Four

Is the practice of public relations easier now or more challenging than the days of "two newspaper" towns and three primary TV networks?

Both.

It is both easier and more difficult to practice public relations in 2009 than is has been in the past.

The amount of media and information we are exposed to on a daily basis is really quite overwhelming. As a budding public relations practitioner, I sometimes find myself at a loss for new and creative ways to get the message across to consumers and the public.

Even doing my semester-long project for PR Practices last semester, it was difficult to pin-point the most effective audiences to reach and the most effective ways to reach them. Working within the confines of a small town, such as Boone, it took us hours to decide what media outlets to send our press release to. Meeting after meeting was spent deciding which audiences would be appropriate to target for our event, which was a low-key wine tasting in the Wine To Water office on King Street for the December 2008 Downtown Boone Art Crawl. I can only imagine how much of a nightmare it would have been planning a major event or gala, which they had initially wanted us to do for them. Even designing the flier advertising the event was an ordeal with the imaging software that is now available. It really takes a jack of all trades to be an efficient PR practitioner.

However, the wealth of information and media we are exposed to also serves as an advantage to the PR professional. The benefits of social media are out of this world. Sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace make it possible to inform an immense amount of people about anything with a few clicks of a mouse. Sure, we still have to decide on which audiences to target, but we now have a valuable outlet for reaching them all at the same time and we have an interactive way for them to ask questions and find out more information. People can post questions about an event and someone can answer them from their BlackBerry.

The tricky part, though, is finding a balance between conventional media outlets and the more innovative and social ones. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to get in touch with the media as it seems daily newspapers will one day, in the not-so-distant future, become obsolete. It is harder, now, as a PR practitioner to build bonds with the media as there may not be anyone on the other end to reciprocate.

BUT as a young person that will soon be entering the field of public relations, I remind myself to keep an open mind and a positive attitude about new and fresh ideas and outlets to get the message out. Being ahead of the curve will ultimately be what gets you the farthest because things don't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.