly essential in order to be a properly educated college graduate. That’s my story – and I’m sticking to it!

 

PLAGIARISM

 

I recently encountered a couple of cases of student plagiarism; it was very troubling. Make it a point to first understand what plagiarism is (some elementary research will help sort this out), then pledge to never engage in it. It cheats everyone, but most especially you. As course instructor, I have the obligation to address student plagiarism in one of several ways: I can award no credit for the given assignment; I can fail the student in the course altogether; or I can even recommend expulsion from Daemen (though a final decision on that is not mine to make). Incidents of plagiarism need to be reporter to the Associate Dean of the college, and information pertaining to the infraction is kept in the student’s file until graduation, as I understand it. Make sure the work you turn in is yours, not someone else’s.

 

 

 

 

OUTCOMES

 

Successful completion of “Introduction to Public Relations” will mean gaining a solid grasp of basic PR principles – or, as the text book suggests in its title, PR strategies and tactics. The strategy part will come primarily in the form of Program Planning and Crisis Communications. The tactics part will span the crafting of such things as News Releases and Pitch Letters, among others. If you came into the course thinking PR was primarily about smiling charmingly and being a good conversationalist at cocktail parties, you’ll leave the course realizing that is very, very far from the reality of the public relations business.

 

Instead, you’ll have a fundamental grasp of what the public relations field entails, how it functions as part of the marketing process, and how to actually prepare various PR tools, such as news releases, program plans, etc.

 

Enjoy. And much luck!

 

________

How to write a News Release . . .

A news release (also called a press release) is "news" that is "released" to the news media. It's normally generated by a public relations specialist within a company, or from a PR agency representing a company (client).

These days news releases are almost always sent via e-mail, with a subject line indicating it's a news release and briefly pointing out the key "what" of the news (e.g., News Release: Daemen College to Offer Major in Magic).

A news release stands its best chance of being published (whether on-line or in print) if it conforms as closely as possible to accepted journalistic style. That means it should be written objectively: facts only, no opinion.

A news release must also include a Summary Lead (Lede), which is the opening sentence/paragraph. A Summary Lead does as the name suggests: it summarizes the main point of the story. A Summary Lead is almost always just one sentence long. And that one sentence opening is normally a separate paragraph -- even though it's just one sentence in length.

There should be a headline on your release. It doesn't have to be a complete sentence -- but it should be a complete or meaningful thought. In other words, an announcement about an upcoming Salvador Dali exhibition should NOT carry a headline like this: 'Salvador Dali Exhibition,' but SHOULD carry a headline like this: 'Salvador Dali Exhibition to Open in November at Smith Gallery'

After you've written your one-sentence summary lede, you then present supporting facts, details, quotes, etc., in descending order of importance. This structure is known as the Inverted Pyramid. It means the main information is at the very top of your release (story), and then less and less important information is presented as you move down in the story.

In theory, if an editor is pressed for time, he or she could conveniently cut from the bottom of your piece and not seriously affect the essence of it -- because what was cut was automatically known to be the least important information in the release.

The MOST important information, of course, is the lead. In fact, with a summary lead, it should be able to stand alone and still give readers enough information to know what's happening -- even if nothing but the lead were published!

We'll be seeing examples and writing some short releases, to get a feel for all this.

Also important in news release writing are two other things: the use of quotes, and the use of attribution. Let's take quotes first.

Quotes add a human and personal element to a news release. They add credibility as well. If someone is quoted, we know someone in authority said or explained something. It takes the focus off of us as the writer, and lets readers know that the key information is coming from respected sources.

Now, those sources are what we *attribute* information to. In other words, we ourselves (as the news release writer) aren't saying to readers that WE are conveying this information to them. We're saying that we know this information to be true based on what our sources have told us.

So we attribute information to those sources, when it's information that is common knowledge or that otherwise doesn't warrant attribution.

Keep in mind that the release will ONLY be seen by readers once it's published in the media to which you released it. And those media wish to maintain the appearance of objectivity or impartiality. So the way you write a news release must sound like the way it would appear, had it been written by a reporter from that publication. Again, this will become clearer as we look at examples.

A news release, ultimately, is a tool the PR specialist uses to promote something -- even though it also serves the needs of journalists, and the needs of news consumers. Often, then, we include at the end of a news release a "for more information" line. Editors may choose to run that or not. Indeed, it's THEIR decision whether a release will be run at all. They're the gatekeepers. They decide.

The two most crucial criteria to ensure your news release gets published are these: whether it's relevant news to the publication's coverage area (readership), and whether it's properly written in journalistic format.

We "end" a news release with either this: ##, or this: -30-

A news release should not be longer than what would fit on a single computer screen, without having to scroll down any further.

It should, style-wise, conform to AP Style (Associated Press), which is the standard style guide governing newspaper writing in the USA. We'll talk some about AP style.