PRSA’s “he said/she said” controversy has me looking for answers

Color me troubled over a conflicting story emerging from the Public Relations Society of America in this holiday season. I’m not ready to take sides in this battle, but I’m also not sure whom to believe.

It started with this story from Joe Ciarallo at PRNewser, a story announcing PRSA’s decision to shut down its Multicultural Communications Section (MCS) and make it part of the society’s standing Diversity Committee.

PRSA’s side of the story: MCS’s low membership (73) is well below the minimum 200 set forth two years ago in a business model for professionals sections. From the statement in PRNewser: “Those sections that fail to meet the stated criteria are subject to being sunset.”*

I read it this way: It was a business decision. MCS didn’t make numbers.

Co-chair of the MCS Executive Committee, Kerri Allen, says the decision to shut down MCS came as a surprise. From her statement published in PRNewser:

The section executive committee leaders received only written communications on December 17 from the PRSA staff that effective January 1, the Section would be dismantled. No prior discussion had taken place, including at the organization’s International Conference in October.

When I asked Arthur Yann, VP of PR for the society, to clarify, he told me (via email) that discussions had been ongoing for 2 years. It was a business decision; all parties knew it was coming.

It is worth noting that Ms. Allen is a relative newcomer to the leadership post. In an email to me, she said she joined the committee in January, 2009, and stepped in as co-chair only this past July. I’m not sure that has any bearing on the issue.

During a Twitter discussion on Dec. 23, I asked PRSA Membership VP Melissa Yahre for her take:

@myahre But were section leaders invited to discussions before the “sunset” decision? Section chairs are expressing surprise. #prsa

Her response: @BillSledzik we consulted them.

About 15 minutes later, Yahre added: @BillSledzik – also invited leaders to participate in a next steps call to ensure we address all of the needs. All, but one declined.

Kerri Allen’s co-chair in MCS, Dora Tovar, also chimed into the Twitter conversation. Scroll down the @tovarpr page and you’ll see a perspective similar to Allen’s.

I wish I knew what to make of this mess. And I really wish I could ignore it. But that’s not how membership organizations work. Discussions should be open an candid, especially when the parties disagree so strongly about both facts and outcomes of a case.

So there you have it.

On the one hand, PRSA’s elected leadership has a right hold its sub-units financially accountable, and it has done that after what it claims was 2 years of discussions.

On the other hand, the two leaders of MSC hold a different perspective on events, and it’s created plenty of ill will. Can we ignore the message this decision may send to the multicultural audiences?

To be fair, PRSA has done a solid job with diversity initiatives over the years. In my 27 years of membership, I’ve seen women, gays and people of color ascend to the top office of the society, and I’ve seen plenty of PRSA leaders encourage them. While I don’t believe minorities are represented on the current board of directors, that doesn’t mean a conspiracy to disenfranchise them is afoot. PRSA’s membership wouldn’t stand for it.

Maybe there’s a lesson in this case for PRSA and other membership organizations like it. But you’ll have to tell me what that lesson is. As I said in the headline, I’m still looking for answers.

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* I was probably the last person on earth to learn that “sunset” had been declared a verb. I gotta get out more! 

Darth Blogger’s Holiday Writing Rant

Confession: Christmas isn’t my favorite holiday.

Before you “scrooge” me, consider that Christmas follows one of my two busiest times of the year: finals week and finals week. You bake cookies and trim trees; I grade papers. When I could be choosing meaningful gifts for the people I love, I’m coaching the next generation of PR pros, and occasionally evicting a few from the business. It’s a dirty job, but…

Anyway, I’ve been working up a holiday rant on my favorite subject: writing. Just finished reviewing 26 final projects and 44 final papers. Most students performed to expectation. But the writing? It’s just not there.

But no matter how loudly I preach the importance of quality writing, students on deadline revert to bad habits. Hope you enjoy this list of writing gaffes that drove me friggin’ nuts this holiday season.

Using “due to” when you mean “because.” Due to the fact that I care about precise writing, I allow students to use the phrase only as a time reference: “Our plane is due to arrive at 10 a.m.” Careful writers don’t use “due to” as a way to indicate cause. It’s inefficient: “The client’s sales are declining due to the recession.” Instead: “The recession caused a sales decline.”

Various and many adjectives really piss me off. Among the first things you learn in journalism school (after the 5Ws) is to use of modifiers sparingly — especially modifiers that add NO specific meaning or degree. Tops on the list of bad modifiers: very, many, various and extremely. They fill space and add no value.

For the GenY writers out there, this rule also applies to “amazing” and “awesome.” To steal a verb from the 2.0 vernacular: Fail!

Pronoun-antecedent agreement. What’s so hard about matching singular nouns with singular pronouns? Hmmmm? In the United States, organization names such as Kent State University or Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. require the pronoun “it.” The word “they” isn’t a gender-neutral singular pronoun unless you move to the UK. For what it’s worth, I can name a dozen prominent PR bloggers who make this error routinely. I suspect they know better. They just don’t care.

Lifeless verbs strangle sentences. And I find them a lot in student PR plans: “Have the client do two special events,” or “Have employees talk about the company’s products in their social media activities.” Some students believe clients “should be able to get” publicity for their community relations efforts. Yuck!

Lesson No. 1 in “Writing 101″ tells us verbs are the engines of sentences. The best verbs describe action and drive sentences forward. “Have” and “be able to” don’t have motors. And while “get” is technically an action verb, why not be specific?

The client “should stage two special events to coincide with industry trade shows.” The client should “encourage employees to discuss company products in social media.” And the client should “pitch stories to local media.”

It’s not a “need,” it’s a recommendation. The most overused and hackneyed phrase of Finals Week 2009 is “needs to.” The client “needs to” do research on employee attitudes. The client “needs to” pay closer attention to social-media conversations. The client “needs to” be more aggressive about its publicity effort.

Ugh! My students need to expand their vocabularies and need to be more aggressive in rewriting and editing.

What students call a need is, in fact, a recommendation. The client “should undertake a survey to gauge employee attitudes.” The client should “monitor and measure” online conversations. The client should “initiate” an aggressive publicity campaign.

Never start a sentence with “there is,” or its cousins “there was” or “there has been.” These phrases lead to passive constructions, forcing the subject out of its rightful place at the head of the sentence. At times, the construction can be effective, as in this line from Benjamin Disraeli: There is no education like adversity.

Punctuation? Don’t get me started. The worst offenses this semester:

• Failure to use commas to offset nonrestrictive phrases.
• Placing quotation marks inside periods or commas.
• Using dashes and hyphens interchangeably.
• Ignoring the hyphen in compound modifiers.

You’ll not get a punctuation rant out of me today. If the subject intrigues you, download: Perfecting Your Punctuation from my SlideShare site. More than 2,000 already have, and damn it, not one has thanked me for it. Not one. So much for gratitude this holiday season, eh? And you call me Scrooge!

Until then, I leave you with this priceless gift one more time: Michael O’Donoghue’s classic essay, “How to Write Good.” It’s a lot funnier after an “attitude adjustment.” You should have plenty of time for that over the holiday!

Wishing you all happy holidays from my tree stand in the snowy woods of Northeast Ohio!

When it comes to manufacturing buzz, no one does it better than PETA

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) ranks among the most skilled media manipulators anywhere. PETA’s publicity machine makes the best Hollywood flacks look like rank amateurs.

What makes PETA so good at creating headlines? First, they pay attention to current events, then they make stuff up. That “stuff” often involves gorgeous naked women, and that always gets my attention.

Actress Charlotte Ross earned plenty of exposure for her appearance in this PETA ad.

I’m not saying PETA lies or fabricates. The group simply understands how to re-frame a story and give it a creative spin. Most times, PETA’s publicity supports organizational objectives and fuels the fundraising machine, too.

Time to put life in the crosshairs

I’m totally off topic today, but it’s that time of year.

It’s almost the end of fall semester, and that means I’ll be intensely busy for the next 3-4 weeks grading projects and presentations. But it’s not all about the students.

The semester’s end overlaps the white-tailed deer hunting seasons in New York and Pennsylvania — my call of the wild. It means I no longer have weekends for grading papers or preparing lessons. I must head to the woods in search of God’s creatures.

Reflecting on an Excellent Adventure @ PRSA09

From Wikipedia Commons

I spent just 72 hours at the PRSA conference in San Diego last week, and I tried hard to be a good blogger. It didn’t work.

My most popular post, the one about Mike McDougall’s 24-second news cycle, drew just 5 human comments and 111 views. Key message in that post was about ethics in media relations, but I buried the lead. You sometimes make those mistakes on deadline.

Strong words from PRSA veteran over leadership restrictions

Art Stevens

Longtime PRSA leader Art Stevens doesn’t mince words in a scathing editorial posted today at Bulldog Reporter. It is a must-read for all PRSA members. (Special thanks to Judy Gombita for the quick link.)

Stevens’ wrath is directed at the 2009 PRSA Assembly, which last week rejected a bylaw change that would have opened the ranks of PRSA leadership to many more of its members.

A Tale of Two Assemblies at PRSA

Update 11/16/09: Longtime PRSA national leader, Art Stevens writes a strongly worded editorial in Bulldog Reporter this week regarding APRs and national leadership. I agree with Art on this one. It goes well beyond “inside baseball.” A must read for all PRSA members.

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To most of us, the workings of the PRSA National Assembly is “inside baseball.” That is, unless you’re part of the governing body, you tend not to know or care what’s going on. I have little interest in PRSA politics, but I’m struck by what I’m calling “A Tale of Two Assemblies,” one presented by PRSA, the other by newsletter editor Jack O’Dwyer.

Media relations and the 24-second news cycle

Made it to the PRSA conference hall in time to catch a session on Sunday afternoon. Since I’m back to teaching the Media Relations class at Kent State, I decided to take in Mike McDougall’s session called “Working at the Speed of ‘New’: Secrets for Conquering and Surviving the 24-second News Cycle.”

I’m a sucker for titles with colons in them. Must be the academic in me.

Mike, VP of corporate communications and public affairs at Bausch & Lomb, offered some great advice for media relations practitioners, but the media landscape he described worries me – a lot.

PRSA Day One

I landed in San Diego about 11 a.m. yesterday, but didn’t have the time or the access to alert my Twitter friends or my ToughSledding readers. I’m sure you all survived my absence

Everyone is raving about this beautiful city on the bay and its perpetual 72-degree weather. Me? I don’t get it. On Saturday, back in Ohio, we celebrated the end of fall by raking our leaves, then taking a barefoot kayak tour around Sandy Lake and its feeder canal. But here’s the big difference: In San Diego, $250K doesn’t by your squat. In Northeast Ohio, it gets you 2,600 square feet on a private lake.

Okay, I know I won’t be paddling the kayak come January. But I will be skiing the trail around Sandy and celebrating the change of seasons. Like I said, I don’t get California. Let it snow.

A citizen journalist heads for the Coast

I touch down in San Diego Sunday morning for my first PRSA national conference in 8 years. This time, I’m attending not as a PR professional or educator, but as a PR blogger — a media person in search of a story. (Stop your snickering!)

Photo from Creative Commons.

What does this mean? I have no idea. But as a “credentialed journalist” in a tough economic year, I’m not expecting a press room stocked with champagne and caviar. OK, it would be nice. But I’m told PRSA has eliminated the media room altogether, an anachronism from an analog age.

(Update 11/5/09: PRSA email says there is a “media center” at the conference. I stand corrected, but I still don’t need it. Opps! See next update. I guess I DO need it!)