Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Are you working in an industry, or a racket?

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Nelson Algren wrote about a guy who made money up and down Chicago's Division Street by finding lost dogs and collecting rewards. Sounds pretty labor intensive until you understand that he was the one who stole the dogs in the first place.

Is that what your job seems like sometimes? Stealin' dogs and gettin' paid to find 'em?

Well, it shouldn't feel that way all the time. Especially if it's a job like PR or communication, that don't pay too good. Doin' a job like that, you ought to feel like you're doin' some good in the world.

What's the useful social purpose of PR? A couple Fridays ago, Shel Holtz, PR professor Bill Sledzik and I were kicking it all around in Sledzik's office at Kent State University.

As is my annoying habit, I was bemoaning the dearth of philosophical, moral and intellectual thinkers in the communication business these days. When I was a boy, I said, there were giants in this industry: practitioners like the late Chester Burger and Mike Emanuel, writers like Roger D'Aprix and the late Pat Jackson, who helped communicators understand the ideal and the real function of their work in a healthy society.

That's kind of important. Because without an independent sense of your purpose, all you'll ever be is a tool for the goon you're working for this week.

Shel could tell I was just beginning to get cranked up, and he smiled patiently and shifted his weight, as choir members do when being preached to.

Sledzik interrupted me by quoting Jackson on the overarching purpose of our work: "Public relations enables individuals to participate in decisions that affect their lives."

Oh. Right. Well. As long as we're all clear on that, then I guess we don't need any more philosophers.

The problem is we're not all clear on that. And as a matter of fact, the concept hasn't occurred to many of us.

So if that's not what you're doing in this world—and PR is not what I'm doing; I'm just a humble storyteller, which is an old and honorable trade, but only as moral as the storyteller's own heart—what will you tell your maker or your children when they ask what exactly you did for your fellow human beings on this earth?

Cuz I'm afraid stealing dogs and collecting rewards is going to sound a little silly.

Even the blarney business can’t keep a straight face

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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?

Public relations: Call it what you want, but it is what it is

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My Kent State PR prof pal Bill Sledzik could bring rationality and a sense of consructiveness to a gang bang.

Which is exactly what he did last week when he led a discussion on his blog about the Public Relations Society of America's cockamamie attempt to use crowsourcing to redefine the term "public relations."

The whole thing reminded me of one of the very first assignments I had when I was a cub reporter at Ragan Communications. Quiveringly, I had to call all the giants of the PR business—Denny Griswold, Harold Burson, Jack O'Dwyer, Chester Burger and even Ed Bernays himself, who was only about 143 at the time—to ask them their definitions of public relations, for a story for The Ragan Report.

They were all amazingly gracious about getting back to me—at the time I didn't realize that PR people, if nothing else, do habitually get back to reporters—and their answers were so dull that even my tape recorder fell asleep. Relationships with publics, blahblahblah, mutually satisfactory, blahblahblah, two-way symetrical, yadayadayada.

Twenty years later, I can tell you my definition of PR: PR is good, PR is bad, PR is ineffective, PR is cunning, PR is fatuous, PR is wise, PR is publicity, PR is action, PR is sinister, PR is craven, PR is a dirty window, PR is useful, PR is a noble instinct and PR is a stinking excuse. With it you're damned, without it you're doomed.

PR is what it is—whatever it is—and it is all these things every day, all day and everywhere, in agencies and in communication departments and in practitioners' hearts.

To "define" PR is to write a hopeful epitaph for your career.

Which is fine for a Sunday afternoon, but Monday morning, it's back to selling brassieres, the best way you know how.