The Rant's mission is to offer information that is useful in business administration, economics, finance, accounting, and everyday life. The mission of the People of God is to be salt of the earth and light of the world. This people is "a most sure seed of unity, hope, and salvation for the whole human race." Its destiny "is the Kingdom of God which has been begun by God himself on earth and which must be further extended until it has been brought to perfection by him at the end of time."
Public relations practitioners function in a climate of public opinion that often conditions their own perceptions and responses. Climates of public opinion can be as broad as that of the international community with regard to a nation's presumed leadership in an arms race or as narrow as that of securities analysts when a company's bonds are re-rated downward.
Public opinion is what most people in a particular public think; in other words it is a collective opinion of, for instance, what voters or teenagers or senior citizens or politicians think about a specific issue. Bernard Hennessy said, "Public opinion is the complex of preferences expressed by a significant number of persons on an issue of general importance." Hennessy, who does not distinguish between opinion and attitude says that public opinion has five basic elements. First, public opinion must be focused on an issue which Hennessy defines as "a contemporary situation with a likelihood of disagreement." Second, the public must consist of "a recognizable group of persons concerned with the issue." A third element in the definition, the phrase "complex of preferences," Hennessy says, "means more than mere direction and intensity; it means all the imagined or measured individual opinions held by the relevent public on all the proposals about the issue over which that public has come into existence." The fourth factor, the expression of opinion, may involve any form of expression - printed or spoken words, symbols (such as a clenched fist or stiff-armed salute) or even the gasp of a crowd. The fifth factor is the number of persons involved. The number of people in a public can be large or small as long as the impact of their opinion has a measurable effect. The effect may be as much determined by the intensity of opinion and the organization of effort as by the size of the public. Hennessy's definition of public opinion does not deal with what could be called latent public opinion. He would reserve that term for "describing a situation in which a considerable number of individuals hold attitudes or general predispositions that may eventually crystallize into opinions around a given issue." In any case, public opinion has to be expressed in order to be measured.
Public opinion expresses beliefs based not necessarily on facts but on perceptions or evaluations of events, persons, institutions or products. In the USA, many people assume that "public oipinion is always right." Perhaps this view should be expected in a democracy in which elected officials must be concerned with public opinion. Long before the pollsters were on the scene, 19th century essayist Charles Dudley Warner said, "Public opinion is stronger than the legislature and nearly as strong as the Ten Commandments."
Obviously, public opinion can be misused or manipulated as Adolph Hitler's master propagandist Joseph Goebbels, demonstrated. And it can be based on a lack of accurate information - as in the period before World War II when many Americans applauded Mussolini's efforts at "straightening out the Italians and 'making the trains run on time," while many Italians were beginning to live in fear of the black-shirted fascist militia.
In any public relations situation whether it is at the public relations management or public relations technician level, you cannot even start without first identifying your publics. Every discipline develops its own terminology; sometimes the same term is used in different ways by people in different disciplines and professions. For the sake of this analysis, a very important term is public, which has a very specific meaning in public relations. It is essential that a practitioner grasp the distinction between a "public" and an "audience" (This is PR: The Reality of Public Relations - 9th Edition by Doug Newsom, Judy VanSlyke Turk and Dean Kruckeberg, pg. 92). The term public has traditionally meant a group (or possibly individual) that has some involvement with an organization. Publics thus include the organization's neighbors, customers, employees, competitors and government regulators. Publics and organizations have consequences for each other. What a public does has some impact on the organization and vice versa. You might imaging that public and audience are synonymous. However, in important ways, they are not (Newsom, VanSlyke, Kruckeberg, pf. 92).
From a public relations perspective, the term audience suggests a group of people who are recipients of something - a message or a performance. An audience is thus inherently passive. However, this conflicts with the goals of most public relations programs which is to stimulate strong audience participation. To help resolve the semantic conflict the term public evolved to distinguish between passive audiences and active ones (Newsom, VanSlyke, Kruckeberg, pf. 92).
In public relations, the term public ("active" audience) encompasses any group of people who are tied together, however loosely, by some common bond of interest or concern or who have consequences for an organization. The best way to understand this concept is to think of various publics that you as an individual may be part of (Newsom, VanSlyke, Kruckeberg, pf. 92).
First, you belong to a group of consumers that no doubt has been well defined by marketing people. You may for instance be in the 18-24 year-old "college" market. This market receives a great deal of attention because - although you may not believe it it - it is responsible for a vast outlay of cash. Secondly, you may have an organizational identity. For example, if you belong to a professional social or civic organization you are a member of a public. You also belong to other publics because of your race, religion, ethnic group or national origin. You probably would not want to be thought of as a member of "the general public" And you are not. No one is. No such public exists. Instead you are a member of many definable and describable publics. It is the job of public relations practitioners to identify these publics as they as they relate to the practitioners' organizations (Newsom, VanSlyke, Kruckeberg, pf. 92).
Publics are often identified nominatively but while we can name them, it is important to remember that any public has no homogeneity. All members of that public are not alike. Making that assumption can createvproblems. Perhaps it helps to remember that another way to look at publics is by their demographics and psychographics. Psychographic ties among people create a sense of shared identity. Although that is usually positive, or at least benign, such as scuba divers or football fans it can also be negative as we know from teenage gangs (Newsom, VanSlyke, Kruckeberg, pf. 92).
In traditional public relations literature, publics are divided into two categories: external and internal External publics exist outside an institution. they are not directly or officially a part of the organization, but they do have a relationship with it. Certain external publics such as government regulatory agencies have a substantial impact on the organization (Newsom, VanSlyke, Kruckeberg, pf. 92).
Internal publics share the institutional identity. They include management, employees and many types of supporters (investors, for example). Occasionally, the term internal politics is used in public relations practice to refer specifically to employees. However this usage is unfortunate because it results in employees being considered as unrelated to management instead of as a part of the same team. This has a marginalizing effect that creates serious communication problems. In a strong union situation, the separation is real and a team concept is not as likely. Still the adversarial relationship can be healthy as long as communication between the two groups is maintained (Newsom, VanSlyke, Kruckeberg, pf. 92).
Realistically, the categories internal and external are too broad to be useful in identifying publics. A more definitive typology has been developed by Jerry A. Hendrix who identifies the following major publics: media, employees, members, community, government, investors, international, special and integrated marketing. Every organization needs to thoughtfully compile a comprehensive list of its publics (Newsom, VanSlyke, Kruckeberg, pf. 92).
Any particular public regardless of its broad category may become the focal point for a public relations effort. When that occurs, the public singled out for attention is called a target public or a priority public (Newsom, VanSlyke, Kruckeberg, pf. 92).
Not everyone approves of the connotations of the term target in the context of an important public. The "dean" of communication researchers, Wilber Schramm, was one authority who early on disparaged it.
For nearly thirty years after World War I, the favorite concept of the mass media audience was what advertisers and propagandists often chose to call the "target audience."... A propagandist could shout the magic bullet of communication into a viewer or a listener who would stand still and wait to be hit!...
By the late 1950s, the bullet theory was, so to speak, shot full of holes. Mass communication was not like a shooting gallery. There was nothing necessarily irresistible about mass communication or mass propaganda. Many influences entered into the effect of the mass media. The audience was not a passive audience; rather, it was extraordinarily active (Newsom, VanSlyke, Kruckeberg, pf. 93).
Most PR practitioners would agree that a target public tends not to be passive and may exhibit unpredictable behavior. Still, the idea behind the term is valid - as a silhouette or a statistical profile, and not as a life-size, full color portrait. Although priority public may be more accurate, the term, target public continues to be used today to signify some definable audience for whom advertising and information are specifically prepared. The "mass audience" is indeed a myth and using the scattershot approach to reach target publics is both foolish and uneconomical.
President Ronald Reagan's deputy press secretary, Pete Roussel, said he faithfully adhered to what he called the "Press Secretary's Prayer": "Oh Lord, let me utter words sweet and gentle, for tomorrow I may have to eat them." Rousel was one of several public opinion-sensitive specialists on President Reagan's staff. President Reagan came to be called "the Great Communicator." Recognizing that some people who did not like what President Reagan said nonetheless continued to like him, Colorado Congresswoman, Pat Schroeder, nicknamed him the "Teflon" president: Nothing unpopular that his administration did seemed to stick to him personally. President Reagan's administration also employed Richard Beal, whose job was to look at public views on questions likely to arise as issues in the future.
In doing this, President Reagan was following a trend that started with John F. Kennedy's use of polling, according to Sydney Blumenthal, author of The Permanent Campaign. Blumenthal called President Reagan "Communicator in Chief" and made this observation:
Reagan is governing America by a new doctrine - the permanent campaign. He is applying in the White House the most sophisticated team of pollsters, media masters and tacticians yet to work there. They have helped him to transcend entrenched institutions like the Congress and the Washington press corps to appeal directly to the people.
In addition to filling the administration's major public relations posts with experienced professionals, President Reagan appointed PR pros to many positions not traditionally considered public relations jobs. Of the three top advisers to the president, two were lawyers and one, Michael Deaver, was a public relations professional. Deaver was indicted for influence peddling after he left the White House, and Bernard Kalb of the State Department left in protest when the government got involved in a disinformation campaign.
After Press Secretary Jim Brady was severely injured in the assassination attempt on President Reagan March 30, 1981, Larry Speaks became acting press secretary. Speaks sometimes felt that he was not sufficiently informed by other administration officials and some news people agreed. However, Speakes said, not knowing is the lesser of two sins of a press secretary: lying was a "cardinal sin" and unforgivable. After he left the administration to work for a large public relations firm and then to direct public relations for a major brokerage firm - Speakes acknowledges he had "made up" quotes that he had attributed to President Reagan.
The Reagan presidency was one of the most controlled in the history of the office. One indication of this was the number of orchestrated photo opportunities. In addition, during the Reagan administration, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and its companion U.S. Information Service (USIS) in other countries grew in power and influence.
However, USIA was disbanded in October 1999 with many of its functions being absorbed by the U.S. Department of State. Since 1994, the International Broadcasting Breau (IBB) has provided administrative and engineering support for U.S. government-funded, nonmilitary, international broadcast services, including Worldnet Television and Film Service. Originally part of USIA, the IBB was formed by the 1994 International Broadcasting act, and the IBB was established as an independent federal government entity.
Concern about Worldnet was expressed in 1987 by Florida Congressman Dan Mica, who observed that it had an "untapped and unlimited potential." The Congressman was concerned "that a particular administration could use Worldnet as its private propaganda vehicle."
It has often been said that 20th century public relations primarily grew out of 19th century press agentry. In some ways this is true. Certainly, many early PR practitioners got their start as press agents. Although few of these early PR pioneers were as flamboyant as the great showman P.T. Barnum, many were publicity writers whose main target had always been the press. The greatest of the publicity consultants was Ivy Ledbetter Lee (This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations by Doug Newsom, Judy VanSlyke Turk and Dean Kruckeburg, pg. 29).
Press Agentry Press Agentry really began in about 1830, with the birth of the penny press, when newspaper prices dropped to a penny each circulation and readership boomed. However, so did the price of newspaper advertising. To reach the huge new audience without paying for the opportunity, promoters and publicity people developed a talent for "making news." The object was simply to break into print often at the expense of truth or dignity. Press agents exploited "freaks" to publicize circuses, invented legends to promote politicians, told outrageous lies to gain attention and generally provided plenty of popular entertainment if not real news (This is PR, pg. 29).
The cardinal virtue of press agentry was its promptness. It was often so prompt that its practitioners spent practically no time verifying the accuracy or news value of its content. But ultimately, the effectiveness of a press release depended on its creator's imagination and imagination remains a necessary talent for effective PR today (This is PR, pg. 29).
Publicity Many early publicists were no more careful with the facts than their press agent contemporaries, neither were many journalists of that day. Most publicists continually tried to "plant" stories in newspapers, hiding their source. In that respect, Ivy Lee represented a new kind of publicist. Perhaps the essential difference can be found in Lee's "Declaration of Principles"(1906), in which he defined important ideals of public relations, his new profession: "Our plan is, frankly and openly... to supply the press and public of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning subjects which it is of value and interest to the public to know about" (This is PR, pg. 29).
Lee's career spans from 1900 - 1939. At the dawn of the 20th century, PR's incubation period had drawn to a close. America was now a powerful industrialized nation with sophisticated mass media and a well-informed public. The time was right for a model of practice that would synthesize and coordinate the various talents - publicity, promotion, propaganda and press agentry - that had developed in tandem with the nation's growth (This is PR, pgs. 29-30).
Ethical Perspectives
Ivy Ledbetter Lee (1877 - 1934): "The Father of Public Relations"
After graduating from Princeton, Ivy Lee became a reporter in New York City but soon gave that up to become a political publicist. Then in 1904, he and George F. Parker formed the nation's third publicity bureau. By 1906 he was the most inspiring success in the young field of PR and found himself representing George F. Baer and his associates (who were allied with the J.P. Morgan financial empire) in a public controversy over an anthracite coal strike. Lee tried a radical approach: Frankly announcing himself as a publicity consultant. He invited the press to ask questions, handed out news releases and presented his client as cooperative and communicative (This is PR, pg. 30).
Lee's "Declaration of Principals," issued in 1906 to city editors all over the country won respect for public relations. That same year Lee represented the Pennsylvania Railroad when an accident occurred on the main line. Instead of hushing up the incident, Lee invited the press to come, at company expense, to the scene of the accident, were he made every effort to supply reporters with facts and to help photographers. As a result, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the railroad industry got their first favorable coverage in years (This is PR, pg. 30).
Lee's remarkable and straightforward style came from his frank admiration of industry and capitalism, and he made it his goal to get big business to communicate its story to the public. By the time he was 30, Lee had sired a profession, chiefly by introducing and promoting its first code of ethics (This is PR, pg. 30).
Lee's many later clients included the American Russian Chamber of Commerce and the German Dye trust, from whom he earned $25,000 a year and a PR problem of his own---how to defend his work for a Nazi organization. He was also heavily criticized for his support of Stalin-era Soviet Russia and his support of U.S. Soviet ties (This is PR, pg. 30).
It is perhaps a testament to Ivy Lee's public relations talent that he is now not remembered not so much for what he did at the height of his career as for what he said when he was still in his twenties (This is PR, pg. 30).
Because the effort to persuade underlies all public relations activity, we can say that the general endeavor of public relations is as old as civilization itself. For society to exist, people must achieve some minimum level of agreement and this agreement is usually reached through interpersonal and group communication. But reaching agreement often requires more than the simple act of sharing information: it demands a strong level of persuasion on the part of all parties involved in the decision-making process. Today, persuasion is still the driving force of public relations and many of the tactics that modern PR people use to persuade have been used by the leaders of society for thousands of years.
Monuments and other art forms of the ancient world reflect early efforts at persuasion. Pyramids, temples, statues tombs, painting and early forms of writing announce the divinity of rulers, whose power derived from the religious convictions of the public. Ancient art and literature also celebrated the heroic deeds of rulers and leaders who were considered gods or godlike. Speeches by the powerful or power seeking used institutionalized rhetoric (artificial or inflated language) as a principal device for persuasion.
Looking at some of the early tools and techniques used in persuasion can help put today's PR activities in perspective. Certainly such an overview will reveal that, in the process of its development, PR has amalgamated various persuasive techniques that have proved their utility and effectiveness through the centuries.
As Theodore Lustig, a retired professor and former Sun Chemical Corporation's communication manager points out:
The ancients had to make do with what they had. Two media, sculpture and coins, were particularly effective, and their use for political ends was refined between the fourth century B.C. and the establishment of the Byzantine Empire in the sixth century A.D., the beginning of the Dark Ages.
Lustig cites as an example, Phillip II of Macedonia. By 338 B.C., Phillip had subjugated all the city states of the Helenic peninsula under his dominion. Gold and ivory statues of Phillip adorned temples along with those of the gods. Phillip was thus a good role model for his son, Alexander the Great. In the thirteen years of Alexander's reign and conquests (336-323 B.C.), he managed to erect idealized images of himself across Africa, Asia Minor and India. According to Lustig, these image-making lessons were not lost on the first Roman emperor, Augustus.
All Roman emperors from Augustus on, made use of the ultimate promotion campaign they proclaimed themselves gods and required the people to worship them. Augustus also had Virgil's Aeneid published for propaganda purposes. This epic poem glorified the origin of the Roman people and by implication, the house of Caesar.
PR's Origins New names for public relations abound, such as "integrated communication." Old ones have become more prominent such as corporate "communication." Arguments exist that not all public relations tasks provide the practitioner with an appropriate claim to the umbrella title of "public relations." Public relations, by that view, should be reserved only for management jobs that involve strategic planning.
In Greek mythology, Hades was regarded as the oldest son of Cronus and Rhea, although the last son regurgitated by his father.He and his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, defeated their father's generation of gods, the Titans, and claimed rulership over the cosmos. Hades received the underworld, Zeus the air, and Poseidon the sea, with the solid earth—long the province of Gaia—available to all three concurrently. Hades was often portrayed with his three-headed guard dog Cerberus and, in later mythological authors, associated with the Helm of Darkness and the bident.
Given that the occupation of public relations continues to have difficulty defining itself, it should be no surprise that authorities disagree about where and when public relations started and how it got its name. Some historians credit Thomas Jefferson in 1807 with first combining the words "public" and "relations" into "public relations." Others say that the term was coined by lawyer Dorman Eaton in an address to the Yale graduating class of 1882. Regardless, "public relations" was not used in its modern sense until 1897 when it appeared in the Association of American Railroads' Yearbook of Railway Literature. The real success of the term can be attributed to Edward L. Berneys, whom Irwin Ross calls "the first and doubtless, leading idealogue of public relations" (This is PR: The Reality of Public Relations: by Doug Newsom, Judy VanSlyke Turk and Dean Krukeberg, pg. 21).
Edward Berneys
Berneys was the first to call himself a "public relations counsel," which he did in 1921. Two years later, he wrote the first book on the subject, Crystallising Public Opinion, and taught the first college course on PR at New York University. Thus it was around the turn of the twentieth century that PR came into being as a term, as an occupation and as an academic discipline (This is PR, pg. 21).
Name
The origin of Hades' name is uncertain, but has generally been seen as meaning "The Unseen One" since antiquity. An extensive section of Plato's dialogueCratylus is devoted to the etymology of the god's name, in which Socrates is arguing for a folk etymology not from "unseen" but from "his knowledge (eidenai) of all noble things". Modern linguists have proposed the Proto-Greek form *Awides ("unseen").The earliest attested form is Aḯdēs (Ἀΐδης), which lacks the proposed digamma. West argues instead for an original meaning of "the one who presides over meeting up" from the universality of death.
Greeks started referring to Hades asPluto(Πλούτων,Ploútōn), with a root meaning "wealthy", considering that from the abode below (i.e., the soil) come riches (e.g., fertile crops, metals and so on).Plouton became the Roman god who both rules the underworld and distributed riches from below. This deity was a mixture of the Greek god Hades and the Eleusinian icon Ploutos, and from this he also received a priestess, which was not previously practiced in Greece.More elaborate names of the same genre werePloutodótēs(Πλουτοδότης) orPloutodotḗr(Πλουτοδοτήρ) meaning "giver of wealth".
Like his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Berneys devoted his career to the study of the human mind. His specialty was mass psychology - how the opinions of large numbers of people can be influenced effectively and honorably. When he arrived on the scene, public opinion was considered the province of philosophy. Sociology was in its infancy and Walter Lipman had just begun to define what Berneys called "the American tribal consciousness." Berneys' approach to psychology is exemplified in the advice he gave the Proctor & Gamble Company several decades ago when it came to him with a problem: a boycott of its products by black people. Berneys advised Procter & Gamble to eliminate its racist advertising campaign, to hire blacks in white-collar jobs and to invite black people to open-house gatherings at the plant (This is PR, pg. 22).
The Berneys style was often subtle. For example, he helped the Beech-Nut Packing Company sell bacon, not by promoting bacon itself but by promoting what all America could respond to, a nutritious breakfast. In 1918 Berneys even changed the course of history by convincing Thomas Masaryk, the founder of Czechoslovakia, to delay announcement of that country's independence for a day in order to get better press coverage (This is PR, pg. 22).
Greek God of the Underworld
In Greek mythology, Hades the god of the underworld, was a son of the TitansCronus and Rhea. He had three sisters, Demeter, Hestia, and Hera, as well as two brothers, Zeus, the youngest of the three, and Poseidon. Upon reaching adulthood, Zeus managed to force his father to disgorge his siblings. After their release the six younger gods, along with allies, managed to gather and challenge the elder gods for power in the Titanomachy, a divine war. The war lasted for ten years and ended with the victory of the younger gods. Following their victory, according to a single famous passage in the Iliad (xv.187–93), Hades and his two brothers, Poseidon and Zeus, drew lotsfor realms to rule. Zeus received the sky, Poseidon received the seas, and Hades received the underworld, the unseen realm to which the souls of the dead go upon leaving the world as well as any and all things beneath the earth. Some myths suggest that Hades was dissatisfied with his turnout, but had no choice and moved to his new realm. The Underworld was Hades' eternal domain, meaning he would spend the majority of his time there .
Hades obtained his wife and queen, Persephone, through abduction at the behest of Zeus. This myth is the most important one Hades takes part in; it also connected the Eleusinian Mysteries with the Olympian pantheon, particularly as represented in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which is the oldest story of the abduction, most likely dating back to the beginning of the 6th Century BC. Helios told the grieving Demeter that Hades was not unworthy as a consort for Persephone:
"Aidoneus, the Ruler of Many, is no unfitting husband among the deathless gods for your child, being your own brother and born of the same stock: also, for honor, he has that third share which he received when division was made at the first, and is appointed lord of those among whom he dwells."
Berneys, who died in 1995 at the age of 103 adamantly believed that public relations is more than mere press agentry. However, he was not above staging events. In 1924, he helped President Coolidge counteract his aloof image by staging a White House breakfast, to which Al Jolsen and other movie stars were invited. In 1929 he publicized the 50th anniversary of the electric light bulb by having Thomas Edison reenact its discovery in the presence of president Hoover (This is PR, pg. 22).
On the other hand Berneys turned down an appeal through an intermediary to provide PR assistance to Adolf Hitler in 1933, just before Hitler came to power. A correspondent for the Hearst newspapers told Berneys, however, that during an interview with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, some years later he saw Berneys 1923 book Propaganda on the Nazi's desk (This is PR, pg. 22).
Analysis of "This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations" (part 1)
Introduction As always I want to thank you, the loyal reader for dropping by to check out my blog. If you are one of the loyal few you know I just completed an in-depth analysis of Persuasion in the Media Age by Timothy A. Borchers. I had a lot of fun doing it and I hope you enjoyed reading it. So in the spirit of keeping this money-machine rolling, I wanted to write about another topic near and dear to my heart, and that is public relations. So to achieve this aim, I shall now begin an in-depth analysis of a book I enjoy very much entitled This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations which is written by Doug Newsome, Judy VanSlyke Turk and Dean Krukeberg.
Mosaic of best-resolution images of Pluto from different angles
Pluto was the first Kuiper belt object to be discovered. It is the largest and second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object directly orbiting the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume but is less massive than Eris, a dwarf planet in the scattered disc. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is primarily made of ice and rockand is relatively small—about one-sixth the mass of theMoon and one-third its volume. It has a moderately eccentric and inclined orbit during which it ranges from 30 to 49 astronomical units or AU (4.4–7.4 billion km) from the Sun. This means that Pluto periodically comes closer to the Sun than Neptune, but a stable orbital resonance with Neptune prevents them from colliding. Light from the Sun takes about 5.5 hours to reach Pluto at its average distance (39.5 AU).
Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, and was originally considered the ninth planet from the Sun. After 1992, its planethood was questioned following the discovery of several objects of similar size in the Kuiper belt. In 2005, Eris, which is 27% more massive than Pluto, was discovered, which led the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term "planet" formally for the first time the following year. This definition excluded Pluto and reclassified it as a member of the new "dwarf planet" category.
Pluto has five known moons: Charon (the largest, with a diameter just over half that of Pluto), Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Pluto and Charon are sometimes considered a binary system because the barycenter of their orbits does not lie within either body.The IAU has not formalized a definition for binary dwarf planets, and Charon is officially classified as amoon of Pluto.
Meanwhile: Back on Earth
The Job of the PR Practitioner
Although the basic duties of a public relations practitioner have not changed much over the last several decades, the demands on the practitioner and the way the practitioner carries out his or her duties have changed and will continue to change. There is more call for depth and diversity in knowledge for this field now that it is functioning at a global level. There is less tolerance for hype. Practitioners need more command of a greater array of communication technologies, and media relations.
Other skills include thinking (first and foremost), writing of all kinds, speaking, being persuasive, understanding and appreciating media, knowing graphics and photography, respecting deadlines and developing an ability to deal with and solve multiple PR problems at one time.
Three Basic Roles
The way a PR practitioner applies his or her special skills depends on the role he or she plays in an organization. The three main roles are those of staff member, an agency employee and an independent PR practitioner, who might from time to time function as a PR counselor.
Staff Members Staff public relations practitioners are employees of commercial or non-profit organizations or of divisions of government such as local, state and federal agencies. They perform highly specialized tasks in their organizations but they get a paycheck just like other employees, and they share the same corporate or institutional identity. Specific needs of the organization usually determine the staff member's job description.
Staff positions with small organizations will often include responsibility for external relations. In the case of a small nonprofit organization, the PR person typically works either with volunteers who provide professional expertise of various kinds or with outside suppliers whose services may be bought on a limited basis or donated.
Staff positions with larger organizations can involve responsibilities for all other communications functions that report to public relations. Large organizations are likely to buy services such as research, audiovisuals (everything from employee training videos to video news releases and commercials) and perhaps even the annual report from outside suppliers. Outsourcing of special public relations services is increasing as companies cut back on their total number of in-house employees.
History
Discovery
Discovery photographs of Pluto
Clyde Tombaugh, in Kansas
In the 1840s, Urbain Le Verrier used Newtonian mechanics to predict the position of the then-undiscovered planet Neptune after analysing perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. Subsequent observations of Neptune in the late 19th century led astronomers to speculate that Uranus's orbit was being disturbed by another planet besides Neptune.
In 1906, Percival Lowell—a wealthy Bostonian who had founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1894—started an extensive project in search of a possible ninth planet, which he termed "Planet X". By 1909, Lowell and William H. Pickering had suggested several possible celestial coordinates for such a planet. Lowell and his observatory conducted his search until his death in 1916, but to no avail. Unknown to Lowell, his surveys had captured two faint images of Pluto on March 19 and April 7, 1915, but they were not recognized for what they were. There are fourteen other known prediscovery observations, with the oldest made by the Yerkes Observatory on August 20, 1909.
Percival's widow, Constance Lowell, entered into a ten-year legal battle with the Lowell Observatory over her late husband's legacy, and the search for Planet X did not resume until 1929.Vesto Melvin Slipher, the observatory director, summarily handed the job of locating Planet X to 23-year-old Clyde Tombaugh, who had just arrived at the Lowell Observatory after Slipher had been impressed by a sample of his astronomical drawings.
Commercial and Nonprofit Organizations Public relations people in organizations, whether commercial or nonprofit, may have skilled jobs in a PR department.They may be middle-managers of specialized PR activity, such as community relations or employee relations or may function as general professional staff.. Increased use of computer technology is likely to decrease the number of practitioners working at the lower-level jobs and increase the number working at the middle and senior managerial levels.
Government Job descriptions for PR positions in government vary dramatically. Some people who are called "public information officers" are really publicists whereas others with precisely the same title may have all the responsibiities of a corporare vice president for PR.
Firm/Agency Employees Each agency or firm has its own internal structure, but generally, the president of the firm shares in handling accounts as do the salespeople who also may be account executives. A firm may employ a bookkeeper, a secretary, a publicity writer, an advertising or graphics specialist and an artist. In some instances, the writer may prepare both publicity and advertising copy and the artist may be responsible for illustrations and layout.
Large firms have copy editors, media specialists, several artists and a production facility. Most firms, even the largest ones arrange contracts with printers, typesetters and photographers. Desktop publishing makes the jobs of writers and artists more efficient and easier to coordinate. Computer software programs that include type and graphics make almost instantaneous page makeup possible in-house. These systems usually make the writer the production person as well, since the writer actually develops the final format of publication. The artist provides original designs and artwork.
Independent Practitioners/Contractors The independent public relations practitioner is usually hired to accomplish a specific task, one that is ordinarily but not always predetermined. Payment may take the form of a flat fee, a fee plus expenses or a base fee plus hourly charges and expenses. The less experienced the PR practitioner is, the more often he or she will have to work for a flat fee.
Although some experienced independents prefer to bill for actual costs, they price a job based on the hours to complete it multiplied by an hourly rate. They often increase these costs by a certain percentage to cover overhead and profit. Independent public relations professionals sometimes function as public relations counselors. Some independent practitioners work almost exclusively as counselors.
A PR counselor is called in at an advisory level and works for a consultant's fee, which he or she sets, with hours and expenses added. The counselor studies and researches, interviews the people involved, outlines recommendations and makes a formal presentation of these. The program is then implemented by other PR workers at the organization or at an agency. Counselors may work independently or they may be associated with a firm as senior members. Some independent PR practitioners do various PR jobs, but most are strictly counselors.
Some counselors are sensitive about their role because people tend to view them as behind the scenes influence peddlers. Another misconception is that counselors are simply unemployed would-be staffers. Public confusion is understandable, because counselors are advisers who possess special areas of expertise, most of it gained in agency or corporate work. Their value resides in their experience, in the people they know and are able to call upon and in their skill as researchers, analyzers, communicators and persuaders.
Some counselors develop reputations for helping institutions prepare for and handle crisis communications. Others are known for their ability to help institutions establish and maintain good government relations (at all levels but primarily the federal level). Still others are called on for their ability to help with internal problems, typically involving employee relations. Counselors as senior practitioners often develop staffs that include younger people who have particular strengths or specializations.
