Back to the Real World

August 20, 2007
Riley Roberts, The Firm Public Relations, Las Vegas, NV

My internship in Vegas is over and I'm definitely sad to be leaving Sin City. My job was an overall great experience and I learned more than I ever thought I could in such a short time. I knew almost nothing about public relations when I arrived in Las Vegas but my experience at The Firm gave me a crash course about this field and I found out that I really liked it a lot. I want to learn more about PR and am considering pursuing it after gradutation; I don't know if I want to actually live in Vegas but will definitely give some thought to The Firm's offer for me to return for another internship next summer.

The best experience of my internship was my project for the Nevada Senior Guide. It was a lot of fun to have my own client and I learned a lot from doing it all by myself. I found out that you have to be very persistent when talking with media people in order to get them to listen to what you've got to say. You also have to be really specific when deciding who to contact at each media outlet; there are always multiple reporters, editors, publishers, and etc. at each outlet and it is necessary to contact the correct person who would be the most interested in the story. That turned out to be a harder task than I thought it would be. It often took several phone calls to a single media outlet to first figure out who I should talk to and then to finally get in touch with that person. After the interviews and all edits and revisions of the press release, it was a great feeling to finally send the release to media all over the state of Nevada. I did find out the hard way that not everybody will be interested in a story and rejection does happen. But most of my contacts were willing to at least take a look at my press release. Unfortunately for me, my internship ended before anybody would actually run the story so I never got to do any sort of follow-up to see what outlets picked it up. But The Firm's other summer intern took over the project when I left Vegas and promised to let me know when and if the story ran.

Other than that big project, the last few weeks of my internship consisted of continuing to help the rest of the team on projects for their various accounts. One of my favorites included helping to write a caption for a picture to go with a newspaper story for the Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada. The picture with my caption ran in four different Vegas newspapers and was on the front page of three of the four, so it ended up generating a lot of publicity for the client. It was fun to help create something that was really positive for our client.

All in all my Vegas internship was incredible. I learned so much about public relations and marketing and am excited to hopefully get more experience. I loved working in such a big city where there is a huge market for public relations. It sounds uncommon in Nebraska, but in a city like Vegas, every major company and lots of small ones hire their own public relations firm. It is definitely the city to be in if you want to pursue a career in this field.

I'm Riley Roberts and next fall I will be a senior advertising major with a concentration in marketing. This summer I am interning at The Firm Public Relations, a marketing and PR firm in Las Vegas, NV. During the school year, I work at the Nebraska Athletic Department doing a sports marketing internship. Email Me, View All Riley's Entries