(This picture was taken from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/technology/microsoft-affordable-housing-seattle.html)

“Microsoft Pledges $500 Million To Ease Seattle Housing Crisis” was a news article that was reported by Karen Weise and published on The New York Times newspaper on Jan. 18, 2019. According to Weise, Microsoft gave $500 million to help low-income and middle-income group of people gain better living environment. In the news article, not only Microsoft, but several technological companies were mentioned such as Amazon, Google and Facebook. These companies have supported programs and helped with housing problem in the region in recent years.

In my opinion, the message that Microsoft would like to send was that they were willing to put effort and money to help local residents gain better life, and when this message was out, local residents, especially for low-income and middle-income class, were most impacted because it was indeed a serious problem for them to worry about. Along with other technological companies, the contribution that Microsoft put to the local region helped increase their reputation in the positive way. Next, if I was the PR person of Microsoft, I would follow up with updates of company’s implementation of the plan and think about how to make this implementation help more local residents. However, it would be important to know real need from local residents when Microsoft implement their plan. Making it beneficial for most low-income and middle-income residents would involve large amount of research and analysis to the current housing situation of the region.

From my perspective, I think this news article was generated by a news release from PR of Microsoft. The main purpose of this news message was generating awareness from the public about the implementation of Microsoft to the housing problem in Seattle, and it was more organizational. I think this news article helped PR people of Microsoft achieve their goal.

If you have any thoughts or ideas that want to share with me, please feel free to leave a comment below or email me by jql6069@psu.edu. Thank you!