Preparing to Practice
Public Relations

 
Originally called "PRClass," this site was developed when I taught public relations at Northern Kentucky University. Now that I've retired from the university, I'm trying to reshape it into a professional development and reference site for young communicators and a resource for people who teach public relations.

-- Michael Turney, Ph.D., ABC        

Updated focus
Is media relations obvious?
Latest revision: 28 July 2008

Media relations is no longer the totality of public relations, but it remains a large and fundamental part of it. While we assume public relations can generate positive media coverage for an organization, can we spot such coverage when it occurs on someone else's behalf? The adjacent article may help you enhance your "PR Detector" for news converage.


Need background?
prbookOnline readings in public relations were written to supplement typical PR textbooks. Topics run the gamut from basic terms and concepts of public relations through the evolution of the profession to specialty fields. Click here for the complete list.


How do you ... ?
pen and paper Turney's Tips are how-to-do-it guidelines for common PR tasks including writing a news release, formatting a speech, and preparing a communication plan. Originally developed as class handouts, they're helpful desktop reminders for working professionals. Click here for the full list.


Is it ethical?
scales of justicePublic relations Codes of Ethics is an informal essay that uses the ethical standards and practices espoused by different professional communication organizations to highlight the fundamental differences between journalism and public relations ethics. Embedded links lead to the PRSA, IABC, and SPJ professional codes. Click here for the essay.


Other site users
It's very gratifying to have teachers and trainers using my Web materials for their classes. I'm especially delighted to have several international users. Here's a partial list of the institutions and organizations that have used, or are now using, materials from this site:

Can you spot successful media relations efforts?

One of the most popular and exciting aspects of public relations is "media relations," the broad process of working with the mass media to generate publicity for people, organizations, causes, or events. And, among public relations practitioners, it's almost axiomatic that effective media relations efforts will generate positive media coverage. If this is, indeed, true, how obvious are the results of these efforts? Can you readily spot news stories that were triggered by a public relations practitioner rather than being the unprompted and unsolicted reporting of the news staff?

If you haven't thought about this before, I'm hoping this article will prompt you to think about it now. And, even more than thinking about it, I hoping you'll be prompted to begin looking for evidence of media relations each day as you read, watch, and listen to the news media. There are at least two distinct benefits of this type of observation.

  1. You become more aware of just how much of the content of the major news media actually derives from public relations sources. -- Most studies report an average of about 50 percent.
  2. By paying careful attention to the stories about organizations similar to yours, you may pick up tips that will make your own efforts at getting media coverage more successful.

Admittedly, there's some guess work involved in this type of analysis, but it will probably be much easier than you expect once you get used to doing it. By carefully studying the news coverage you normally attend to any way, you should soon spot clues that suggest some of the stories were provided in their entirety as "news releases" or were otherwise pitched, planted or cultivated by a public relations person who wanted them to appear in the media.

Some clues are more obvious than others. Here are a few you can begin looking for in any news story in any medium.

Remember, these are only clues and should be thought of as such. Sometimes a story originated by the media without any public relations involvement can come out looking like those cited above. That doesn't matter. What's important is to remember that there is nothing wrong with any of these practices from a public relations standpoint. Favorable news coverage is one of the most desired goals of all public relations practitioners and their clients, and it's almost impossible to go wrong by getting positive media coverage.

On the other hand, there are hard-core, traditional journalists who might consider some of these practices "lazy" or less than ideal from a journalism perspective. They might even consider a reporter who uses them to be unethical or to have violated journalistic standards. So, to avoid offending such people and to be sure you don't cast helpful and friendly reporters in a bad light in their colleagues' eyes, it may be best to not talk about any of this in the presence of reporters, editors or other media people.

For further discussion of media relations see Working with the media and other related articles in my Online readings in public relations.

Michael Turney photoAbout Site Creator Michael Turney   |   Contact me by e-mail   |   © 2008 Michael Turney