PR knowledge? Princeton Review suggests it’s unnecessary
August 28, 2007 by Gary Schlee
I’m just back from several months away — from the campus and from this space — only to find that my role in training new PR practitioners may be unnecessary. No, it’s not an edict from my dean; it’s an assessment on the career pages of The Princeton Review, a commercial website out of New York. The site maintains that “Though some colleges offer a degree in public relations, most industry professionals agree it’s unnecessary. Since public relations requires familiarity with a wide variety of topics, a broad education is the best preparation. Any major that teaches you how to read and write intelligently will lay good foundation for a career in public relations.”
Now, the claim, as outrageous as it is, can’t be easily dismissed. American students put the same stock in the Princeton Review rankings and generalizations that Canadian students put into the annual Maclean’s poll.
Jack O’Dwyer has flagged the passage in his online newsletter and you can also glean more thoughts about it from Toni Muzi Falconi on the always-meaty PR Conversations blog (UPDATE: the discussion was accidently deleted, but partly recaptured in a newer posting.)
Suggesting that most practitioners see knowledge of and training in public relations as unnecessary may help to explain why the same overview defines the PR specialist as an “image shaper” who in a typical day may have to “put a warm n’ fuzzy spin on the company’s latest oil spill.” As people keep entering PR without knowledge of what PR should be — and they do — we run the risk of perpetuating the stereotypes.
While it is certainly possible for practitioners to launch their careers without formal PR training, it’s unnerving to think what the field would be like if everyone came in as a blank slate. Learning on the job is fine, but tempering that with some already-acquired savvy about effective communication is even better.
In my experience, most practitioners do not say an education in PR is unnecessary. They do continue to say: new practitioners these days can’t write. It’s a mantra that hasn’t changed much over the decades. And although it’s always challenging to turn wannabe writers into good writers, it happens regularly in colleges and universities. Could our batting average be better? Sure. But the average is significantly higher than it would be if all new practitioners were coming from the broad general education farm team.
I isolate writing from the PR body of knoweldge because of a quote by an anonymous practitioner on the Princeton Review site. “If you can write a thesis on Dante, you should be able to write a press release.” That certainly goes a long way towards explaining the cumbrous shape of so many news releases I see.
9 Responses to “PR knowledge? Princeton Review suggests it’s unnecessary”
I think bad writing in the case of this article could be defined as saying something like “most industry professionals agree it’s unnecessary” without offering any sort of citation.
Even if 51% of industry professionals did say this, I think a certain amount of bias should be taken into consideration, given that many of these people could be years apart from their last stint in formal education. People – and I offer no citation for this, either – have a tendency to take sole credit for their own merits, particularly as time goes on and experience outweighs training.
As for people being unable to write in general, however, the blame for that rests upon the unwillingness of educational institutions to fail people who cannot. There is something unfortunate about the fact that a course in public relations can be, for many people, a last minute swerve against a poor foundation. Maybe it really wouldn’t be necessary if there were consequences beforehand? There really aren’t – a piece of writing that would be completely unacceptable in the professional world would probably get a ‘C’ in your typical Canadian university.
I offer no citation, but do not need to: I have seen it.
This occurs because many universities don’t care about the fates of their undergraduates, and the task of the public schools before them are only to get people into said universities, many of whom are probably not ideally suited to it anyways. Why more people don’t want to make more in an hour than I make in a day by being electricians or plumbers, I will never understand. Young people should be given field trips to go see the credit card bills of your average young professional, then go see some 22 year-old tool and die guy who bought a house.
In cash.
That should leave us with just the people who really want to be here.
I agree that the content of the “Day in the Life” of a PR person in the Princeton Review is disturbing for the reasons you state, Gary. I’m equally disturbed at how narrowly the writer characterizes PR as involving generating media attention. Little or no mention of community relations, corporate philanthropy, employee communciations, issues management, etc. The writer seems quite out-of-touch with modern day PR. Unfortunately, keen students and readers of the Review won’t know that.
[...] my friend Gary Schlee took issue with the Princeton Review’s career profile of PR. IÂ can understand Gary’s [...]
[...] A Class Act » PR knowledge? Princeton Review suggests it’s unnecessary From Gary Schlee (tags: PR) [...]
Gary,
As you pointed out numerous times during our time together, there is a huge difference between a press release and writing an essay.
The techniques used are almost diametrically opposed – the former being focused on succinctness, the latter on exposition and theory.
So although a formalized education process may not be required, some training is necessary to effectively work in PR.
Employers could theoretically hire people without a background for a year and do on-site training. Or they can pick up someone who has gone through a program and demonstrated they have learned the essential skill sets.
The choice seems obvious to me.
[...] and seasoned professionals who have commented in this, o d’wyers and other blogs such as this, and this, and others…which over the last few days have covered the [...]
[...] chimes in with an audio comment. He mentions these links in his commentary: The Princeton Review, Gary’s A Class Act blog, PR Conversations, and the IABC Advocacy [...]
As a communication professor who teaches PR, I am troubled by such a narrow definition of public relations practice (i.e. PR = news release writing). What about all the other aspects that PR work involves? What about establishing and maintaining relationships with key publics? What about social media and engaging publics in new ways?
I think the Princeton Review comment is symptomatic of a wider problem facing the field though: the idea that communication is just a skill and that there is no theory behind it. Seems like the public relations discipline and the field of communication studies are in need of a little bit of PR themselves to get word out about what we REALLY do.
Nice to hear from you, Corinne. You’re right. Skills & theory; you can’t have one without the other. Portraying that on the public stage may be challenging, but an effort worth making.