The Two Pillars of Communication

 The Two Pillars of Communication - Lovenia Megumi Surjanto

Journalism and Public Relation are now popular than ever with all companies fight at the business market to engage their audience. To provide values or products to them whilst competing with other companies is quite a challenge for the basic marketing team. On the other hand, people are starting to get quite used to the up-to-date hype that the demand for news and articles has been overloaded. The people who wrote your news are Journalist. Those who market your phone and laptop desirable are public relations. As mentioned by a successful entrepreneur founder of Bath and Body works, “Communication is the key for any global industry” (Roddick,2013).

 

These two majors; journalism and public pelation are two of the most sought out majors in communication. Even though both studies are vastly different yet closely related. They both are fundamentals in the media industry and to simply give their audience information. Journalists and public relations are both staple in today’s industry with technology. Both these majors have been an extraordinarily strong contender in the business world. After all these companies and organizations need support from their audience. Both jobs are not the basic 9-5 jobs, they both have a flexible time schedule and lots of impromptu writing and research (Mahogany Consult). With these majors, they shall learn how to communicate with audiences through pictures, journal articles and even could and would build up to advertisement. With technology quickly advancing these prospects have been very promising, but most people do not know what the difference is between journalists and public relations. 

 

Journalists are people that provide information and news for their viewers. This news can be all sorts of things related to science, arts, economics, tech, politics, even controversial gossip. Their topic ranges from a to z unlimitedly. Journalist most focuses more on writing about the current situation happening on the society, they must ask themselves “Is this important?” or “Is it relevant?” They simply lean more towards communicating a certain topic or news to the media and the society/viewers, although journalist’s point of view in certain topics will be neutral, some did insert their own opinions and beliefs in their writing. The skills you will need to be a journalist are researching, critical thinking, and relevancy estimation. As a journalist you will be writing about information for people, it must be factual or a strong opinion, after researching the information a journalist must then analyze the information found to get strong points for their writing. When the journalist has found their points, it is time for the news assembly, knowing proper grammar and punctuation marks shall be a life saver in this situation. Finally, the journalist must consider how the mass society will react to this writing once it is published (Evans, 2016). Do note that journalists hold massive power in shaping the society’s beliefs as Pearl Strachan Hurdstated, “Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs’’. An astonishing example of successful journalist are Najwa Shihab, the founder and host of Mata Najwa. Mata Najwa has one of the biggest impacts in Indonesian news reports, it also can and have shaped most of the general publics mindset about politics, economic, and social.

On the other hand, while journalists serve the public by giving information and keeping them up to date. Public relations serve an organization or a company. Public relations tasks are to be the bridge between society and an organization or a company. They simply need to communicate the organization/company beliefs or products to the mass audience of potential buyers or supporters strategically. Its described as a mix of journalism, psychology and lawyering and it also has an ever changing landscape by Ron Torrosian (Damayanti, 2015). The practitioner also creates communication materials through production work such as photography, computer desk-top publishing, audio and video recording and editing as well as preparing audio-visual presentations. They communicate in numerous ways such as organizing an event, endorsing artists and public figures, even down to the smallest bits such as the company/organization’s Instagram is under their control. Likewise, research is also a much-needed skill in public relations. Journalism needs to research about the topic they were going to bring up, but public relations need to do research on the audience’s interest and disinterest. They need to be able to position themselves in the audience’s position to get the reaction and response they are aiming for. Not only is the main goal to capture and captivate their audience to support them, but they also need to be able to maintain that relationship to an extent. (Evans, 2016). Most successful public relations work behind the scenes such as Eliot Schrage, VP Communications for Facebook. Leslie Dach, EVP of corporate affairs and government relations at Wal-Mart. (Stampler, 2018)

To sum it up, journalists are mostly people who authored articles and news for the media to be published containing diverse topics, while public relation are the people who forms a relationship with an audience under the name of a brand, company, or organization. Both require intensive research skills and creativity, not to mention their relevancy and credibility to the wide audience. Me myself are vastly intrigued by the similarities these both have which is communication skills, after all this time we cannot deny that technology keeps moving onwards and this might be the perfect career path for you. Which one are you most leaning to? Are you more of a journalist or public relations?

Bibliography

Anita Roddick, B. G. (2013, Oct 12). Anita Roddick’s Leadership Style, Founder of The Body Shop. Retrieved from Brandon Gaillie: https://brandongaille.com/anita-roddicks-leadership-style-founder-the-body-shop/

Damayanti, E. (2015, Oct 15). Public Relation dan Jurnalistik. Retrieved from Esterlite: https://esterlite.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/public-relations-dan-jurnalistik/

Evans, G. (2016, Sep 22). Public Relations vs. Journalism: What’s the Difference?Retrieved from Medium: https://medium.com/@gbrundin/public-relations-vs-journalism-whats-the-difference-39ee797d5b09

Mahogany Consult. (n.d.). Journalism and Public Relations: Spotting the difference. Retrieved from Proi: https://www.proi.com/uploaded/companies/articles/pdf/Journalism%20and%20Public%20Relations.pdf

Stampler, L. (2018, August 20). Meet the 25 Most Important People in PR. Retrieved from Business Insider: https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=Awrx5kp8Gy5h6fsA3gxP5At.;_ylu=Y29sbwMEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1630440445/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.businessinsider.com%2fmeet-the-25-most-important-people-in-pr-2012-11/RK=2/RS=iNSfIRLwcxYbDhQ9nAkO_M2q8x8-