Media and Communications

I've been decidedly under the weather. Wednesday's session of Leadership Charlottesville was a real effort for me to attend. Battling a cold and armed with tissues, cough drops and Dayquil, I showed up, determined to participate to my full capability.

This session's focus was media and communications. Since my field of work is public relations, much of the content was quite familiar, but interesting to me all the same. It's always interesting to learn about a local market's approach to public relations, get advice from newspaper, television and radio professionals about pitching the local media and gain tips for on-camera interviews. We met at the Charlottesville Newsplex and spent the afternoon in session that covered traditional media, new media and interviewing.

The new media session was of particular interest to me. Speakers Waldo Jaquith and Sean Tubbs talked about blogging; what it is, who is doing it, and what effect it has on journalism and news in general. Sean covered the topic of podcasting -- a concept growing in popularity and possiblities.

The entire day was very informative for the group, I think. As we're thinking about ways to lead in our community, and ways we can support and drive results for our efforts in our civic programs or nonprofit organizations, using the media to gain exposure for anything we're passionate about is important to understand. Our program director made a comment to me at the break about how I probably wasn't hearing anything I didn't already know; it's more about context -- while I may be very familiar with media and communications strategies and the process involved in achieving results, I'm still learning Charlottesville, and that is a topic I value very much.