Teaching PR

Historical research on public relations

Tom Watson's wonderful International History of Public Relations Conference is fast becoming a high point in my academic calendar.

Unfortunately, I can't travel to Bournemouth every year. Fortunately, Tom has released the 2011 IHPRC proceedings, so that those of us who could be there only via social media can now read the papers. It's a great resource for faculty and professionals interested in PR history, and a great starting point for some student term papers!

The Week's Best, 29 August 2011

• German PR Industry Is Unhappy with Mercedes-Benz's Cannes PR Win, Arun Sudhaman
• Padding the Death Count and Other Natural Disasters of Hype, Steven Silvers
• Will Sina Weibo Replace Twitter?, Aljazeera (via @Allen_Sun)
• The Crowdsourced Facebook Marketing Book, SocialFresh (via @MariSmith)
• Uganda Needs a More Potent Public Relations Machinery, David Billington (via @josh_greenberg, and please read the other links in his Tweet!)
• More Weird PR Email, Ed Brayton
• Case of 8,000 Menacing Posts Tests Limits of Twitter Speech, Somini Sengupta
• PR History -- What It Tells Practitioners, Tom Watson
• Do You Need a Degree in Public Relations to Work in PR?, Mary Fletcher Jones
• Not All Public Relations Is Spin, Just Like Not All FDA Approvals Are PhRMA Favors, Derek DeVries

And just for fun: The Best Tweets About the D.C. Earthquake, Jay Yarow

Social media and higher ed

A study of four-year accredited colleges and universities shows that 100% of schools are now using social media -- up 34% since 2007. Conducted by Dr. Nora Barnes and Ava Lescault of the U. Mass.-Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, the study finds that only one in five colleges/universities report using social networking sites to recruit and evaluate potential students.

Virtually all colleges/universities are on Facebook (98%), most are on Twitter (84%), and two-thirds have a blog. Meanwhile, message boards have leveled off and Myspace participation is down, while podcasting and Foursquare are up (the study has a margin of error of +/- 4%). Dr. Barnes suggests this shows a maturation process as higher ed institutions develop a better understanding of social media tools.

The press release from the Society of New Communications Research notes that higher ed is outpacing the Fortune 500, the Inc. 500, and the Forbes top charities in adoption of blogging.

Any guesses as to why blogging is so popular? Facebook is not surprising, given that students and potential students are a major public, but the stats on blogging are less intuitive. Also, do you believe that one-in-five stat, or is the word "evaluate" the problem?

You can download the report in full. Thanks to Kim Harrison for passing along the SNCR news release.

The Week's Best, 22 August 2011

• Walking Off: Christine O'Donnell Bails on CNN, Rich Becker
• Survey Reveals Insights About Millennial PR Agency Employees' Ethics, Tiffany Gallicano
• Avoiding the Social Media Job Shop Scenario, Shannon Paul
• Revealing Yourself Through a Verb, Lauren Vargas
• 3 Books I'm Reading Now, Valeria Maltoni
• Case Study: Social Media Drives Message Development, Todd Defren
• What I Learned from my 50 Different Jobs, Denise Duffield-Thomas
• The History and Future of NASA's Social Media Strategy, Brad McCarty (via @arikhanson)
• College vs. the Real World: The Stats Might Shock You, Elizabeth Short (via @kaitlyndennihy)

Are all our students above average?

As an incoming member of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication's Standing Committee on Teaching, I attended the plenary session at the annual meeting with even more interest than usual (here's another good session from 2008). The topic this year, "Lake Wobegon meets grade inflation: Are all our students above average?" is one worth considering. I didn't try to take notes on the whole thing, but I did take down the keynote speaker's remarks. Stuart Rojstaczer, retired from Duke and now at gradeinflation.com, was funny and provocative, and had strong opinions to share. He said:

Grades have mostly been going up for 50 years-- why? Push for access (every high school student wants to/is expected to go to college; push for more graduates (emphasis on retention and graduation rates); push for more student satisfaction (consumer-based universities).

Higher education involves 10 million 18-24 year olds and is a $300 billion industry. It influences how democracy operates and influences our economic competitiveness. However, the academic component of college has been diluted. 

Evidence shows that grade inflation began in the 1960s, declined in the 1970s, began again in the mid-1980s and has continued; it's worse at private schools. Evidence also shows that 43% of all grades are now A's -- it's the most common grade! The C, which used to be the most common, is now just 15% of all grades. The numbers of D's and F's has remained relatively stable at about 5%.

People rationalize this in several ways: students are smarter (but the ACT/SAT scores haven't improved, and more students need remedial classes), we teach better, and students work harder (but student engagement, measured by study time, focus on academics, etc., is at an all-time low; literacy of graduates is at an all-time low; and students work less than they used to, not more).

More students are attending college, and many are not well prepared, yet they are still graduating. Faculty have reduced workloads and eased grading in order to accommodate those students. Another problem is the rise of the adjunct, who is poorly paid, has a heavy teaching load, and has little job security and relies on course evaluations to keep the job. The obvious solution for a person in that position is to expect less and grade higher.

Also, every faculty member is now expected to be a great scholar (faculty are distracted by the research imperative), and stagnating wages in the presence of rising college costs means students have high debt and take the pragmatic approach of focusing on the outcome of their degrees rather than learning.

Thus, we now have a "high-school plus" model, and a non-aggression pact between professor and student. "I'll give you high grades and low workloads, if you give me high evaluations and don't bother me after class." Less writing, less reading, dumbed-down texts, and failure is almost impossible.

Implications: higher graduation rates, a more educated populace overall but less education per degree, an unnecessary degradation of educational quality at the top schools. Students and parents want this, and it's what distracted faculty want because they prefer to do research.

So, PR profs, what do you think? Have you experienced grade inflation (I admit that I give more A's than I used to -- now entering my 19th year of teaching), and if so, have any of these factors been an influence? And students, do you think faculty are distracted or unwilling to give you time outside of class? Do you automatically give good evaluations to easy teachers, or bad evaluations to more difficult ones? I'd love to hear about all of your experiences.

Journal of Public Relations Research updates

Because the Public Relations division of AEJMC sponsors the Journal of Public Relations Research, I provided updates at the business and editorial board meetings. In the interest of transparency, here are the highlights:

• The introduction of new reviewing guidelines held up the reviewing process earlier this year, so the average time from submission to decision is up to 79 days. However, we're caught up now, so I expect to see that time head back down toward 60 days next year. And, the new reviewing guidelines are excellent!
• The number of submissions is down to a little over 100 in the past 12 months (31 pending), but it appears to me that virtually all of the submissions are now appropriate to the Journal and very few are being rejected without to review. However, this also means that the acceptance rate is creeping up toward 30%, so I will be asking reviewers to be more demanding, with an emphasis on significance to public relations theory development, in order to get it back down to the 20-25% range.
• Routledge's representative, Patrick Fallon, informed the editorial board that the Journal is moving to a new publication schedule. We will now have 5 issues per year under the publish-less-frequently model, meaning that issues 1-2 will come out electronically on schedule and then be bound together, issue 3 will be a standalone, and issues 4-5 will be bound together. Thus, there will be 5 issues published electronically, but they will be distributed in print only three times per year. This, along with a tougher editorial stance, will address the current backlog of accepted but unpublished articles.
• The article "Media Catching and the Journalist-Public Relations Practitioner Relationship: How Social Media Are Changing the Practice of Media Relations," by Richard Waters, Natalie Tindall, and Timothy Morton has been especially popular, and it's now free from Taylor and Francis.
• The Journal received its first impact factor, which is 0.512 with a ranking of 48 among 67 communications journals. This is lower than we'd like, but Fallon informs us that it's not bad for a first-ever rating; moreover, the Journal's Eigenfactor score puts it at 40 out of 67, meaning that it has more influence than the impact factor might suggest. Hopefully, some of the changes we're making will help improve our scores over time.

The Week's Best, 15 August 2011

Today's the first day of fall semester at the University of Georgia -- welcome, and welcome back, to all of our students! 

Here's my take on the Week's Best for PR Students:

• Social Media and the Tourism Industry, Layla Revis, and Social Care and Commerce: How Airlines Are Using Social Media, Ryan Aynes
• Using Twitter for PR Events, Heather Yaxley with Judy Gombita and Markus Pirchner
• Just Another Issue for Women in Politics, David Wescott
• How Important Is Social Media for Upcoming Graduates :: Get Prepared, Robert French
• International History of PR Conference 2011 (video), via Tom Watson
• What You Should Never Put in an Introductory Email, Sindhu Sundar (via @PRjobs)
• Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade, Virginia Heffernan (via @nycrican2)
• Where Should PR Sit in an Organization?, MaryLee Sachs (via @melanie_james)
• Twitter Will Not Shut Down Accounts of London Rioters, Lauren Dugan; UK Police Name and Shame London Looters on Twitter, Lauren Dugan; and PR Winners and Losers, Stuart Bruce

What to do about pop culture representations of PR

Last week I mentioned an AEJMC panel on pop culture images of public relations; it took place today and it was just as interesting as I'd hoped. I don't have notes from the first half of the session because I was on the panel, but wanted to share what the speakers in the second half discussed. Having established that books, movies and television often portray public relations inaccurately and PR pros badly, the panelists discussed what to do about it.

First, Rosanna Fiske (Florida International and chair of PRSA this year) described efforts by the Public Relations Society of America to overcome these problems. She described the "Business Case" campaign (more information on prsa.org), the purpose of which is to "drive recognition for the strategic value that PR brings to the table for any organization." She said that PRSA focuses especially on measurement as a key component in making PR count. Fiske also said that as a member of the committee creating the strategic plan for 2011-2013, she led focus groups (there were a number of groups held in 5 different cities) and that the results showed that everyone thinks the number one thing PRSA should be doing is advocating for public relations, because the image is poor and/or misunderstood. Therefore the campaign focuses on how PR can help with financial, reputation, employee/internal, and public policy; but PRSA has also taken a more active role in advocacy, emphasizing the value of PR, ethics, and diversity in the profession. Another program, "PR Serving America," showcases positive community service PRSA offers at the local level.

Next, Meg Lamme (University of Alabama) talked about the teaching moments pop culture can offer. She suggests that we need to own pop culture images and use them to our benefit. She provided two examples, an episode of "West Wing," which portrayed a day in the life of the press secretary, C.J. Craig, and "Absolutely Fabulous." Each provides examples that teachers can use to talk about important issues -- for instance, "West Wing" demonstrates the wide range of expertise a press secretary must have and the influence of the 24/7 news cycle on the character's work. Finally, she described how students have brought up pop culture images in class (Maxim's spread on MTV's "Power Girls," or "Kell on Earth) which spurred good discussions on ethics, diversity, and other important issues. She warned us to be ready for "Scandal," a new show on ABC this fall.

Tim Penning (Grand Valley State) provided a number of reasons that pop culture may not matter at all. Pop culture may not influence public opinion on PR; a lot of other professions have worse portrayals than PR; people understand it's just entertainment; maybe we're too sensitive and focused on the normative; there are other factors besides pop culture that influence the image; attitudes aren't static but change frequently and rapidly; personal experience is stronger than media cultivated images; and pop culture images of "PR" are often really about lawyers, marketers, etc. On the other hand, he said, pop culture may be one important contributing variable; the use of the word "spin" is prevalent; a dominant coalition's worldview of PR may influence its decisions about how to use PR; and new students do seem influenced by pop culture images in their decision to study PR. Since it both is and isn't important, then, PRSA, AEJMC, the Page Society and other should continue to take steps to present PR people appropriately, and we should present more examples of positive public relations.

Finally, Andi Stein (Cal State-Fullerton) described some steps we should take as public relations educators. She asks students to list 5 positive and 5 negative terms associated with PR, and then asks where they got those terms -- which is often pop culture but also other journalism professors. She asks why media people have these images and describes historical events that contribute to the antagonism between PR and journalism. She often uses guest speakers to describe what journalists want and expect from PR people, and also invited 2 reporters and 2 PR pros who'd all been involved in some way with a school shooting to show how they can work together to inform the public. She briefly touched on the idea that new media allow PR people to tell the organization's stories without going through the media, and suggested that ethics must be an ongoing part of the conversation, including the conflict between personal and professional ethics. She also suggested guest lecturing in journalism classes to talk about PR; for example, students could look at a few pages of newspaper and try to identify where the information came from in order to begin to understand the importance of public relations in the news-gathering process.

 

The Week's Best, 8 August 2011

• A Ramadan Public Relations Plan for American Muslim Community Centers, Iesa Galloway
• Arthur Page's Hiroshima Statement Written for Harry Truman, Jason Chupick
• A PR Time Capsule Can Take You Back to the Future, Kevin Dugan
• Summer Music Series: How Music Fans Support Nonprofits and Causes, David Meerman Scott
• The Road from College Student to PR Professional, Gabby Bladick
• Defining Your Keywords, Molli Megasko
• Elite, Educated and Opinion Leaders Still Hold Sway Online, Sally Falkow
• S&P's Historic Downgrade Announcement Doesn't Go According to Plan, Joe Ciarello (via @mdbarber) and Standard & Poor's Inconsistencies, Ezra Klein

Pop culture images of PR

I'm heading to the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, in St. Louis, next week and thought I'd share this fun multiple-disc DVD series on "The Image of the Public Relations Practitioner in Movies and Television, 1901-2011." It's produced and written by Joe Saltzman, the director of the Image of Journalist in Popular Culture at USC, and will be featured in a pre-conference workshop on Tuesday.

I've had a long interest in how PR pros are portrayed in entertainment media, so Joe invited me to join in the session at which he's unveiling the DVDs. 

The workshop is called "The Image of the Public Relations Practitioner in Popular Culture: What Is the Predominant Image and How Do We Repair It?" In the first half we'll see parts of the series and then Emily Kinsky, Carol Ames and I will do short presentations; mine is on "Mysterious Public Relations," based on my analysis of portrayals of PR people in mystery novels (as drawn from the IJPC database) -- a work in progress that I'm having fun with this summer. In the second half a group of distinguished panelists will talk about improving PR's image. 

I really can't wait to see the TV and movie clips. There's more to PR on the big and small screens than Samantha.

The Week's Best, 1 August 2011

• Talking About My Generation--PR and Pretty Young Things, Heather Yaxley
• 9 Rules of Caution for Twitter Communications, Diane Schwartz
• PR and the Murdoch Affair (podcast), Inside PR
• Live and Learn--Social Media Style, Kristina Summers
• Content Is Not King, Kevin Dugan
• The Future of Business Is the "Mesh," Lisa Gansky (video), via @chuckhehmann
• 5 Ways to Earn Blogging Cred Without a Blog of Your Own, Heidi Cohen (via @ThePRCoach)
• What to Do at the End of Your Internship, Jeremy Porter