NPR Listeners: "A Fine Whine" SHARE

Snooty or smart? You decide.  Great piece by Farhad Manjoo from Slate.  I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this - great writing and I love the sentiment too (especially his definition of older folks as those who listen to The News Hour and go to bed by 9:30...love it!).


NPR Letters:  The Tedious, Annoying Complaints of Public Radio Listeners

What exactly is PR?

At a recent PRSA luncheon, I sat next to a young woman who worked for one of our City’s major cultural institutions.  I was instantly envious.  I work in municipal government, and I love my job, but I have always wanted to work for an arts or cultural organization and have, in fact, sent these places resumes on several occasions.  Lucky her, I thought.  Then I asked what she did, and she said “media relations.”

As my envy receded quicker than flowing molten lava, I couldn’t help but exclaim, out loud, ah, well, that is my least favorite thing.  The young woman, not being privy to my thoughts about her place of employment and so not understanding why the quick about-face, asked me to clarify, and I said “Media relations is my least favorite part of the job.”  She then replied “But what else is there?  That’s what PR is.”

I didn’t want to get into an argument so I made some quick off-handed remark about, oh, no, there’s a lot more to it (thinking but not saying “it’s called public relations for a reason”), but ever since that luncheon, I have wondered why she thought that was all there was to public relations and whether or not others feel the same way.

It probably doesn’t help that I come to public relations via writing and journalism.  I have a journalist’s natural proclivity to tell stories. I build relationships with these stories.  And judging by the growth of blogs over the last decade, I am not alone.  In fact, while I would not necessarily relegate media relations to the dungeon, I think public relations is much bigger than just cultivating relationships with journalists. We use so many delivery mechanisms today to tell our own stories and get our messages out that our jobs have expanded way beyond the boundaries of traditional media.  It is still important to get stories into the daily newspaper and industry press and to get our visual stories told on television, but today that is not enough.

When I tell a story in my current job, I write it in a Word document first.  Then I sometimes take photos to accompany it, because pictures really do tell a story.  If I take a lot of pictures, they may go up on Flickr.  I will probably post the story and a photo (or link to Flickr) on our Website, with an accompanying tweet (with a link back to our Website).  Then I may write a shorter version and paste it into our e-newsletter, with another link back to the Website.  I sometimes will then write a third version and save it for our printed newsletter, published once a month in the weekly community newspaper (we pay for a full page).  Then, and only then, do I consider whether or not to write a press release for the local daily paper or TV stations. I often never get to this last stage.

Media relations, per se, is somewhat painful for me.  Partly it’s because I hate selling, and if you’re pitching, you’re selling.  Partly it’s because I hate being so dependent on the whims of journalists, whose only interests on some days appears to be whether or not they can get a byline or air time. Long gone are the glory days of Woodward and Bernstein, and you can't even really fault the journalists.  They work in a hugely competitive industry that is evolving from the inside out on a minute-to-minute basis. 

Of course, none of this comes even close to touching on how a lot of PR these days is marketing and branding.  There are days when I'm not even sure which camp I'm really in, but that is a blog topic for another day.

So what is Public Relations?  I'm sure somebody has written a definition somewhere, but I'd like to make the case that it's a whole lot of stuff:  It's writing, teaching, learning, talking, listening, reaching out, taking in.  It's story telling.  It's relationship-building. 

I invite your comments and thoughts on this topic, the very first topic of this new PR and Media (as in "all media," including TV, films, and music) blog.  I have invited other writers to guest-blog here, and I guarantee the topics will not be limited to "How to Write a Press Release."  So come on back when you have the time.