The Portland Senior Experience

Image Credit: Inside Oregon Web site

As of last week, I was informed that I am part of the spring 2009 senior experience cohort. I cannot express enough my gratitude and excitement for this opportunity to take workshops and intern with Portland, Ore.’s premier public relations professionals.

The Portland Senior Experience is a program that I highly recommend to journalism students and professionals. It was one of the draws for which I chose to attend the University of Oregon over the University of Southern California. The program involves students taking their last capstone classes of the public relations program and workshops with professionals at the Turnbull Portland Center while working as an intern at a public relations agency in Portland. Many of the classroom and internship activities are integrated to allow students to experience more in-depth learning and create relevant, interesting portfolio pieces.

What I am looking forward to the most is networking with and learning from public relations and journalism professionals in the Portland area. So much of the expertise and knowledge in public relations is shared through storytelling and experience. From internships, conferences and networking events I have gleaned priceless knowledge through countless stories that practitioners have been eager to share.

The next few months will be an exciting process during which I will interview at agencies matched to my interest in consumer public relations, and I will finish my last term at the University of Oregon before heading back home to Portland to embark on my public relations adventure.

Have you participated or will you participate in this or a similar program? Students and professionals, I would love to hear your stories.

PRSSA National Conference in Detroit: Happy 40th, PRSSA!

Wow, what a weekend! After a stressful week of midterms, I found myself glad to be traveling to Detroit, Mich., for the National PRSSA Conference. Detroit is an interesting town full of beautiful, gothic buildings. Not the bustling city I expected, but an interesting place to visit, complete with Greek Town and vibrant city culture.

University of Oregon Executive Board in Detroit

The conference was full of helpful and interesting sessions and keynote speakers, including PR pioneer Ofield Dukes and Craig Newmark from Craigslist.org. There were many sessions available regarding various of topics including ethics, global PR, entertainment PR, PR for healthcare, sports PR, fund-raising PR, social media, event planning, and corporate versus agency PR. The conference also included a PRSA/PRSSA social where students and professionals mingled at the GM Renaissance Center Wintergarden.

My favorite sessions were on ethics, social media, and corporate versus agency PR. The ethics session, led by several professionals including John Bailey, was interesting because it addressed many ethical issues practitioners may come across when doing work for clients. We learned about a whisper campaign, which involves the spreading of bad publicity in an attempt to bring down a competitor or promote one’s own product without taking credit for disseminating the information.

The social media session was memorable because speaker Jud Branam created an acronym to tie his points together, POST: People, Objectives, Strategy and technology. He made several interesting points that ring true, including the fact that the emphasis lies in what the company can do for the online community.

Lori Billingsley, a professional working with the Coca-Cola Company, enlightened us on the differences in working for a corporation and working for an agency. She recommended starting at an agency to acquire a wealth of experience with a variety of clients before going to a corporation and applying that broad knowledge.

Conferences are an excellent opportunity to advance professional knowledge and get excited for a career in PR. I had a lot of fun bonding with this year’s executive board and meeting so many other students and professionals. To any students looking to get more involved in PR, I highly recommend joining PRSSA and attending conferences whenever you can.

Hello and welcome to my blog!

My name is Elana, and I am a senior at the University of Oregon. I am studying public relations and business, and have acquired a minor in Spanish. Writing is my passion, yet this is my first foray into the blogosphere.

Blogging has taken our culture and world by storm. Never before has there been an easier, faster or more transparent form of communication across such a large geography and with such a large community. I am eager to learn about blogging in my Advanced Public Relations Writing class and through my experiences writing and reading blog posts.

My entries will be reflections on current public relations issues, trends and events with periodic emphases on writing, ethics and professionalism.  Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog, and I hope that you enjoy reading my posts.