One of my former clients is an interior designer in Newport Beach. She has a really unique style among other designers in Newport because she has an eclectic, modern perspective. In an area that is filled with overly nostalgic Mediterranean and Spanish inspired homes, my client wanted to reflect the best of former eras but also push it forward and reflect contemporary life. I remember her saying in a meeting once, “We are people living in a modern world. We need to be in homes that reflect our modern lives.” I couldn’t say it better myself.
The same is true if you ever flip open a PR textbook (especially writing ones). I have to wonder, “Have these people done public relations in a modern office?” Now, I have not read all PR textbooks and I have not had every PR experience, but a lot of what I have seen that is out there is bad, bad, bad. When choosing a textbook for my Writing for Public Relations class, I am left with picking the lesser of the “evils.” Our current book, for example, is one that I felt did the best job of explaining the information, didn’t have multiple unnecessary chapters and was reasonably priced (don’t even get me started on how expensive these books are and I will have to sift through useless chapters to find the few sections of gold). It’s most recent publication is 2007. In the digital communication section it talks about pagers. PAGERS. While, I would have been surprised if had talked about Facebook and Twitter, which businesses were still trying to figure out at the time (though the book didn’t even mention them), to talk about a technology that was no longer relevant to business professionals after 2002 (and that's even a little generous) is just shameful and lazy.
I was told that maybe I should focus on finding the latest and greatest that the Internet has to offer. And that’s where it becomes really clear—we in PR assume that most people understand PR (which we really should not do). So, a lot of what is out in the PR blogosphere is tips and trends. Things that are useful to PR professionals who have mastered the art and are looking to keep their skills sharp or others who are looking to make sense of PR for their business.
There’s also few out there who really see (or at least express) writing as fundamental to success in PR. That most everything in this industry begins with the written word is something we either forget or want to cover up because it’s not as sexy. It’s also really hard to teach people how to write. It’s really easy to give them tips on strategy and what not. So, I’m not surprised that books and the Internet fall short when providing knowledge I can use to show my students how valuable writing is AND how they can do it.
And so, here I am, looking to sort out my ideas for my PR classes online (namely my writing one). Trying to make sure I don’t miss anything. Looking for what is out there that is useful and usable. Hoping that maybe I can also help others along the way.
