Niagara University - Public Relations

Spring 2019

During the spring 2019 semester, I was able to do an on-campus internship with Niagara University’s Public Relations Department. This was a convenient opportunity because most of the work I did was done on campus, and worked around my schedule but I was still able to get all of the benefits of a typical internship. After having a class with Mike Freedman, who worked in NU’s PR department, I got in touch with him when he mentioned that the department had taken on interns in the past. He was able to put me in touch with a longtime faculty member of the Public Relations department who also works with Alumni Communications. This was the first time that she had taken on an intern, as some of the positions within the department switched around, so it was a learning experience for the both of us. I took over some of the things that she typically did, which helped lighten her workload and allow for me to get an insight into a career in PR.

I worked with Lisa and helped create news stories and other PR type stories for NU’s news website. I met with Lisa and received different tasks and events to attend for the weeks ahead. She was able to give me the time, location, and different contacts for each task. I attended many university events, as well as interviewed and got quotes from different speakers, faculty members, and students. All of my stories went up on the news section of Niagara’s website.

Events that I attended included NU’s Sport Recreation and Tourism Summit, NU’s Race and Economic Equity Summit, NU’s Social Justice Speaker & Discussion Series, NU’s Career Expo, Take Back the Night, and other similar events. At these events, I took notes, recordings and spoke to different people to get more information about the purpose and outcome of these university events. I gathered facts about the attendance of the events, the reason behind the events, and the importance of them to the university’s community. Not only did I get information on the events and topics I was supposed to cover, but I also learned a lot about the different opportunities that Niagara has to offer, and I wouldn’t have learned about these otherwise.

In addition to attending university events, I was also able to write stories that highlighted different aspects of NU. I was able to write about certain students receiving awards and honors and their involvement in on campus and off campus ventures. I was also able to highlight certain programs including club hockey, and Niagara’s Brennan Center/ International Relations Office. This added variety to the internship because not every topic was an event or speaker, that I had to attend but was also notable accomplishments within the university’s community.

This internship helped me to be able to write different stories and identify what is important to include in news and public relation stories. I worked with Lisa to edit my stories and cut down/ add parts that made the story better. I learned how to construct a story with facts, information and quotes that were relevant to promoting the university’s image and message. This also helped me with basic communication skills including interviewing people, gathering quotes to highlight the topic, and get different perspectives on the topics I covered. I had to email different people to get in touch with speakers, so it also helped with those type of communication skills.

In addition to helping me with building these types of communication and written skills, I was able to have stories published within NU’s news, and these stories will help me to build my portfolio and resume. I have all of these stories saved and I can use them as examples of my written skills for other work opportunities.

This internship was very much based on writing and reporting. Although it was in the PR department, the workload was very similar to the type of things that you would do for a journalism internship. The stories I wrote were mostly news and were written after the fact, following up on a speaker or event. However, it was also different than journalism because it did have the PR theme of writing to highlight the university. But, I did not do very many press releases or evaluations of the university. It was also an internship that was very independently done. Although I had a mentor, I was the only intern so it was not very team oriented like other internships, which some people may or may not prefer. There was another intern who did the photography for the news website, but I was the only one dealing with the written stories besides my mentor.

I would say that this internship worked more with the external parts of PR, and building NU’s image through news stories, rather than the internal aspect that the PR faculty members would typically deal with. I would recommend this internship for someone who is interested in writing and reporting. I was able to write many stories that will aid me in building a portfolio and talk to many different people who I can stay connected with. The schedule was very flexible and I attended the events that worked within my class and athletic schedule. This was a helpful internship experience especially for undergrad students who are still learning the skills used in the realm of communications.