This new column, Upfront, will be written by Senior Editor Debra Zimmerman Murphey and appear monthly on page 2. If you have an idea for a column or an issue you would like us to pursue, contact Debra at [email protected] or at 301/340-7788, Ext. 2098.
This summer, over lunch with a high-level PR agency executive, the conversation turned to the role of PR professionals as strategists. Many outside of the industry view good PR as simply well-executed spin; insiders think that view is passe gibberish.
In parsing PR, we also discussed the role that PR education plays. Are those entering the profession fresh from turning their tassels really equipped to take on strategy, much less advocacy, roles? If your account exec can't speak intelligently about the difference between Microsoft and a microwave forget positioning the PR industry as a strategist's Shangri-la. (And in our newsroom, we hear all too often from neophytes who call us and don't even know why they're calling us).
My contention is that while creative minds are crucial, students of PR better be exposed to a range of other disciplines: social sciences, statistics, political science, business management and, of course, journalism. If PR pros want to be strategists, they better be up to speed on all of the factors that go into strategizing.
Only a week after this lunch, I discovered that the University of Maryland College of Journalism was poised to abolish their PR sequence altogether. And immediately, PR students to seasoned pros put their strategy skills to the test.
At the university, a massive letter-writing campaign, buttressed by a student-created Web site put up within hours of the announcement, helped propel the debate about PR vs. journalism beyond academia and into PR agencies and corporations. PR executives expressed concern and even outrage that one of the nation's top-rated programs could be a victim of the supremacy journalism curriculum has claimed over communications.
I find this particularly ironic in a year which has provided a long list of examples of what happens when public relations fails to play an assertive role in the public discourse. Think Clinton. Think Microsoft. Think the International Monetary Fund. Let's be realistic - journalists only have so much power in influencing public opinion.
However, in part due to letters from PR pros such as you, the PR sequence - which faced being wiped entirely off the curricula blotter - has been salvaged. Courses, instead, will be moved to the Department of Communication in 1999.
To Tell a Lie
Why does PR so often take a back seat to journalism?
The prevelance of books on my shelf with titles like "The Father of Spin," "Spin Man" and "Spin Cycle" don't help your cause.
I think that many journalists believe that rarely, in the ivory towers of corporate America, are PR folks privy to what CEOs like the Herb Kellehers and Louis Gerstners of the world are going to do.
And I know there is many a writer and reporter who holdss a disdain for PR, even though we're reminded over and over that many a PR executive was once a journalist who decided to retire his AP Stylebook for the finesse of blast faxing.
Estimatesare that at least one-third of those in PR come from the ranks of the media. Nonetheless, the wide divide.
To Tell the Truth
PR professionals struggle daily to fight the spinmeister stereotype. Consider Mike McCurry who had to adopt the "don't ask, don't have to tell" approach to keep his nose clean and his ethics intact. As for McCurry, I recently spoke with Jack Bergen, head of the new Association of Public Relations Firms, to get his take on McCurry's method of media relations.
Bergen, who knows most press secretaries never face the kind of barrage that the Clinton issue produced nonetheless points to the danger of McCurry's behavior. "When you go the McCurry step, you're saying, 'I've deliberately gone out of my way not to know the truth here.' It says we are rejecting a seat at the table, which is exactly the opposite of where we want to be since we want to be on the strategic side," Bergen reminds.
But for some reason, no matter how hard PR professionals work at strategy or how stressful PR strategy becomes, the media is rarely privy to what an invaluable part you play.
I think that's where the PR industry is missing the mark when it comes to promoting an advocacy role.
I've called several PR agencies myself seeking an opportunity to come along on a pitch for a prospective client, to get the inside perspective. I've even agreed use the experience only as background and not for a story. But every principal I've spoken to has reacted as if I had accused them of recent Cuban cigar purchases!
I've met the same resistence with attempts to see media training from the PR perspective. I'm still trying to get a consultant to find a client willing to allow me to sit in on their media schooling. I'm not looking for controversy, just to better understand The Other Side. Apparently no one wants to let journalists see this side.
If I were a PR firm principal, I would want the press to have an insider's view of what's being done, and I wouldn't rest well if I couldn't find some avenues for building rapport without encroaching on client confidentiality. Heck, if nothing else, maybe I'd invite some journalists I trust to a few staff meetings.
Strategy is never going to be something conveyed in a vacuum. In fact, for strategies to work, you have to build rapport with key audiences, whether employees, government agencies or the press.
Edelman Public Relations Worldwide recently installed its International Advisory Board but missed a key opportunity for good PR by treating this journalist with a lukewarm attitude. I sought Edelman's help in interviewing several of these global figures for a story on the Y2K issue. Two weeks later, I was told that the agency saw no benefit in helping me set up the interviews since I wasn't doing their story: a straight news piece about the advisory board.
Despite their lack of help, within hours, I had landed an interview on my own with one of the board members, Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. Apparently, it was my mistake to assume that the job of a good PR firm is to facilitate story opportunities. What I was left with was the impression that if it's not self-serving, then why go there?
This is at the heart of why PR professionals are still seen as folks who sell spin. Strategists think big picture, and spinmeisters- who aren't by any stretch of the imagination altruists interested in issues - think in the moment. Edelman was thinking only in the moment. Are you?
Correction: In last week's front-page story about the PRSA conference, PRSA President-Elect Samuel Waltz was incorrectly identified as speaking via satellite from California. It was Frasier Seitel, editor of The Public Relations Strategist.