Public Relations Trends: Understanding the Profession and Practice

Hello and welcome again. Here's my new work for coursera.org MOOC. I want to share it with you

1. Please look up media references to Public Relations in the country where you are currently residing. What is the term used to refer to Public Relations in the media? (5 points)

As I live and study in Russia, there are a lot of media trying to depict the profession of PR practitioner. But in our country term PR is used to refer to bad-quality promotion and mostly has a negative perception. As opposed to it, mass media depict PR as vital for big companies and even for government (as a part of social politics). But at the same russian media says that traditional PR has become outdated. For example, http://www.kommersant.ru/ says the PR has become a spam-machine because of the amount of press releases reaching for the editor’s email. And some of this PR practitioners are annoying at their follow-up after sending a press-release. Also kommersant.ru claims that PR has changed dramatically since it was established: instead of making text press releases you should monitor the agenda and integrate press-releases (filled-up with images and videos) in accordance with the daily agenda.

2. How do the media describe the profession of Public Relations? (15 points)

2 years ago the famous russian internet media “the Village” (http://www.the-village.ru/) has published a material in order to describe daily life of PR Practitioner. “the Village”  claims that the profession of Public Relations “consist” of infinite flow of information PR practitioner trying to cope with. PR practitioner should be communicative, confident about press-releases he suggesting for publishing and persistent with media neglecting almost 90% of suggested press-releases (as refer to statistics). In addition, “the Village” reports that because of dependency of PR practitioners on journalists of mass-media there’re some situations when these journalists force PR practitioners to make them gifts in order to visit the event or publish a particular release.

3. How do the media describe Public Relations jobs? (10 points)

We can see that PR practitioners have an average salary. USnews.com says writes that median pay per year is slightly less than $55 000.

Gerard Corbett, a chair of the Public Relations Society of America added that PR is booming now:

“Social media outreach has become an integral part of a PR specialist’s job in recent years. With the onset of social infrastructure such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest, combined with the versatility of Web tools, the jobs of public relations specialists are growing at a fast clip”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects public relations specialists employment will grow 12 percent between 2012 and 2022. During that time period, an additional 27,400 jobs will need to be filled.

At the same time Business2community asks if PR is doomed by a shortage of journalists: there are roughly 5.7 PR professionals for every one journalist. But the answer is “No”: PR will only be doomed by our failure to adapt to the ever-changing media landscape, now and in the months and years to come»

4. How do the media depictions of Public Relations resonate with and/or depart from the definition of Public Relations we covered in the lecture videos? Please explain briefly with at least three similarities and/or differences. (30 points)

In MOOC Mohan Dutta said that PR is deliberate and data-driven. But statistics says that there’s almost 90% of press releases sent by companies are not published by mass-media. So, only 1 in 10 of press releases are relevant to media and agenda. This shows that PR is just under preparation to become data-driven.

Also, Mohan Dutta claims that PR practitioner is a mediator between publics and organization. Nevertheless, most of media is controlled by a third party. Therefore, the real mediator is journalist or editor-in-chief.

In addition, Mohan Dutta declared that successful PR practitioner should be conversant with data. I fully agree with him. There was a research that PR activities are successful only when relevant. To be relevant you need to work with data.

5. Based on your assessment of the media portrayals of Public Relations jobs and the Public Relations profession, what are the challenges facing the profession of Public Relations in the context of the country you are referring to?

            The main challenges in US are:

1)    Because of the disproportion (5.7 PR practitioner for only one journalist), PR practitioner should be flexible and quickly adapt to fast-changing PR industry. Those who won’t adapt will lose their job.

2)    Junior PR practitioner is not well-paid job. You need to be prepared to earn a few during the first year.

3)    The expectation of growth of PR jobs in not so good (only 6%). There many jobs booming now

4)    As a PR practitioner, you need to work even 24/7 to be on agenda. Not everyone ready for this. Actually many people will switch to another profession in order to manage better work conditions.

6. What steps would you suggest for overcoming these challenges to the profession?

             I think that PR industry is self-regulated. It means that those practitioners who cannot adapt will lose their job. Those companies struggled to adapt will lose their publics and will leave the market. However, newcomers that will be more flexible and innovative will replace such companies. This rule works for PR practitioners as well. PR in evolving, its effectiveness is growing. The only thing that PR practitioners need is to stay on agenda and learn more about future trends to be qualified enough.