Public relations and the press

This branch covers what a writer produces when an organisation works with the press and its publics through public relations, and a reader chooses here by the job the communication does: handing journalists a story, planning what the organisation promotes and through which channels, or speaking when something has gone wrong in public. It leaves reporting health as journalism to health journalism and features, and an organisation's own social media channels to social media.

• Press releases — what a release is for, a story newsworthy to the journalists it reaches and the hook and timing that carry it, the inverted-pyramid structure and what goes in it, style, checking and a checklist for the writer, delivery and watching how the release is used, and how releases carry research into the news, where findings get overstated
• Public relations plans in health care — what public relations does for a health organisation and what it offers a medical communicator, building the plan around what is promoted, and carrying it out through relationships with the team, the media and influencers
• Crisis communications — what a crisis is, its three tiers and the writer's part, preparing the team, the approval process and the standby statement, monitoring the news, responding quickly and truthfully through facts, apology and one spokesperson, with hospital and product-recall cases, and the tenets of crisis communication