What is good public relations? How does writing for PR differ from writing news?

Public Relations (PR) has all sorts of different definitions, but PR personnel are concerned with three things, the message, the audience, and the media to deliver the message. First of all, you must know the message that your organization wants to send. The message could be a product, a program or the organization itself. For every message you must know what you hope to accomplish even if that just means to inform people. It is important to be timely though, because some messages cannot wait. For example, if there is bad meat going around that shouldn't be eaten, it needs to be known immediately. Knowing the audience who you are directing the message at is almost as important as knowing all you can about the message. The better you are at targeting your audience, the more effective you will be. You have to look at who are these people, what are their attitudes, what do they do for work and recreation? These questions can be answered somewhat differently for internal and external audiences. Lastly, once you have masted the message or product and found your target audience, then you choose the best medium by which to deliver the message to the audience. With today's technology there are all sorts of ways, including TV, radio, newsstands, the internet, social-networking media, internal publications, brochures, billboards, etc. It is all depending on the message, and how many people you need to inform. If it is that important of a message, it will most likely use all of these things. In conclusion, good PR takes a lot of preparation, and you can see it is highly different than print news.