Week Two - Tutorial One

Hi!

My name is Bec Cassidy and I am in my final semester of a Bachelor of Communications majoring in Public Relations and Journalism. I am currently doing two first year subjects (this and Defining Women).

I currently work at Boeing Australia doing Communications which I absolutely love! I started at Boeing at the end of last year - I scored a 3 month paid summer internship in the Communications department and since my internship ended they have decided to keep me on. So I am currently working four days a week at Boeing's head office in Brisbane and am at uni one day a week finishing my degree. Once I graduate they are looking at creating a full time position for me. I also work casually at a radio station in Brisbane called Nova 106.9 in the newsroom, which I really enjoy as well.

I decided to enrol in this course because last year I undertook quite a bit of work experience at various public relations companies, radio stations and media outlets and one of the things I came to realise is that to be successful in this industry you have to have some level of knowledge on new/digital media. One of my tasks at one of the PR companies I interned at was to put together a document and presentation for the directors of the company about how digital media is impacting on the media and public relations industries, and how PR companies around the world are incorporating digital media into their communications plans for clients.

Before I started that task I honestly didn't know the first thing about new media. I couldn't have told you what a blog, wiki, RSS feed or anything like that was - let alone how they effected or impacted on the media industry. However I came to see that digital/new media is not a thing of the future anymore - it's very much here and now - and if the media industry is to continue to be successful and cater to it's audiences it has to evolve and continually find new ways to cater to it's ever changing audience.

Take the newspaper, for example. With the growth of the Internet and new media, a few years ago print media was a dying outlet. However instead of just sitting back and waiting for it's circulation to run dry - newspapers began to adapt and grow to cater to the changing demands of it's audience. You can now read newspapers from around the world online. Online versions of newspapers are now interactive - they generally have regular news updates, you can comment on stories, submit your own story ideas and participate in polls - all at the click of a button. Newspaper journalists are no longer simply writers either - they now submit their stories online and can also provide photographs and footage to accompany their story. The growth of this forum has even meant that there are now online news journalists who submit stories to their online editor for publication online rather than in the newspaper.

Anyway I've just realised how long this blog is actually turning out to be - but that's basically why I enrolled in this course. I wanted to get a greater understanding of this emerging and ever growing forum, not just for my own knowledge, but to also increase my employment prospects in the future.

Adios!