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Posted at 05:53 AM in Week's Best | Permalink | Comments (0)
Today is International Women's Day, so I'm taking an opportunity to interview one of my PR Campaigns class clients, Joan Prittie of Project Safe, a local nonprofit organization that works to end domestic violence through prevention and education, crisis intervention, support services, and advocacy. The Athens Banner-Herald named her one of the top newsmakers for 2009 because domestic violence claimed 10 lives in our small city last year.
Question: You told my students that Project Safe began when some Athens women were brave enough to open their homes to strangers who needed a safe place to stay. Can you tell us what you know about that time?
Joan: Unfortunately I know very little about the early years--before Project Safe officially became Project Safe. I've met some people who were involved in various ways back in the early 1980s, but I'd love to learn more about our founding mothers (and fathers) and really piece the early history together.
Question: You also said that you've been inspired by the founders' bravery. What do you do to try to live up to the example they set?
Joan: I try to keep moving the organization and the community toward an end to violence. We push ourselves to do better and do more each day.
Question: During the team's first client meeting, you said that when Project Safe had a little extra money last year, you spent some of it on marketing. I can honestly say I've never had a client tell my students that before. Why did you make that decision? How do marketing and public relations contribute to the success of Project Safe?
Joan: Before I came to Project Safe, when I was practicing law, I worked on a clemency project with 78 battered women who were in prison for killing or harming their abusers. Only one ever called a hotline, but they all had someone in their lives who knew about the violence. They got bad advice or no advice at all. That same pattern is confirmed in studies and--just recently--in the Georgia Domestic Violence Fatality Review Report.
Victims aren't in touch with advocacy/service providers, but their friends and family are aware of the abuse. Marketing and outreach is important to help people connect with us. It's also important for events like our Dancing with Athens Stars fundraiser coming up on March 21st at the Classic Center, or our resale shop, P.S.Too. Donor trends nation wide are that individual giving and government grants are decreasing, while earned income or entrepreneurship among non-profits is increasing so we want our events and business efforts to be successful.
Question: What can the rest of us do to help prevent or halt domestic violence?
Joan: Don't be violent for starters. Teach your children not to commit or condone violence. Talk about it--it's so widespread, and yet people act like it could never happen to them. Learn about the risks, warning signs and resources the same way you might educate yourself about any other health issue.
Check out our Web site or our Facebook page for information about domestic violence and resources in the area. Know that there's a hotline (706-543-3331) available 24 hours a day. Volunteer. Donate. Contact Project Safe for an education presentation or training at work, school or church.
Posted at 09:02 AM in Classes, Misc. | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted at 08:44 AM in Week's Best | Permalink | Comments (1)
Prof. Tom Kelleher of the University of Hawaii at Manoa recently guest edited a special issue of the Journal of Public Relations Research on social media (it'll be published later this year as volume 22, issue 3), and I think it's fair to say it was a learning experience. We e-mailed and talked several times as he struggled to make decisions about which manuscripts to move forward and how to set deadlines and work with authors in order to complete the issue on time.
At one point I tweeted, "Let's do a blog post on making the editorial decision when you're finished." He responded, "Great idea." So here we are (and here, too).
Karen's perspective:
Probably the most important decision an editor makes is determining which reviewers will get the manuscript, because reviewers have far more influence than they probably realize. Although reviewers ultimately provide only recommendations, and the editor has the final say, collectively the two or three reviewers per manuscript provide an assessment that would be pretty hard for an editor to ignore -- particularly because, if I've done a good job with selection, the reviewer is more expert in the paper's topic or method than I am. I typically invite two members of the editorial board, one with topic expertise and one with method expertise, to review each manuscript, and usually (but not always) invite a third, outside person. This gives different and often younger scholars an opportunity to participate in the process and allows me to compare their assessments with those of more established scholars.
JPRR has four categories of recommendation -- reject, revise and resubmit, accept with minor revisions, and accept -- but I've learned to pay less attention to the recommendation and more attention to the reviewer's comments, because I've realized that one person's reject is another person's R&R, or one person's R&R is another person's minor revisions. Thus, if a reviewer asks for major revisions (such as calling for more data collection or reanalysis of the data) but doesn't give me a sense that the research will make a significant contribution to public relations theory development even if those revisions are made, I would consider that a "reject" even if the reviewer called it a "revise and resubmit." [Note: I'm working on revising the reviewing guidelines, and this will include some clarification of the categories.]
After I receive the reviews, I read them carefully and then go back to the manuscript to compare my impressions with those of the reviewers. As I've written about before, the most important consideration is always the paper's contribution to theory development. I am willing to work with authors through two or even three revisions, and I've spent hours line-editing manuscripts when reviewers have expressed frustration with the writing or organization, if the experts are convinced that it makes an important contribution to the literature.
But that's the major difference between a regular issue, in which articles can be reviewed multiple times and the ulitmate criterion is quality of contribution to the body of knowledge, and a special issue, which has a specific deadline and a set number of pages that must be filled by that deadline.
Tom's Perspective:
One of many reasons I’m in academics today is that I dread the cold call. I’d get a knot in my stomach when I was an intern at Ketchum in Atlanta years back, knowing my day would be full of pitch calls to busy people with more important things on their minds. James McCroskey might call it “situational communication apprehension.” Given the choice of grinding out pitch calls or grinding out years of grad school I chose the latter.
So one of my biggest concerns taking on this journal issue was how I was going to recruit reviewers. To my delight, my apprehension was unfounded. The vast majority of people I contacted fell into one of two categories: those who planned to submit an article themselves and those who were ready and willing to review.
Social media experts with academic track records and accomplished academics with an interest in social media were quick to offer help. Not surprisingly Twitter and blog versions of the call were helpful recruiting tools. I also paid attention to methodological and content expertise in assigning manuscripts to reviewers.
The same enthusiasm for the project that drove reviewers to volunteer also drove many of them to offer amazingly detailed critiques and suggestions. In turn, authors who were invited to resubmit took their lumps and vigorously revised (in fact most probably didn’t even see it as taking lumps). With each iteration, the special issue looked better and better.
But this is where the unique nature of a special issue becomes most apparent. We had a calendar date when the revisions had to stop and a finite number of articles had to be selected. Until that deadline loomed, I was gratefully able to serve mostly as conduit between reviewers and authors. Later in the process though, I felt the gravity of being the only one with a full view of all the submissions and all the reviews through several rounds.
Here are a few of the dilemmas that I think are unique to a special-issue project:
Generating interest was never a problem. No pitching required! In fact, the greater challenge was making the most of the exchange once everyone was engaged… Almost sounds like a topic for a paper on social media.
When the issue lands in your mailbox, if you learn from what you read, thank the authors and the reviewers.
Posted at 11:17 AM in JPRR, research | Permalink | Comments (4)
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Posted at 05:45 AM in Week's Best | Permalink | Comments (1)
My colleague Kristen Smith is gearing up to teach our PR writing class for the first time, and she asked for my advice on what to do with the class. Some things are obvious and haven't changed in decades, but I don't think most of the PR textbooks do much with the Web and social media (and I haven't taught it in a while so please feel free to add a comment if you know of a good PR writing text). I mentioned, for example, that she'll need to talk about SEO when teaching about writing news releases, even if the textbooks aren't doing that yet.
Later it occurred to me that I already have a great resource on hand* for her and for students: David Meerman Scott's 2nd edition of "The New Rules of Marketing & PR." I used the first edition of this book when I taught a special topics ad/PR class on social media, and the students loved it. The second edition is out now, and it could very easily be used in a PR writing class.
The early chapters clearly explain how the Internet and social media in particular have changed PR and marketing -- primarily in that organizations can now reach individuals directly and cheaply. The second part of the book runs through different platforms -- blogs, social networks, Twitter, audio, video -- that can be used.
Part III introduces the idea of "buyer personas," in which the PR person pulls together research to draw portraits of different kinds of buyers and then to figure out how to talk to that kind of person, using the language they would use. That concept isn't anything new to PR, but somehow writing that little character sketch seems to make target publics more concrete to students.
The book includes a chapter on Search Engine Marketing, but in it Scott makes the point that "this entire book is about search engine marketing." As such it would make a great supplement to a PR textbook that focuses on more traditional writing (brochures, news releases, annual reports, etc.). I would definitely recommend it to someone teaching a PR writing course.
So, Kristen, check your mailbox. You can borrow, but not keep, mine.
*Disclosure: David knew that I used his book in class and asked me to write a blurb for the 2nd edition. You can find me on the bottom of page iii.
Posted at 10:45 AM in Book Review | Permalink | Comments (7)
In the interest of better connecting academic researchers and professional communicators, AEJMC started a program called "News You Can Use," in which editors of academic journals submit research to be promoted to journalists and others in the relevant industries. For my first issue as editor of the Journal of Public Relations Research (which is sponsored by the PR Division of AEJMC), I selected "The Effects of Attribution of VNRs and Risk on News Viewers' Assessments of Credibility," by Colleen Connolly-Ahern (Penn State), Susan Grantham (University of Hartford) and Maria Cabrera-Baukus (Penn State).
The article challenges the notion, perpetuated by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and others, that unattributed government video news releases are overly-influential forms of covert propaganda. The authors' experiment found that partisanship had a tremendous impact on how viewers interpreted the VNRs. AEJMC's news release explains the results of their study in more detail.
Posted at 06:21 PM in JPRR | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted at 06:15 AM in Week's Best | Permalink | Comments (1)
Here's a report to other faculty who might be considering a "PROpenMic Week" assignment like this one.
Overall it went pretty well. My students jumped right in with joining groups (two created new groups), commenting on posts, and (if they didn't already have one) creating profiles. It seemed to me that there was a leap in site participation that week (Robert French: can you confirm this perception?), with lots of new posts on the site; a couple of my students from past semesters also got re-energized about using the site because a lot of their (IRL) friends were friending them or commenting on their old posts. Also, if students from other schools joined that week there would have been lots of activity to engage them. So that's a good thing.
What I thought would be the high point, the joint blogging project with UNC-Wilmington's Dr. Jeanne Persuit's intro class, actually turned out to be the part that needs tweaking. I sent Jeanne a list of my students the week prior to PROpenMic Week, and she matched names with her students and posted a list on the discussion board for our "Seahawks + Bulldogs" discussion group. However, we should've done this sooner, because most students didn't start posting their interviews until Wednesday or Thursday of PROpenMic Week, which left very little time for anyone to comment on these posts. Moreover, the "week" was supposed to end on Friday, but it really ended up being "week-and-a-half" because some of the student pairs didn't finish each other's interviews in time to be posted during the official assignment (Jeanne and I both extended the deadline when we realized what was happening). I think a number of the students enjoyed talking to someone from a different school and at a different point in their education, but the assignments need to be made a least a week before the start of the assignment if you expect them to be part of the week's conversation.
My students are still expected to participate on the site throughout the semester, but I think this assignment can serve as a good introduction for students who aren't familiar with using a social network for professional reasons. I also thinking pairing up with another class makes it more interesting because it seems a little silly to interact primarily with students you already see in class every week. Just use the "Faculty" discussion group on PROpenMic to find a partner.
Posted at 10:11 AM in Classes | Permalink | Comments (3)
Posted at 10:02 AM in Week's Best | Permalink | Comments (0)
