Never Give Up

Trying to balance being a new mom and having a new career can be difficult for any woman but Tiffany Aguilar handles both with confidence and grace. Tiffany is the Coordinator for the Planning and Marketing Department at St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City. On any given day she handles internal and external communications for the hospital and contacts media about anything and everything the hospital is trying to promote. She writes for St. Anthony's newsletter and plans many of the hospitals fundraising events, such as Celebrity Chef.

Tiffany began her schooling at Rose State College as a child psychology major. After realizing her love for writing she transferred from Rose State to the University of Oklahoma where she majored in journalism.

After graduating from college she went on to work for the news station KFOR in Oklahoma City as an intern and worked her way up to become a producer at the station. She says she learned most of what journalism truly was through her colleagues at the station. She claims that her past experience as a journalist has helped her become a better PR professional because she understands what stories will make it into the market and what the media is looking for out of a story.

Although she is an extremely busy woman at work, she has even more going on in her personal life. She has been married to a wonderful man for 10 years who, at the beginning of their marriage, had to undergo a kidney transplant. Her husband has undergone 10 major surgeries and has really struggled for the past 6 months to save his kidney from rejection. Tiffany thought they might lose him over Christmas but she said with faith and prayer he pulled through it. She was with him every step of the way and never gave up on him. Throughout the past 6 months she has also been caring for their son while he has been in the hospital. Tiffany juggled being a mom, wife and having a career while never giving up on her dreams.

Sometimes it might be hard to balance everything going on in ones life Tiffany can give us all hope that it can be done. She claims that your first job may not be one you love but use that experience for the future. Her final words of wisdom were to never give up because there is something out there for you just work hard and enjoy life.

An Interview with Dad

An Interview with Dad

By Aaron Vossen

For this entry, I didn’t have to do much searching or work so here goes nothing. When I think about a PR Professional I think about my father Kevin. My dad has been working at ATT for the last 28 years. My father didn’t start right out of college as a Public Relations practitioner but eventually with hard work, and encouragement from friends and family my dad became the Director of External Affairs.
My dad graduated for Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. So as many of you know this is where my Kansas love started. While at school my father studied Journalism, worked for the paper, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. After college he came straight to work at the phone company and has worked there ever since.
When I began talking to my dad it was a little strange because talking serious with him is hard, just like me, we both love to joke, laugh, and give each other a hard time, but boy do I love him. Growing up I have always been like him and have known I would one day hopefully follow in his footsteps. So like I have asked him many times what do you need to be a good PR practitioner and he replied well I know you need to be a good writer, analytical, creative and an outgoing personality.
The last think I asked him is what advice would you give to future practitioner and he said wherever you may find yourself working be sure to understand the issue of the client for a successful and strategic campaign.

Picture By Aaron Vossen

Issues in Journalism

Issues in Journalism

By Erin Chancellor

The book “Issues in Journalism: a Discussion Guide for News Media Ethics” by Maclyn McClary (a professor at Humboldt State University), features a group of fictional reporters who work for a publication called “The Evening Star”. These reporters names are Burt, Charlene, and Mark. The author McClary uses these reporters to illustrate certain issues in journalism. These issues include discussions of the ‘the power of a reporter’, ‘ethics in PR’ ‘the importance of diversity in the newsroom’ and ‘journalists and political backing’. The book was meant to be used as a discussion guide and teaching tool. The stories, though they all feature the same characters, do not include a plot line that develops throughout the text. The end of each chapter also features discussion type questions that cause the reader to think about the issue being discussed.

A particularly interesting chapter discussed the role of a PR person. It featured the three characters talking about the benefits of good PR people today, and the differences between PR today and in the past. It mentions the hard work of Public Relations Society of America to bring a positive image to PR. The questions at the bottom of this chapter meant for discussion include “what are the connotations and denotations of the terms used to describe PR people and publicists?” and “describe several types of PR practices and policies”.

This book was easy to read and included good discussion points for journalism classes. I think a book like this would be great for teaching material in Gaylord College classes.