Press Release Assignment

For this blog post, I wanted to discuss my plans for the press release assignment, as the due date is approaching. For the press release, our professor asked us to imagine our dream career. Once we have our dream career in mind, we are supposed to use that organization in the creation of a press release aimed towards journalists. We have to come up with something that is news worthy, such as an organization about to do something, receiving an award, or changing a product line/service.  

The dream career I chose would be working in PR or communication for the NHL team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. I plan to write this press release about an event that already happened as a result of winning an award. Though I will pretend this event has not yet occurred. In 2015, Kraft Hockeyville held a competition for ice rinks to compete, and share their stories in hopes of being named Hockeyville USA. The winner of this award was granted $150,000 for arena upgrades and the chance to host an NHL preseason game at their rink. The winner was determined through fan votes sent in by phone or internet. The Cambria County War Memorial of Johnstown was named the first ever Kraft Hockeyville USA and scheduled to host a Pittsburgh Penguin preseason game.

The press release I plan to write, is going to pretend the hosting of the preseason game did not occur yet. I will convince a journalist that this story is worthy to write, in order to announce the game to not only the local community but also to hockey/sports around the world. The purpose of the writing would be to make the War Memorial arena look good and also Kraft Hockeyville for the donations to make this game possible. It is going to draw in a crowd to the event, spread the word about the upcoming game, and also raise awareness of Kraft's new competition to be held annually. This piece will interest hockey/sport fans, other teams that play in the War Memorial that will benefit from the rink upgrades, Pittsburgh Penguin fans, and the local residents of Johnstown.

This particular press release will have many new values that will appeal to the journalists is they were to read my press release. The news values it would contain would be impact, proximity, timeliness, novelty, and possibly celebrity. It contains impact because the event may result in some road closings which will relate to the audience. It has proximity because it is a local event for the people that live in Johnstown. It relates to timeliness because it is a current event that is about to happen. Novelty is involved because it is an event that is different considering it has never occurred before. The final news value it contains could be celebrity, being that the Pittsburgh Penguins are an NHL team which generate a variety of die-hard fans. I would hope these news values could encourage a journalist to publish a piece of writing about the upcoming event. 

Evaluation Assignment

The due date for my next assignment in professional writing has been quickly approaching. Unlike the last one where I knew exactly what I wanted to do for it, I have been struggling to come up with a topic regarding the new one.

The assignment is to write a review/evaluation that I could potentially have to write in my future communication career. The first thing that came to my mind was a literature review. I have written multiple literature reviews since I have been in college. I have written some for communication classes regarding communication theories and also one for a literature class I took. Since I have already written a few of these, I wanted to expand my knowledge by writing a different type of review. This is where I got stuck. I searched for some ideas using internet sources and also a professor and classmates opinion. I weaved through a series of potential options and came to the conclusion to write an evaluation memo to my professional writing professor regarding a specific form of social media's success.

I went through a process that we discussed in class regarding the success of the mobile app, Snapchat. I have designed my memo into sections with headings including, an overview, measuring success, quality, and lastly a final argument. Judging the success of social network is primarily done by measuring the growth over a large period of time. I answered a question in regards to social networking, as to what makes Snapchat a unique form, compared to Instagram, Twitter, and/or Facebook. I found that there were many positive attributes that weighed into the success behind Snapchat. I found that there are shockingly rising numbers regarding the amount of active users Snapchat has. According to AdWeek, as estimated in 2015, Snapchat has 200 million monthly active users and 100 million daily active users.

I believe the multiple, unique features is what draws consumers into the mobile app. One could argue against my accusations, in saying that compared to its competitors, Snapchat is very different and used for different functions thus should not be compared. One could say Snapchat is used for more of a private form of communication whereas, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook is public for the purpose of expressing oneself. This is true, but that privacy feature is exactly the one that makes Snapchat so appealing and interesting to a variety of age groups. The uniqueness of the app cannot be found on other social networking forms of communication.

"January 13"

One may be asking themselves why I would've entitled this post "January 13," when it is in fact February 5th. The answer relates back to my professional writing class, when I was assigned to read a piece of writing entitled "January 13." The author of the piece is Rick Bass.

The piece was very short in length, which I found very strange at first. My initial thought was that it couldn't possibly be as detailed as my professor made it out to be, when she announced we would be close reading for detailed descriptions. I was wrong.

"I've seen flakes as big as my fist, and monstrous, wet, stuck-together flakes as big as wadded-up sheets of newspaper, falling among the myriad other, smaller flakes plummeting madly down, tumbling like planes crashing, but landing silently, or nearly so."

Bass's very detailed description, allows for his readers to experience this blizzard as if they were along side him, seeing/hearing everything exactly as he did in that moment. The way he can describe the snow flakes is fascinating to me. I am sure everyone has experienced what wet, stuck-together newspaper pages are like, or even wet paper for that matter. I love how he relates the snowflakes to something that most people would have experienced at one point in their lives. That description is something I admire of his writing style that admittedly, I probably would not have thought of myself. The plane crash description makes me think back to last week, when we watched the pilot episode of the TV show, Lost. The plane definitely tumbled, yet there was nothing silent about the blades crashing into the island. Unlike, snowflakes, that have that ability to seem to come crashing down, yet at the same time, do it ever-so gently and silently.

Last semester, I took a creative nonfiction class. I enjoyed getting to go back to reading a creative nonfiction piece of writing, even though it was for my professional writing class. The very close details draw me in as a reader. I believe it was a nice change and also nice to get back to a well-known topic.