Newsy Thursday

My day began as it always does, scrolling twitter to monitor the news agenda for the day. It's essential for any PR professional to keep abreast of current affairs to make sure you don't irritate journalists by issuing ill-timed press releases and lose credibility for future coverage.

It doesn't matter if you're promoting cars, castles or cardboard packaging, knowing what's going on in the world will affect how you do your job, or at least it should if you want to be taken seriously by the press.

The news headlines today ranged from the mundane with a report claiming more than 8 hours sleep will cause a stroke ie. a university survey that was inconclusive, to the ridiculous with Madonna falling over at the Brit Awards ie. a contrived PR story. Can you name anyone that won an award? No, thought not. And how many people picked up the hidden news story, why were the Brits and the Oscars nicknamed the 'white awards' this year?

Real news of an Army Paratrooper becoming the first living person to receive the Victoria Cross was heartwarming to read, while the story of a baby being born in its amniotic sack, a 1 in 80,000 occurrence, was frankly just bizarre.

The variety of news today reminded me I need to re-read 'My Trade' by Andrew Marr, an insight into how news is created and the history of journalism. A must-read for PRs and unputdownable.

I caught up on motorsport news with my photographer pal over lunch at a lovely country pub as we planned our next adventure, Goodwood's 73rd race meeting next Month. I can't wait to get in the collecting area amongst all those vintage cars to chat to racing drivers, marshalls, engineers and motoring media chums. I'm just hoping for sunshine!

PR report writing and researching for the next big (and very exciting) press release occupied this afternoon and early evening before I concluded my day catching up on Castle news with my two former colleagues and now firm friends over dinner. Lovely photo of the three of us for my Blip pic today.

We talked and laughed so much my face ached by the end of the evening. More joviality to come next month when I hope to join them for a long weekend in Paris...if the busy work diary allows me!

Brain on overdrive tonight after far too much coffee today and so many new projects bubbling away, so I'm off to read #tomorrowspaperstoday on twitter and hopefully, eventually, catch a bit of shut eye before it's back to news generating again tomorrow.