2015 Student Media Tour

By: Sarah Jones

Today I had the amazing opportunity to participate in the Student Media Tour put on by the Alliance For Women In Media DFW chapter. I chose to participate in the Fort Worth/Arlington tour which included NBC Universal, Six Flags, Pavlov Agency, 95.9 The Ranch, and the Texas Rangers.

Texas Rangers Stadium via Sarah Jones

The chaperones were members of the AWM and were so helpful and insightful throughout the entire tour. I appreciated them hosting this tour because it shows how invested they are in young people's success and how willing they are to help us meet our goals. They provided breakfast and lunch and made sure to let every place we went know we had our resumes with us and were ready for internships/jobs.

During the tour I learned so much about the media industry and I also learned a lot about myself. Before I went on the tour I was having trouble figuring out what part of the industry I was a good fit for. While my major is public relations, I haven't been feeling it lately. I enjoy PR; I like making content and being the voice of an organization or business. However, lately, I have been questioning whether it is the best fit for me. So I don't want to graduate college and not use what I have put so much hard work into for the past four years. I made it a goal to really pay attention during all the presentations in classes and on the tour so I could find which area of the industry I could be passionate about.

Throughout the tour the common theme that interested me was promotions or marketing. Anytime someone talked about it, I found myself thinking, "That's it, that's something I could be great at." I hadn't felt that way about anything else in the industry. I think it's because I wasn't even aware that it was a department among organizations and businesses. I love giving people information, and talking about something with positivity and passion that will draw them to whatever it is I'm supporting. I also love coming up with ideas to spread the word and bring people in but I couldn't figure out how to incorporate that with the degree I'm working towards. Then I went on the media tour and saw many organizations and business had something like that. For the first time in my college career I thought that was something I could finally be passionate about and excel at.

So, I encourage anyone in the whole field of journalism who is unsure of the route they want to go, or who is looking for internships to try and attend this media tour or some other kind of media tour. It's a great way to get exposed to everything this exciting industry has to offer and network with professionals to get internships at the same time. A lot of the professionals said the key to being successful is to get an internship. They also reiterated that whom you know means more than what you know. The media tour gives a real world perspective on something classes at a university aren't able to show as well. So I just want to thank the AWM and all the entities that participated in showing all of us what working in the industry was like and all of the endless possibilities that are out there for us.

Ethical Dilemmas with Public Relations inside an Organization

By Sarah Jones

In today's industry of  public relations one of the most significant ethical problems facing PR professionals is the line between business opportunities and crisis communications. Sometimes, even PR professionals can't keep management from crossing the line. Often what starts as an opportunity to conduct basic business turns into a PR nightmare no matter how hard the PR team tries to defuse the situation.

A perfect example of this is the recent signing of Greg Hardy to the Dallas Cowboys. It's completely normal for sports teams to sign new players and get rid of old ones, so the business side of the situation is on point. However, from the PR side it could be foreseen as a nightmare from the beginning because Hardy is currently under investigation for domestic violence. Although the charges were dropped in court due to the victim not appearing for the hearing, the NFL is conducting its own investigation. From every angle it makes the Cowboys look horrible. Signing Hardy to play football isn't the issue, however, the way the Cowboys went about signing him, is what makes it look bad.

When it comes down to it, the Dallas Cowboys is a major organization that deals with many businesses and groups. From a business standpoint, if this goes wrong, the Cowboys will lose next to nothing. However, it's already lost something greater than a few bucks, it has lost respect. The Cowboys have been deemed "America's Team" for as long as anyone can remember, it has a huge fan base that have stuck through many losing seasons. Except how does it make "America's Team" look when it signs a man who has been accused of domestic violence, something the NFL is no stranger to. The organization claims it has spread awareness of domestic violence and took careful consideration when making the decision but I have yet to come across an explanation that causes this decision to make sense.

Charlotte Jones Anderson, the VP of the Cowboys sat down with a local news station and had an interview explaining the decision. Anderson talked about giving second chances and not throwing people away, and that's great people deserve second chances but the Cowboys didn't give Hardy or America time to see the need for a second chance. Hardy is still being investigated by the NFL, but that didn't stop the Cowboys from going ahead and signing him, and I think that is what's bothering a lot of people. If the Cowboys would have waited until the investigation is over it would have saved them a ton of grief. The fact that right after Hardy was signed it had Hardy jerseys for sale to the public didn't help either.

Even if Hardy is totally innocent it still doesn't lessen the fact that even after the NFL struggled with domestic violence and launched the No More campaign, the Cowboys still decided to sign someone that could have the chance of being punished for something that the organization is speaking out against which screams hypocrisy. True, Hardy is a very good player but from a PR perspective it's not worth the grief. The Cowboys should have waited on this one, it shouldn't have been so hasty in a business decision and allowed the PR team to do their thing and let the organization know when the backlash would have been less severe. It's not worth the respect and reputation that the organization lost by making this avoidable decision. It's a different case when a crisis comes out of nowhere but when it can be so easily avoided is where the ethical dilemma comes to light. For ethical decisions to be made the business or organization needs to work with, and trust, the PR team to make the right call, especially when the deal has no real financial effect on the organization. In this instance it doesn't appear that both entities had an agreement and unfortunately it's the management that has the final say and the PR group that has to clean it up.

Will Ferrell: Master of PR Stunts

By: Sarah Jones

Will Ferrell has been a busy man already this year. Ferrell has already participated in two PR stunts for two different films since January. In his latest stunt Ferrell played every position for 10 different Major League Baseball teams on Thursday. Ferrell partnered with the MLB to film a segment for an upcoming HBO series.

                                          Source via YouTube/CityTV Official

In January Ferrell was 'thrown out' of a Pelicans-Lakers game after he threw a basketball and hit a cheerleader in the face. Of course Ferrell wasn't arrested because the stunt was for a scene in an upcoming movie starring Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg.

                                          Source via YouTube/Entertainment Tonight

These aren't the only times Ferrell has done outrageous and genius stunts to promote his upcoming works. For Anchorman 2 Ferrell went on a 'media blitz' where he visited numerous news stations and helped report the news. He also visited various late shows and interviewed sports celebrities all while maintaining his Ron Burgundy persona.

                                          Source via YouTube/ESPN

Ferrell has been known for his outrageous movies and now is known for his excellent marketing skills. Of course he's not the lone brainchild of coming up with these ideas, he undoubtedly has a team of people that come up with how he's going to promote his upcoming projects. His team knows whom to market. Most of Ferrell's movies are geared towards males so by having most of the promotions at sporting events and sporting channels it's reaching a huge male audience. However, what I am most impressed about is his willingness to do almost anything for laughs and a good cause.  The MLB event on Thursday is a great example of that because memorabilia from the day is going to be auctioned off and all the proceeds are going to Cancer for College and Stand Up to Cancer. I think that's so great to turn a PR/Marketing ploy and use it for a good cause while promoting work.

Some people feel like the Anchorman 2 promotion was a little excessive, but if you're a fan of those movies then you understand why that choice was made. The character Ron Burgundy is an over-the-top, eccentric, and obnoxious person so it was smart to make it as elaborate as it was because it fits the character. A lot of the times entertainment marketing is not executed well when using celebrities to promote their movies, it often seems like they're trying too hard. However, with Will Ferrell the entertainment industry uses his talents so impeccably well it causes major success in promotion. The movie and show he's promoting aren't coming out anytime soon but they already have him out promoting them because they know his talent, personality, and fan base will leave an impression people will remember.

Breaking News On Twitter

By: Sarah Jones

In todays culture information can spread like wildfire. In a matter of seconds breaking news, of any kind, spreads from household to household but not by the way of traditional media. In recent years Twitter has become a news source for social media savvy individuals. Twitter is a social media platform that relies heavily on conversation and it's a great tool for reaching a huge amount of people quickly. Not only does it reach the public, but the public has also been known to join the effort in allowing others to know what is happening the moment it is happening. For these reasons, Twitter is the place that reporters go to keep audiences up-to-date on what is happening in the world around them. Since the amount of people who use Twitter to receive and report breaking news is high, Twitter has even given techniques on how to cover breaking news events on its platform.

For a lot of people Twitter is the first place they go to find out breaking news because things are happening in real time. No one has to wait for the 10 o'clock news or for the edition of the paper to arrive on his or her front doors the next morning. Although many news stations have reporters that blog on a breaking news event and post them directly to their websites, it doesn't have the same timely factor as Twitter. On Twitter not only does the public get the basic rundown of the event, they also get to read what other people are saying about it and even weigh in on the topic themselves. However, the public should have caution when getting their news from a social media platform because it's prone to false information by what young people refer to as 'trolls' which are people who cause controversy for fun.

Twitter saw its latest breaking news event on Thursday when a Delta passenger jet slid off the runway at LaGuardia airport in New York caused by ice and snow on the runway. Passengers from the airplane immediately took to Twitter to share the ordeal and reporters from various news organizations began to report on the situation.

Source: Twitter via @steveblaze98

The picture above got thousands of favorites and retweets which goes to show just how fast a tweet can reach multiple people in a short amount of time. Since breaking news travels fast on Twitter, and multiple people are telling different stories, the companies involved in the situation have to be on its game even more. Companies have to control the situation and get the truth out there before the public starts believing everything they're seeing on social media. Also, reporters have to do their job of checking their facts to make sure peoples tweets are legitimate before using them in stories and sharing it to the public. Bottom line, Twitter can be a great place to get and break news if the public follows legitimate news sources and uses common sense when following a major event as it unfolds.