Internship Project: DC Lifestlye Guide

Background
An ongoing project I worked on this semester is the DC101 DC Lifestyle Guide. The lifestyle guide is a new project introduced this intern semester to give visitors of the Washington, D.C. area, and the main demographic for DC101 and BIG100.3, a running list of the different things to do in the area. Providing a list like this not only helps newcomers to the area and the stations become acquainted, but makes the stations look more in-touch with the area in which they broadcast. One of the most important things about working for a radio station is making sure the organization is represented in a positive and reputable light. Radio has no visual components, so any tangible entity distributed by the station has to follow suit with an organizational image. The DC Lifestyle guide is the perfect distribution to let listeners know that the stations know everything there is to know about the DC area.

Layout
My supervisors asked that I do not attach a copy of the guide here because it is still not completed, and the place where it will be uploaded has not yet been determined. The layout can be explained as very divided into different categories and subcategories. Because there are millions of things to do in this area, it is important to break up the information into different groups so that users will be able to find the information they are looking for. The categories include restaurants, shopping centers, monuments, museums, bars and metro stops.

Biggest Contribution
I suggested the idea of instead of breaking up the information solely by attraction, to also break up the information by metro stop. Like many others, I use the metro every week and would find great value in knowing what kinds of things are around the stops that I travel to. My supervisor liked the idea, and gave me the permission to start a new section explaining different things to do at each metro station. After making a section for each stop and designating its color line, I started adding the biggest attractions in proximity to each stop.

Personal/ Professional Value

The lifestyle guide reminded me of how important it is for a PR professional to stay knowledgeable on the area in which they work. Representing an organization effectively means knowing your publics, and knowing your publics requires knowing the area in which they live.