Media Coverage Report #8

America's National Parks: The South / Sarra Sedhi - March 9
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/03/americas-national-parks-the-south.html

This article is a photo summary of America's national parks in the south. This article is written and published side by side with the centennial of the national parks service creation. The article's intention is to inform people about parks in America in places such as The Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina, Mammoth Cave, and Tennessee.

This article could be beneficial for our client because it gives great information to our audience about what parks they may be interested in. Even though it's not endorsed by REI, this article could be a great resource for us to direct our audience to. Moreover, it could also be a great resource for our employees or team members to check out.

The Pro Snowboarder's Workout / By Equinox - March 9
https://www.yahoo.com/health/the-pro-snowboarders-workout-112813631423.html

This article published in Yahoo! Health explains steps and guides to maintain and curate a perfect snowboarder's workout and physicality. They use a professional (Kelly Clark, three time Olympic medalist) to focus on certain skills.

This could be a great resource for REI because they might consider using a similar spokesperson or idea in order to promote snowboarding and therein their snowboarding gear. With such a warm season for the Northwest in regards to this activity, it may be a good idea to promote the health benefits of snowboarding, piggy backing on the idea of this article.

Snowboarding Takes A Slide In Popularity: Experts Unfazed / Lisa Rathke - March 9
http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20150309/GJLIFESTYLES/150129230/-1/foslifestyles

This article attempts to sum up the last ski season. Taking information from ski resort and retail industries, the author pinpoints that sales have gone down at least 28 percent from 2003-2013, with a huge boom preceding that time period in the 1990s to early 200's. This year, the lack of snow and warm whether has not helped.

This article is useful for our client because it's important market research. Our client, though probably already aware of the changing whether from previous market research, should be aware that snowboarding is not only affected negatively by warm whether but also its phases of age. In this article, it pegs snowboarding as having already passed through a "maturity" phase - meaning sales will probably only continue to drop in retail locations as interest wanes.

New Hiking Movies May Overcrowd Appalachian Trail; Registration Sought / March 9 - Ad Crable
http://lancasteronline.com/news/local/new-hiking-movies-may-overcrowd-appalachian-trail-registration-sought/article_ff811606-c692-11e4-9d29-8bd594f0c86b.html

This article explained how recent movies like "Wild" and "A Walk In The Woods," have launched a large interest in outdoors activity; specifically hiking. These movies focus on the Appalachian trail, therefore the registration for such trails has been filling up unusually fast.

This is good information for our client because it's good to know that more business is potentially coming to REI. Moreover, it's good audience research to know that a certain type of person responds positively to movies such as the ones listed.

Canoeing and Kayaking Around The World: Readers' Travel Tips / Curated by The Guardian - March 5
http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2015/mar/05/canoeing-and-kayaking-around-the-world-readers-travel-tips

This article has five curated locations across the world dubbed as the best locations to go kayaking or canoeing. Each location gives information to websites and information for viewers to learn more.

This could potentially be beneficial for our client because they might need to be knowledgeable about potential questions our audience members may ask. If they're being informed about these locations, perhaps our team members can be informed about what sort of gear is necessary for specific areas.

Chapter 16 / Chapter 18 / Chapter 21

Chapter 16

Chapter 16 covers meetings and events. This chapter is pretty basic, in that everything it describes is exactly what you would think. It first goes on to describe what a meeting is and what the basic things a person should do before they have a meeting, including things such as: wiring (literally seeing if the wiring works), meeting identification (if people can find where it is), lighting (if the lighting is good), charts (literally if people can read the charts), and screens (if people can read the screens). Once you have taken five minutes to see if the meeting space you chose isn’t on fire, you’re ready to have a meeting.

            Past the basic “meeting place requirements,” the chapter explains types of meeting such as open houses and tours. These must include convenient times and places, have parking available, consider restroom occupancy, guests, and safety. Facilitators should also consider emergency procedures for these specific places.

Chapter 18

            Chapter 18 covers entertainment, sports, and tourism. These are multi-billion dollar companies that generate huge business and tourism. Though large amounts of PR professionals were needed to cover and facilitate advertising and planning for such events in the past, now with new ways of media usage, the PR professional team has increased. Tactics include events such as: movies, concerts, sporting events, travel, stunts, and more.

            Usually for large events, advertising is down slowly. This is called a “drip by drip” tactic, where information is released at a steady pace as the event approaches. For example, an event could be planned for March of next year. In April, the event would show up on the sponsored area’s calendars, yet advertisement probably wouldn’t happen till December of next year.

Chapter 21

Chapter 21 covers nonprofit, health, and educational organizations. Covered in the previous week’s reading, this chapter now focuses on the tactics best used by PR professionals who are in this specific organization. These specific tactics include: lobbying, litigation, mass demonstrations, boycotts, reconciliation, publicity, creation of events, use of services, creation of educational metarials, and news letters.

            Lobying,as described in the previous chapter before, is the act of persuading government officials toward a certain stance on a pseicic issue. This is done at the local and state government levels. For example, a lobbyist could take an official out to lunch and attempt to talk about their desired issue.

            Litigation is the  act of filing law suits seeking court rulings in favor to t their projects – or these filings could be to block competitive projects.

            Mass demonstrations are essentially self explanatory – large gatherings in support for a cause.

            Boycotts are like mass demonstrations, only they have more effect. Sometimes these effects last for years but other have little evidence of success.

            Reconciliation is the act of covering your mistakes and then improving on your original form to make it look like an organization is doing better than it ever has.

            Publicity is having news media provide accessible channels for audience members to view information about your organization.

            Creation of events is pretty self explanatory. This is the creation of certain events to attract crowds and make news.

            Use of services increases overall public awareness – this encourages the public and families to use the organization’s services as well.

            Creation of education materials requires public relations representatives to spend their time preparing educational, help book, or otherwise tutorial-like materials to educate the public.

            News letters are used to help post bulletins to the public, either monthly or quarterly.

            

Chapter 19 / Chapter 20

Chapter 19

Chapter 19 goes over politics and government and Public Relation’s involvement in such affairs. The chapter defines what PR organizations are involved with government. It defines PR professional’s roles to actively promote their services, orchestrate fundraising, help develop long range plans and visions, implement campaigns that address social issues, assist with smooth daily operations or crisis management, and spread news of success or crises. Essentially, all these actions involve public relation officials to spread information of governmental policies and/or changes.

            The chapter then dissects different types of government starting from federal and going to local. The chapter starts at federal describing its use of communication. Federal agencies employ PR processionals to help embed journalists, recruit, and a plethora of other policy-promoting techniques.  In the united states, federal agencies are not allowed to persuade public.

            State agencies are then briefly mentioned by the chapter. The state agencies are briefly made up to look like agencies that hire public relations professionals to change the image of their state to

            The chapter then steps down a notch to describe local government’s use of communication. The local government, as stated by the reading, has multiple departments. All of which hire specialist to deploy information to citizens about the services they provide. These communication teams also work to make the city look smarter and sharper – these tactics can include sign design, public meeting coordination, etc.

            Lobbying is also a profession that PR professionals can go into. Lobbying is the act of influencing a political issue – lobbyists are hired to influence political officials to see into and pay interest to specific issues. The chapter defines lobbying as a “formal process” closely aligned with corporate and organizational governmental relations.  In the united states, lobbying represents the interest of business, education, religion, local, national, and government pursuits.

Chapter 20

            Chapter 20 covers public relations on a global scale. This chapter also highlights the fact that PR has evolved so heavily with the invention of internet, that it’s easy more accessible for PR professionals to have access to jobs that relate to high developed functions in the industrialized nations of the world. However, PR jobs have more opportunities in countries that are multiparty political systems, relatively free press, considerable private ownership of business and industry, have large scale urbanization plans, and relatively high per capita income levels.

            The chapter lists some key countries that have high need for people seeking PR jobs in global relations. The chapter first starts with Brazil – being the largest South American nation, it has a matured business market and has a high need for PR professionals. Jumping over to the Middle East, Dubai is becoming a popular destination for many global PR firms. Countries in this area, however, have a low literacy rate. Turkey also has a large economy and modern communication infrastructure. I particularly liked this case study because my close friend recently went back to Turkey after studying there for about five years. She’s now going on a global reputation internship.

            The chapter then defines some language and cultural differences including: Power distance (how tolerant a society is), individualism (pits loyalty to one’s self against loyalty to a larger group), uncertainty avoidance (measures how well a society tolerates ambiguity), masculinity / femininity (contrasts competitiveness with compassion and nurturing), and long term versus short term orientation (measuring society’s willingness to consider the tradition of the past).