My day as a journalist

This semester I took a journalism course.  All PR major are required to take a journalism course, but this has been the only class that required me to be published as part of my grade.  As a result I've reported on a number of events.  All of them were pretty low impact with the exception of one.  On Sunday I covered the construction of the worlds tallest Lego Menorah, and much to my surprise it was receiving legitimate news coverage from Long Island outlets like Newsday and News 12 as well as myself. The event which was by far the most complete management of the stories I've covered.  When I arrived I mentioned that I was covering the story I was immediately led to the person in charge who introduced me to the person who was handling the media.  As you can imagine this was an awkward experience for me. As someone who does not feel like a journalist or plan on ever being one, to call myself a journalist felt almost like lying.  But I was in fact acting as a journalist in this situation so I introduced myself as a journalist with the Long Island report.  At which point the woman handling the media gave me a skeptical look.  Once I mentioned that the Long Island report was a website she gave skeptical look and immediately looked it up on her phone when she couldn't find it (she put .com Long Island Report is .org) she informed me that she couldn't find it not quite rudely, but certainly in a way that made me a little uncomfortable.  Once she found the website she was a slightly more helpful, but I still felt a little bit out of place.  What I discovered during this experience is that the way you respond to any journalist is important even if you have never heard of them or there organization. The Long Island Report isn't the most well known news source on the Island but it is a completely free news source that serves Long Island.  So if you want your story to be seen on Long Island it is a good source to have.  But even if a source is only read by 10 people, 10 more people is  10 more than you would have without them so every journalist should be made to feel comfortable regardless of the size of their establishment.