Carolina OCR

Each week, the students participating in the OCR scour the Internet for news relating to North Carolina companies.  From this information, the students write articles about the current events and news as it relates to the North Carolina companies.  These stories are shared with the group and posted to the online newsroom.

The articles written each week follow the following guidelines:

General:

1. Company stories do NOT have to been found in a weekly timeframe.
2. Company stories should be first about corporate reputation, and second (if possible) about North Carolina. Not all will be about North Carolina.

Sourcing:

1. Double source stories.
2. Include sources in a works cited page and in-text citations.
3. Follow APA style.
4. Flag reputable sources to begin compiling a master list
5. In-text citations can be used to avoid "over-crediting" sources within story body (e.g.: "According to an interview given to Chicago Tribune writer Al Smith...").
6. Footnoting can be used for quote attribution where writer did not personally conduct interview (e.g.: 1. Qtd. in ...).

Ranking:

1. Keep track of company rankings.
2. Keep track of ranking outlet (e.g.: Forbes, Triangle Business Journal, etc.).

Teaching Moment:

1. Synthesize information (usually a series of facts from a news article) to flesh out corporate reputation implications.
2. Do NOT provide tactical PR counsel
3. Observe how a company's actions demonstrated effective or ineffective public relations.
4. Do NOT attribute a company's actions to a specific goal (e.g.: McDonald's sued the activists becuase it wanted to create better corporate reputation and clear its name.) You have no way of knowing a company's goals.
5. Demonstrate company's uniqueness in the moment.
6. How is the company handling an issue from a PR/corporate reputation standpoint? Are they doing a good job?

Avoid serving as PR or advertising for the company:

1. Separate your voice from the company's voice.
2. Include boiler plate information about the company that is unbiased.
3. Source Hoover's or other third-party site.
4. Avoid biased words like "unfortunately."