© 2024 NPR Illinois
The Capital's Community & News Service
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Ever Changing Job: Working in PR at UIS.

Max Alessia interviewing Blake Wood
Chloe Bellot
/
NPR Illinois
Max Alessia interviewing Blake Wood

For NPR Illinois podcamp I’m Max Alessia.

Have you ever wanted to play around with pictures and videos for a job? Because Blake Wood does just that.

”I’m the Assistant Director of Public Relations here at UIS so for my job I do media relations and I also do social media so I take in all the pictures for social media and produce the videos for social media.”

I asked him what his favorite parts of going to work each day are.

“I’d say the easy or fun part is that I get to interact with  a lot of students and tell their story and it’s really fun getting the word out about the university, UIS is a growing campus and it’s fun telling that story and helping to communicate the university’s message.”

I asked Him about what kind of message he wanted people to receive about UIS.

“Well we hope they see all the positive things that are going on out here at UIS like the new student union building that just got built and opened in January 2018 and we hope that they see all the wonderful majors that they have to offer for students out here and that the students come to the university.”

I asked Blake Wood what a typical day was like for him at work.

“So my typical day  is I come in in the morning and I do the news summary for the university and so I look for articles published by TV and radio stations that mention the university’s name and we put those in a summary and send them out to campus so everyone can see, it’s called the UIS in the News.”

I asked Blake what made his job different from other jobs.

“No day is the same, that’s one of the things I love about my job, no day is quite the same each day is a little different.”

 

I found His response to my question about what was different about being a multimedia writer/producer from his old job as a reporter was interesting.

“In TV news it’s very fast paced and I had multiple stories I needed to cover every day and it had to get on the air at five or six that night while in public relations I have a little more time to work on some of the videos that I do and some of the feature stories.”

For NPR Illinois Podcamp, I’m Max Alessia.

 

Max Alessia and Blake Wood
Credit Chloe Bellot / NPR Illinois
/
NPR Illinois
Max Alessia and Blake Wood

Related Stories