2009: A year of thin ice

I awoke this morning to the honking of Canada geese outside my window. The seaweed, a primary food source for these birds, was obscured by the overnight freeze. There’ll be no easy meal for these critters, maybe not until spring.

Re-engineering media relations: Help me out, OK?

Today I’m thinking about media relations — my least favorite PR task, but one our bosses expect us to perform in our sleep.

I’m thinking about MR because I’ll be teaching a course in the topic next summer, and for some years to come. It’s been 3 years since I last taught the class, and a good bit has changed — the influence of blogs most notably. The way we connect to journalists also has changed. I saw a tweet this morning claiming that 50+ NYT journalists are on Twitter. Me, too.

I need your help on this one. Because many of you do media relations day to day, you know the skills and the mindset it takes. So check out my list and leave me an idea or two on how to improve the course.

Restoring public trust: Today’s headlines have me wondering if it’s possible

I was part of this conversation on Facebook yesterday, triggered by a status update from my old friend and mentor:

John J. Bailey is wondering how we elect bad politicians? Why don’t more good people run for office?

Roy Richardson responds: Good people won’t take the abuse, personal attacks and other stuff that go with the election process in this day and age. Which is sad.

I respond: Most of us are unwilling to swim with the snakes. So the snakes just take over. Scary.

John Bailey laments: Great comments guys. Then we get what we deserve, I guess.

Yep. I guess we do.

Let’s raise the bar for PR education, and let’s raise it really, really, really, really, really, really high

I probably shouldn’t say this, but someone has to.

We’re producing too may PR graduates in the U.S.A., and a good many of them can’t find jobs in the field. It’ll only get worse as we plunge deeper into recession. So it seems like the perfect time to shrink the number of students studying public relations by raising our standards really, really high. Students will benefit and so will the profession and public relations education.