Three cheers for Melanie Shoults, my spotlight, guest blogger for the week. Melanie is a great writer with a real eye for quality work. She balances out fun and informative posts while keeping it all professional and relevant. Check out her blog sometime. You won’t regret it! Until then, here is a glimpse of one of her most recent post:

Rough Drafts Are Fun

Image Credit: micn2sugars

Okay, raise your hand if you hate rewriting. Wow.  That’s a lot of you. You just want to throw something on a piece of paper, glance at it, then turn it in, right? That used to be me, too.  I was mostly confident in the stuff I could just pull out of my brain, make sure the grammar was correct, then submit it.

And that worked fine for all my other classes until I got into Journalism. Then, even after rewriting it 10 times, I could turn it in and still have red marks all over it. This bugged me, a lot.

That’s why I loved the (FREE!) NewsU course, Get Me Rewrite that I took a few weeks ago. Not only did it emphasize the importance of rewriting, but it also offered valuable tips and steps for the rewriting process. And because I love lists and step-by-step instructions, this made me super happy!

Here are Chip Scanlan‘s steps, taken from Get Me Rewrite, for working through the rewriting process:

1. Print out your draft.
2. Listen to the entire story. During the reading, you can’t write on the draft or comment or respond, just listen.
3. Read the draft a second time aloud, or silently to yourself, but now every time something strikes you, make a mark at on the manuscript. Nothing more.
4. Number every mark you’ve made.
5. Beside each number write down why you flagged that word or passage either on the draft or in a separate file. For example, you might jot down, “cut this,” “check this with source,” etc.
6. Count up the number of changes and estimate how long each will take you to deal with them all.
7. Start with the first one — if it’s a misspelled word, change it on the screen, hit save, and move on, cutting, pasting, moving up or down, inserting, as quickly as possible. You may not be able to solve every problem in this revision. But you may the next time around.
8. Once you have gone through the entire list and made changes save the revision as a new file, hit print, and repeat until you are satisfied.

He also wrote about the 10% rule, trying to cut out 10% of your essay every time you rewrite. I didn’t like this rule, because that’s a pain whenever your essay has to be a minimum of 1,000 words or so. Sometimes I just want to be lazy and submit whatever I have rather than making that essay or article a bunch of really good 1,000 words.

Twitter is used for a number of reasons today. From advertising to socializing with friends and famly, twitter has topped the social media charts .

One of the many avenues of Twitter include twitter chats. And I have to admit, I wasn’t aware of what a twitter chat was as of recent nor had I ever had the desire to participate in one. How would this benefit me?

PR chats on Twitter are a helpful way to connect and communicate with PR specialists from all around the world, to build relationships and personal network, to meet new interesting people and to learn the current tendencies in the field.

I decided to participate in the PR Chat #PRStudChat, which is a once a month conversation between public relations students, educators and professionals.

Moderator Deirdre Breakenridge (@dbreakenridge) and host Valerie Simon (@valeriesimon) bring present and future PR industry leaders together for a lively discussion once a month on twitter to discussion the Public Relations industry and the changing landscape.

Since I had never particpated in a twitter chat before, I did some brief research on what to expect from it. Here is a glimpse at a few tips in case you are about to embark on your first twitter chat as well via Valarie Simon:

Before the chat

• Join the #PRStudChat LinkedIn Group The group has been set up to anchor participants. Get to know the other members that will be attending the chat. Feel free to “message” them through the group, to let them know you are looking forward to hearing from them. Take an active role in the group by posting disucssion topics or adding your comments to current discussions. And be sure to start following those members you find interesting, Remember, participants won’t be able to DM you if you are not following.
• Follow the hashtag in advance of the chat, so that you can get to know who is coming (you can “follow” the hashtag by either searching for #PRStudchat or setting up a column inTweetDeck)
• Tweet with the hashtag in advance. Let everyone know you will be attending. Tell them something about yourself and what you hope to gain from the conversation
• -Encourage other PR Students and professionals to join in. The quality of the dialog is dependent on the participants, and you can help by referring those you respect.
• “Watch” other chats. If this is your first Twitter chat and you are curious to “watch” a chat before jumping in, you may want to check out #journchat, a weekly discussion between PR professionals and journalists (Monday evenings 8pm EST) or #PR20chat a weekly discussion about PR 2.0 and the future of the PR industry (Wednesday evenings 8pm EST)

During the chat

• Log on to Tweetchat.com or Tweetgrid.com and use the hashtag #PRStudchat. This will allow you to participate in the conversation real time, without the distractions of tweets from those not participating in the chat
• It’ okay to talk. Please jump in and voice your questions, comments and advice. Discussion and debate are encouraged, but please be respectful so that we can maintain an environment where everyone is comfortable asking questions.
• It’s okay to listen. RT comments you find particularly valuable, to help assure that they do not get lost in a fast paced conversation.
• Stay on topic. If you want to discuss something off topic with a participant, drop the hashtag .

After the chat

• Consider and continue the conversation. Blog about the chat and your experience. Take a moment to review the conversation (rough transcripts can be made athttp://wthashtag.com/Prstudchat and a clean summary of the event will be available shortly after here.  Continue to use the hashtag.
• Build relationships with new tweeps you hope to learn more from; Follow their blogs and tweets, Check out their profiles and websites. Continue to use the LinkedIn Group to learn about future chats and follow up to the conversation. Once you have built an individual relationship with other members, send a personal invitation to them to join your LinkedIn network.

I recently completed the NewsU Course entitled “Writing for the Ear,” which taught me how to write more effective audio narratives.

The five-part module covered:

• Introduction to audio stories - How audio stories are different from their print counterparts and examples of great audio stories
• Picking and pitching stories - Generating story ideas that work well in audio form and pitching stories and sharpening their focus
• Writing the story - Everything you need to write effectively at the story, scene and sentence levels
• Revising the story - Strategies for applying the tools of revision to audio writing
• Voicing & special topics - How to perform an audio story and other topics, such as “translating” a print story to audio form

I’ve mostly written for print, so I definitely learned a number of new things regarding journalistic writing from a broadcast perspective.

It was interesting to view the necessity of picking and pitching your story. Selecting and pitching your story will have a big impact on your writing. They can make your job a lot easier ― or harder ― when it comes time to report, write and voice your story. So I learned how it important it was to pick if you want to use audio or not in your story.

Evaluating how to pitch the story was some of which I learned already in regards to writing story. The writing process begins with story selection. It involves reporting, tape logging and drafting. After a draft’s in place, a story still needs to be revised and voiced.

Revision is probably where I learned the most from this course. How do you revise an audio story?

While the tight, succinct writing that is done for listeners is good writing no matter where it is used, there’s one critical difference between writing for audio and writing for print: Audio writing is more conversational. Even the best writers slip into clunky, multi-syllabic, adverb-dense prose, and it takes careful editing to get rid of that heavy language. You want to write like Ernest Hemingway, with jabs. Some of the best radio writing isn’t even full sentences. But the writing sounds good, which, of course, is what matters.

Overall, I really enjoyed this NewsU course because it gave perspective on a form of writing I am not too familiar with.

I’ve used Poynter for the past two years now. Most of my experience from this website has come from the NewsU courses, which have coached me through effective journalism and public relation’s techniques. However, there courses are just a small portion to everything Poynter has to offer to media students and professionals.

Here is a brief overview of what Poynter has to offer:

Latest News

Under the “Latest News” tab, Poynter offers media industry news and commentary through “MediaWire,” the latest news about media through “Top Stories,” accuracy, errors and the craft of verification through “Regret the Error,” news about mobile and its applications for media through “Mobile Media,” news about social media that matters to journalism through “Social Media,” and media business news through “Business News.”

How To’s

Under the “How To’s” tab, Poynter offers tips for reporting and telling stories with traditional and new tools through “Newsgathering and Storytelling,” tips on managing a website, from measuring traffic to understanding new platforms for news and information through “Digital Strategies,” tips on leading people and organizations through “Leadership & Management,” and tips on crowdsourcing, user-generated content, managing comments and other ways of connecting with communities through “Community Engagement.”

Chats

Under the “Chats” tab, Poynter offers chats with Joe Grimm and other experts about managing your career through “Career Chats,” and chats bi-weekly with Roy Peter Clark about writing through “Writing Chats.”

As you can see, Poynter offers so much in just media news alone. Try exploring the Poynter website and experience something new today!

Give Credit Where Credit is Due.

This is a rule that we have famliarized ourselves with in and outside of the classroom. Yet, there is still complications that have arised from it.

Growing up, teachers stressed the importance of crediting our sources, explaining what plagirism looked like and teaching us the proper ways of citation.

However, I have never personally encountered  plagiarism or have had friends that got in severe trouble with plagiarism. I have only encountered what plagirism looks like in academia but not in a professional field.

So I must ask myself: how would I deal with plagiarism in the field of public relations? I mean, plagiarism has to reside in blogs more than ever before. Content is easily accesible and easily attainable to use and abuse.

If infringement took place in my work environment, the best way, I believe, to go about it would be to target the source. I would contact the infringer and explain the area where they have stolen from our company. I would request a cease and desist letter, requiring that the infringer take down any content that was not theirs, and request that they notify viewers that the work was not originally theirs…referencing the original source.

The best way to deal with situations like this is to simply have the right knowledge of infringement laws. They are constantly changing, and adequate background-knowledge will give you the skils to handle it in a professional manner.

Here is a great site that keeps you up-to-date on content theft, copyright infringement and plagiarism:  PlagirismToday