PR - Public Relations or Publishing Requirements?
by Capt. Kieran O'Higgins, Deputy Inspector of Lights
& Marine Superintendent
SINCE 1995 public relations have been vested in the
Inspector's Department. PR might be thought to mean expressing
Board policy via radio, tv, and the print media. This certainly
happens and, due to the persistence of the Loran-C issue, Capt.
Shay Hickey and I may be more identifiable to Clare listeners and
readers than to those in most other counties of Ireland. Putting
our message across in a consistent fashion is an important factor
and it is also important that Irish Lights should not appear to be
hiding or avoiding comment.
However, let me put forward another aspect of pr. This is the broad provision of information about our Service and our functions. We frequently deal with questions such as 'My great grandfather was a lightshipman on a vessel called the Shamrock. . . can you help?' or 'Can I have a picture of the Fastnet?', or 'I'm doing a thesis on the Cork estuary; have you any weather and fog records from Roches Point or the Spit Bank?' Naturally we try to oblige, but there is a cost in human resources.
An information booklet on Irish Lights was produced in 1996 which explained the various functions of our organisation in one publication. This proved very useful. The booklet complimented the 1995 issue of Beam, when, for the first time, it was produced in full colour.
It soon became apparent that considerable effort was required between editor and publisher before the final product was ready to print. Consequently, we decided to invest in a quality desktop publishing package and associated photo editing equipment.
The result is that the magazine you are now reading has been fully laid out, typeset, and colour selected with pictures s canned and inset.
This is also the case with the year 2000 Irish Lights Calendar. The finished product is sent to the printer on disk and the presses roll.
We had been looking at the Internet as a means of communicating and, more particularly, providing the content of our information booklet on the net. The great advantage of this is that anyone with a computer and a telephone modem can access the information, download what they want, and need not ring or write to anyone in Irish Lights. Journalists, for instance, are always referred to our website for background information on our organisation.
The rest as they say, is history. We went live in August 1997 and since then the Commissioners of Irish Lights' website at www.cil.ie has gone from strength to strength. From 4,000 hits a month initially, we had over 27,000 hits in January 1999. The site has been awarded three industry awards for design. The content has subsequently been expanded to include our published Notices to Mariners, our latest news, the information booklet on the new dgps service, dgps incident report forms, and last year's Beam.
This year's edition of Beam will also be available in electronic format on our website. It seems we have come full circle but rest assured, there are no plans to terminate the paper issue-yet!
However, let me put forward another aspect of pr. This is the broad provision of information about our Service and our functions. We frequently deal with questions such as 'My great grandfather was a lightshipman on a vessel called the Shamrock. . . can you help?' or 'Can I have a picture of the Fastnet?', or 'I'm doing a thesis on the Cork estuary; have you any weather and fog records from Roches Point or the Spit Bank?' Naturally we try to oblige, but there is a cost in human resources.
An information booklet on Irish Lights was produced in 1996 which explained the various functions of our organisation in one publication. This proved very useful. The booklet complimented the 1995 issue of Beam, when, for the first time, it was produced in full colour.
It soon became apparent that considerable effort was required between editor and publisher before the final product was ready to print. Consequently, we decided to invest in a quality desktop publishing package and associated photo editing equipment.
The result is that the magazine you are now reading has been fully laid out, typeset, and colour selected with pictures s canned and inset.
This is also the case with the year 2000 Irish Lights Calendar. The finished product is sent to the printer on disk and the presses roll.
We had been looking at the Internet as a means of communicating and, more particularly, providing the content of our information booklet on the net. The great advantage of this is that anyone with a computer and a telephone modem can access the information, download what they want, and need not ring or write to anyone in Irish Lights. Journalists, for instance, are always referred to our website for background information on our organisation.
The rest as they say, is history. We went live in August 1997 and since then the Commissioners of Irish Lights' website at www.cil.ie has gone from strength to strength. From 4,000 hits a month initially, we had over 27,000 hits in January 1999. The site has been awarded three industry awards for design. The content has subsequently been expanded to include our published Notices to Mariners, our latest news, the information booklet on the new dgps service, dgps incident report forms, and last year's Beam.
This year's edition of Beam will also be available in electronic format on our website. It seems we have come full circle but rest assured, there are no plans to terminate the paper issue-yet!