COMU1152 - Media Conference 2

In this lecture, we had Guest Speaker Frances Whiting, who is an author, journalist and public speaker. Firstly, Frances gave us some background information of how she became a journalist. From being a primary school teacher, a 28 she studied a batchelor of business/journalism over a time of 6 years. Following her studies, she got a job on a small paper on the North Coast, where there was little pressure to perform well and a great way of learning. Starting off in a small regional newspaper was her advice to get an opening into the industry. Soon after, Frances was offered a job in the Brisbane Sunday Mail, doing a piece for the EKKA, and has since continued for 16 years. She now has her own column in the Sunday Mail. Frances finds this an intimate form of writing, where viewers enter your world and feel they know you personally. She also gets an insight into the readers, which improves her writing career, as you know whos reading it, and who is writing to her. As she is also a feature writer for the Q weekend magazine, Frances has had to learn a few different style of writing. Her advice was learning to be flexible and versatile to suite your audience. As such, the Sunday Mail readers want to smile and laugh, whilst Q weekend is advertised as a formal magazine, where readers want to learn something and be directed to do something to help somebody. When referring to PR, she comments that if you don’t get a job, you can create your own job. This is as the industry is changing, but with this comes opportunity and new ways to get your voice heard. She recommends to build up relationships with journalists and to continually follow up after each story. Frances discusses the importance to love what you do. As you go into the world of PR, don’t forget your basics, build up your contacts, and be professional in every form of communication you can. I found this speech very inspirational, as I am concerned about the limited amount of jobs for PR out there. But she believed there are always jobs, sometimes you need to make your own.

COMU1152 - Media Conference 1

In todays lecture, we had Guest Speaker Robert discuss his Journalism work in the Russian Foreign Affairs. Robert is an investigative journalist and war correspondent. He first studied Journalism and Communication, and after his studies began working for the Nation Media Group.  A highlight in his career is having been the first person to have interviewed Joseph Kony. During that time, he was captured and put into a detention centre, where a bag was kept over his head for four days. Following this, he was disposed of somewhere on the street. Whilst working in this particular industry, he found that due to arrests, stress became too much and there were signs of him becoming depressed, and psychologically challenged. After discussing a bit about his struggles, with having to see psychiatrists to keep him sane, he gave many tips and hints of the trade. Firstly, he mentioned that when you move up in the Public Relations world, you are going to confront Journalists who are very curious, and want to now more then what you show them. Content that you do provide to the print media should be planned differently to that of radio and television media as they only want a couple of paragraphs. By doing this, he recommended that you also take advantage of media as much as you can, with well researched information and lots of complex questions. In conference rooms theres no room for mistakes or carelessness as cameras and recorders are on at all times and can use this against you. Roberts final words were images of war scenes, where he said it was very traumatising and ultimately becomes a part of your life. He is still dealing with the impact it has had later on in his life, and 90% of his friends are on drugs to maintain the high of war scenes. The many counselling sessions is what has kept his sanity. I found Robert very inspirational, in practically giving up a lot of his life for his work. He has achieved a great deal post his time in the war scenes and that is also very impressive.