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| Issue No. 200503
| March 2005
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The PIOnet Newsletter is sponsored by Newswise and Dick Jones Communications
Feature Editor: Dick Jones Editor/Publisher: Roger Johnson
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PIOnet Newsletter is produced monthly to support media relations' vital role in integrated marketing for your institution. This role is not always adequately recognized, understood, or acknowledged. Our goal is to give you data, arguments, evidence, and ideas to enhance the understanding of and appreciation for media relations at your institution.
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View full list of jobs in higher education.
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The Partners in This Shotgun Marriage Are More Alike Than They Think
by Dick Jones
Dick Jones Communications
At one time, nearly all private college media relations departments reported to the development office. That was the case with quite a few public institutions as well.
Over time, the bond -- some might call it a shotgun marriage -- has weakened between media relations and development. Today there is no dominant organizational home for media relations in higher education. Yet the original model is far from extinct.
Often uneasy allies, media relations and development professionals have never really understood the similarities in their work processes. Since development has often held dominion over public relations (PR), this ignorance has most often worked to the detriment of media relations.
Effective development professionals plan their work and work their plan. They identify the organization's needs and the prospective benefactors whose aims and needs fit with those of the college, university, or foundation. They make personal contacts with these prospects and build relationships with them. When they finally ask for support, they make sure they have a solid case to present.
In media relations we do, or should do, the same things.
We identify the organizational messages that need to be communicated as well as the media targets that are potential receptors for those messages. We search for areas of mutual interest between what we want to communicate and what they want to report. If there is no common ground, there will be no story.
The best media relations practitioners make personal contacts with media "prospects" and strive to build relationships with journalists that are based on mutual trust. In some cases this involves making ourselves useful to journalists even when the payoff to our organization is small. Of course, this occurs in development as well. What fund-raiser has never done a favor for a prospect in order to maintain or build a relationship?
Finally, when a PR person asks the media for a story, he or she puts together a sufficiently strong "case" for that story -- one that answers all of the questions that a reasonable journalist could be expected to ask.
I spoke on this topic to a roomful of development executives recently. Because a fair number of these executives had dominion over PR in their organizations, I pointed out that they might bridle if their supervisor gave them only a small window of time to produce a big gift. Yet I often sense a misconception among the senior leaders of institutions about the lead time required to successfully pitch a valuable news feature or opinion article.
And rare is the occasion when a development office will send out a blanket impersonal request for support to a large number of companies or philanthropic institutions. Yet I often see organizations whose approach to media relations is to just "get out a press release on this." The results usually are disappointing.
I tried to impress upon the development professionals the similarities in processes between effective media relations and development. I saw at least a few heads nod in agreement.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Questions About Public Relations on the Web Addressed
by Zoltan Bedy
State University of New York at Oswego
There is little disagreement about the significance and benefit of the Internet in the practice of public relations (PR). But practitioners cannot -- or, should not -- jump into the World Wide Web simply for the sake of its popularity. Doing so might create problems, rather than solve them.
In "Public relations and the Web: organizational problems, gender, and institution type" (Public Relations Review, Volume 29, Issue 3, September 2003, pp. 335-49), Michael Ryan measured the attitudes of 109 practitioners -- all members of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) -- toward PR and the web by seeking answers to four research questions. His research design also sought support for two hypotheses. The research questions are as follows:
Q1. Do public relations practitioners perceive that links to facilitate two-way communication are important for their organizational websites?
Virtually all respondents agreed that "organizations must supply links for submitting comments, suggestions, or complaints." At least 84 percent said that it is important to establish links for contacting the PR department directly, "for engaging in interactive communication, and for helping organizations gather their publics' ideas." There was less enthusiasm, however, for links enabling publics to directly contact the organizations' leaders and experts.
Q2. What kind of content do public relations practitioners perceive is important for their organizations' websites?
While all respondents "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that news releases and general news about the organization; news about products, services, and outreach programs; and "good deeds" are important to post on their organizations' websites, the most important items, they said, were news releases, product and service information, and investor information.
Q3. What concerns do practitioners have about their training, the limitations of their public relations departments, and their web tasks?
The biggest departmental problem, according to the respondents, was the lack of technical and conceptual training. "In terms of specific tasks, (they) were most concerned about educating others about the attributes of a good site," and "were least concerned about a lack of Web interest within their units, producing useful content for the site and determining the site's purpose."
Q4. What major organizational obstacles, if any, do practitioners face as they work with their organizations' websites, and do they perceive encroachment vis--vis the website as a problem?
More than half the respondents "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that the "lack of monetary support, educating others about the attributes of a good Web site, and too little time to devote to the site are problems in their organizations." More than 40 percent (though less than half) agreed that "lack of technical support from the organization and getting diverse interests within the organization to agree about the site's purpose are problems."
With regard to encroachment (the assignment of non-public-relations professionals to manage a public relations function), respondents do not perceive that they are threatened by encroachment from marketing or information technology specialists. More than 90 percent said their organizations' websites support PR objectives, and nearly 80 percent said they can do their jobs better because of their websites.
The two hypotheses Ryan sought to support are as follows:
H1. The attitudes of women and men toward public relations and the web are significantly different.
Women's perceptions of web technologies are substantially the same as those of men.
H2. Practitioners in not-for-profit or science organizations have significantly different perceptions of public relations and the web than do those in profit-making or non-science organizations.
This hypothesis received no support, indicating that the perceptions of practitioners in not-for-profit or science organizations and those in for-profit and non-science organizations toward PR and the web are, essentially, the same.
"This research clearly suggests," says Ryan, "that public relations practitioners, at least those who are members of PRSA, have abandoned the debate about whether the World Wide Web is useful in public relations, whether practitioners need technical skills, and whether they are acquiring them. It is; they do; and, they are."
Perhaps the most critical question asked in this research is, "What should be put on the web?" The easy and simple answer is, "Everything," but with some discretion and limitations. As mentioned earlier, practitioners don't consider important or necessary links making it possible for publics to directly contact organizations' leaders. Also less important are "music; photos of organization leaders, employees, customers, or clients; and streaming video about the organization." Streaming video about products and services, however, is considered important.
Websites are important and valuable resources to PR departments in both disseminating and gathering information. Making sites attractive, inviting, informative, and easily navigable, and giving visitors to the sites the ability to be active participants, rather than merely passive viewers, will help organizations be more effective in maintaining relationships with their publics.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Book Review: Jackie Disaster: A Novel
by Brian Eckert
University of Richmond
Every public relations (PR) practitioner needs continuously to learn and re-learn the hard lessons of the profession. But, wading through thick, gray textbooks or skimming the trades rarely entices after a long day of drafting news releases, pitching story ideas, and lowering the expectations of campus clients.
Washington, D.C.-based crisis communication consultant Eric Dezenhall provides a shovelful of sugar to help the PR medicine go down with his novel Jackie Disaster (New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2003). Dezenhall leavens some big-picture PR lessons with laugh-out-loud humor and a fictional case history involving Atlantic City casinos, mobsters, and false product-liability claims. Any campus-based PR counselor will find the book a quick, fun read that reinforces some important truths about dealing with crisis communications.
Jackie Disaster also exposes some of the black ops of public relations that campus PR people rarely encounter. At a time when growing endowments make even colleges and universities enticing targets for frivolous lawsuits, the adage "Know thy enemy" applies to us, too.
The title is the nickname of the book's protagonist, Jackie DeSesto, owner of the aptly named crisis counseling firm Allegation Sciences. DeSesto's unusual team of investigators makes its daily bread identifying and hustling casino cheats and card counters out of a large Atlantic City casino. Occasionally, DeSesto -- retired boxer and former Atlantic City police department public information officer -- is contacted by word of mouth by New Jersey's wealthiest corporations to unmask con men and crazies who try to shake them down by making false claims through the news media. So it goes that a South Jersey businesswoman vaguely resembling Martha Stewart asks DeSesto to discredit a woman who claims publicly that a soy milk product injured her unborn baby.
The story is a frolic, a club sandwich of PR lessons, attempted mob hits, break-ins, suspicious fires, and assorted mayhem. It is laced with humor that perhaps only those of us who grew up in the Delaware Valley and worked in the news media there will find excruciatingly funny. An example: Jackie observes that "the ÔRocky' movies had once been to the Delaware Valley what the Koran is to Islam." Dezenhall's deft use of the local accent -- reminiscent of Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn -- only makes the scenes funnier. (My own friends still can't watch a Rocky rerun on TV without pointing and shouting at area landmarks -- "Oh moy Gawd! Deres'a Ben Franklin!" Translation: "Oh my God! There's the Ben Franklin Bridge!")
But it is Jackie's asides and observations that PR counselors of all types will recognize and internalize. He muses about Lesson One of crisis communication: "My job was to make bad news go away." While DeSesto's tactics will make most of us cringe, they remind us what our institutions fundamentally expect of us.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Your Entry in Newswise Contact Directory
by Roger Johnson
Newswise
We hope you are enjoying PIOnet and the PIOnet Newsletter and wanted to alert you to another free service offered by Newswise. The Newswise Contact Directory is a tool to help reporters find media relations contacts at your institution. We have found that reporters use it and use it often. For more information about their use of this resource, see http://www.newswise.com/public/reports/200405/index.php#feature.
We invite you to verify the accuracy of your institutions' listing in the Newswise Contact Directory. You may search for your institution and others at http://www.newswise.com/resources/ncd/
You may search by institution name, state, country, category of institution, or subject category. This is a free, easy-to-use, comprehensive and international resource. However, we depend on institutions to maintain the accuracy of their own data. Newswise clients have an enhanced entry including a logo, several websites (including media site, experts directory and research magazine) and multiple media contacts. In the future, we intend to enhance the contact directory by adding the ability to search by a person's name.
If you have corrections for your institutions entry, please email them to info@newswise.com.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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