I always laughed at IABC and PRSA's accreditation programs, with their secret tests purporting to prove passers proficient to practice … public relations. It was amusing, listening to "Accredited Business Communicators" gas on about how much they learned about themselves from the process of studying for the test, and so forth.
But now that PRSA's APR program seems on the wane and IABC has suspended its ABC accreditation program altogether, I suddenly see the value in having some common standard of excellence—even if the "common" part of that phrase is more important than the "excellence."
In an industry as nebulous as communication, it's crucial to have, if not common tests, at least common texts. Communicators used to subscribe to trade publications, and have some regular reading in common. I worked for some of those publications, at Ragan Communications.
When I started at Ragan—a few years before anyone heard of the Internet—we published two kinds of newsletters:
1. Trade publications for PR people—The Ragan Report, Speechwriters Newsletter, Editor's Workshop Newsletter, Corporate Annual Report Newsletter and even a desperately dreary one called Techniques for the Benefits Communicator.
These weekly or monthly eight- and 12-pagers were filled with interviews with leaders in the business, case studies about successful communication campaigns, essays by top practitioners and survey stories that asked various communicators to weigh in on important issues and problems in the business. The editors of these publications were serious about their work, and performed to the accepted standards of journalistic integrity. And if people canceled their subscriptions or complained to our publisher about our critical coverage, it was tough shit for them, because this was serious business. It had to be, to command hundreds of dollars for a subscription, as these newsletters did.
2. "Tips newsletters" full of cleverly written commonsense ideas for middle manager types. With names like Manager's Intelligence Report and The Working Communicator, these publications offered bulleted lists of tips, like: "At a cocktail party, hold your drink in your left hand so that when you meet someone your shaking-hand is warm and dry." To a one, the publisher, the marketer and the editor of every one of these publications were cynical about the purpose and contemptuous of the audience, which they saw as faceless masses of fools who believed that wisdom and competence could be achieved by merely compiling tips from sharpers like us.
Within a decade, the Internet had all but eliminated those cheap, silly tips newsletters.
And within 15 years, it eliminated the expensive, serious trade newsletters, too.
And what's left? A limp combination of both. A website that purports to offer "news and ideas for communicators," but really only offers generic tips that sound much like The Working Communicator (and worse). One day this month, here were the headlines at Ragan.com:
"The Winnie-the-Pooh guide to social media"
"6 secrets to create a powerful LinkedIn summary"
"8 foods that PR people should avoid"
"What communicators can learn from farmers"
"5 ways to make your brand sound human online"
"12 quotes about readers to inspire writers"
"The craziest excuses employees use to call in sick"
And so on. The only article approaching a case study was a thing on how a pizza chain "deftly" responded when a nude photo of a woman was uploaded to its Facebook contest for children. And what was this "deft" response? They immediately pulled the photo down and issued a corporate apology: "We were disappointed last night to see a shocking photo in our Mini Monsters contest …."
We don't need a trade publisher to tell us to do that any more than companies need to hire a professional communicator to do that.
I'm not criticizing Ragan; I'm assuming Ragan.com editors are watching traffic patterns and serving their readers what their readers like to eat.
But here's the question that tortures my afternoon naps: When everything is bullshit, who will pay the bullshitters?
On Facebook, Peter Dean asks about the PR profession, “Was it ever deep? Clever sometimes, yes.”
Yes, it was reasonably deep. Its founder, Ed Bernays, was a legitimate social scientist. Scholars like Scott Cutlip and Pat Jackson and practitioners like Chester Burger operated on a deeply thoughtful level and had built sophisticated theories about organizations and publics.
Larry Ragan devoted three decades and all of his considerable intellect to writing about our business weekly. And though he would have scoffed at the idea, his son Mark suggested we start a serious Journal of Employee Communication Management in the mid-1990s.
It carried six 3,000-word articles per issue, cost $199/year and went from zero to 1,200 subscribers in its first year of publication.
Meanwhile, around that time, chat groups on CompuServe contained long, intense, raging debates on subjects like the influence of communication technology, the true and proper mission of of employee communication, the social utility of public relations, etc.
During any of that time, was the AVERAGE practitioner heavily concerned with such theoretical issues? No. But the average pro knew that SOMEONE was, and knew where to go to get a short or long gaze at a generally agreed-upon bigger picture.
Now, where will the average pro go for a little intellectual sustenance or philosophical back-up?
Mark Ragan weighs in via email:
The information you associated with The Ragan Report of yore is now covered in our conferences, live video webcasts, and beginning in January, a new subscription-based training site.
However, there is still value in the short stories that we publish. While they are not always the deeply reported pieces of the past, most of them are quick, scannable how-to stories that really do help people keep up with the industry, new developments in social media and technology.
At our Microsoft conference a few weeks back, we had a delegation of India-based communicators who pumped my hand as if I were the biggest star in their firmament. One guy told me that Ragan helped him keep abreast of everything for four years after a layoff.
We now have, without question, the most influential web news sites in the industry, and that’s worldwide. Nearly 800,000 readers each month, with 40 percent of that traffic originating in Canada, the UK, Australia, India, Singapore, and the Eurozone. Our sites even exceed the traffic of locally produced competitive news operations.
So while I agree that, “10 Words that Don’t Mean What You Think They mean,” which begins with a hilarious clip from The Princess Bride, will be held in some contempt by the boomer generation of journalists, it has the opposite effect for most everyone else.
Make no mistake: our sites are not only useful to our customers, they are beloved.
Strange, isn’t it.
Yes, David. That’s pretty much it.
And yes, Peter, that’s pretty much it, too I remember Compuserve, and I’m still in touch with people I “met” in the PRForum.
And no, Mark. It really is hard to find very much value in your stuff, although I try often and read much of it. You sure about your numbers, because most web sites lie / mislead and double, triple… count. But you are not alone. There are Twitter forums and Linkedin forums for communicators (whatever that means)usually equally shallow. And the photography forum I follow isn’t very good, either