Over the summer, my wife and I ran into an old friend: PR maven Robbie Vorhaus on the streets of his hometown of Sag Harbor. I’ve known Robbie for far too many years that I’d care to admit. We reminisced about the PR biz back in the day when the choice of media channels and methods for gaining mindshare seemed so finite (and manageable).
He eventually reminded me of “the test,” which I hadn’t thought about in years. Back then, I had devised a media relations questionnaire for prospective hires, which served as a non-scientific barometer of one’s experience toiling in the PR trenches. Sample questions included:
Fill in the cities:
__________ Times Picayune
__________ Globe
__________ InquirerWhere can one watch:
KUSA-TV _____________
WMAQ-TV _____________
KGO-TV _______________
What do the following stand for:
SMT ___________________
DMA ___________________
VOT __________________
The questionnaire also asked prospective employees to match high-profile journalists with their national news organizations and even NY-based news organizations with their street addresses. There were also some practice questions as well:
- Both “Good Morning America” and “Today” have requested to interview your celebrity client. How do you determine which should get the booking?
- You accidentally gave both Time and Newsweek the same “exclusive” photo. Now what?
(Gee, life was so easy back then!)
The test ran about 3-4 pages. For today’s new world order, I thought the time was ripe to update the questionnaire, which, again, only provides a glimpse of one’s media connectivity and curiosity (versus PR acumen). Internet access d̶i̶d̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶e̶x̶i̶s̶t̶ is forbidden during the administration of this test.
Rank the following in order of their unique visitors per month:
___ NYTimes.com
___ Gawker.com
___ Politico.com
___ TechCrunch.com
___ HuffingtonPost.com
Match the following people with their place of work:
Dennis Crowley ___________ Facebook
Tina Brown _____________ Foursquare
Andrew Mason _____________ Twitter
Pete Cashmore _______________ Groupon
Sheryl Sandberg _______________ Google
Larry Page __________________ Mashable
Vivian Schiller _____________ NBC
Jack Dorsey __________________ The Daily Beast
Describe the following:
Spotify ________________________________________________
GroupMe ______________________________________________
Flipboard _______________________________________________
GetGlue _______________________________________________
Instagram ______________________________________________
Tumblr ________________________________________________
Bit.ly __________________________________________________
BuddyMedia ___________________________________________
Who is Siri?
_______________________________________________________
Whose Twitter handles are these?
@Carr2N _______________________
@APlusk _______________________
@acarvin ___________________
@pkafka ________________________
@benpolitico _____________________
@Xeni _________________________
@Zee _____________________
@Dens _____________________
@Ev _______________________
@Finkd _____________________
What are The Shorty Awards?
_______________________________________________________
Where can one find The App Store?
______________________________________________________
What’s the significance of Twitter hashtags?
______________________________________________________
Match the following journalists with their news organizations:
Emily Chang ______________ CNN
Andrew Ross Sorkin _______________ NPR
Bob Garfield ____________________ Bloomberg TV
Piers Morgan ____________________ Dow Jones
Kara Swisher ____________________ The New York Times
Lara Logan _____________________ Business Insider
Henry Blodget ___________________ CBS News
True or False?
The Huffington Post owns AOL ____
The Atlantic’s digital ad revenue is greater than its print ad revenue _____
Fox News Channel is “fair & balanced” _____
Bill Keller has left The New York Times _____
Fairchild Publications is the parent company of W Magazine & WWD _____
Which does IAC NOT own:
The Daily Beast, Newsweek, Match.com, Vimeo, Expedia, Ask.com, Gothamist?
______________
What do the following abbreviations stand for?
SXSW ___________________
API _____________________
iOS 5 ____________________
RT ______________________
HTML5 __________________
DM _____________________
NYTM ___________________
Complete the following:
President Obama recently made news in social media circles. He joined ______________.
Michael Arrington recently quit ______________ to start a _____________________.
Lance Ulanoff is the new editor of ________________.
Frank Rich recently left The New York Times to write for ____________________.
Anderson Cooper is the son of ______________________.
Robert Scoble first made a name for himself blogging for ______ under the name __________.
Keith Olbermann has his own show on _________________.
What is the standard email nomenclature for journalists at:
The Wall Street Journal ____________________
The Associated Press ____________________
Conde Nast __________________________
How many years has CBS “60 Minutes” been on the air? ___23 ___33 or ___43 years
What is Mediaite and which ABC News contributor founded it? _________________
How does Twitter make money?
___________________________________________________________________
Which print magazine has the largest U.S. readership ______________________?
When is it OK to pitch a story idea via a Twitter direct message?
______________________________________________________________
Having fun yet? Y or N
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