There is an incredible amount of stress. I go from one ailment to another. I think everyone in PR wonders why they do it. A lot of people burn out and give it up. My predecessor here had terrible health problems and went off and sold real estate or something. It happens to people in the business constantly. There are internal politics in any institution as well as in the media. The politics of any situation create stress. The difficulty of gathering the news is stressful enough. But it's reaching people… reaching people is tough and getting tougher by the year, even tougher by the day as the demands on the media become greater.
The biggest thing I dislike about the agency business is the internal politics.
What advice would you give someone in school or just starting a career in public relations?
I would suggest that they get as much experience as they can, even if they have to volunteer. That's unfortunate, and I feel that it is very unjust. People are just exploiting young people in journalism to the lilt today. A television station is employing my niece for the summer find paying her absolutely nothing but the experience she's going to get it that station and the fact that it will be on her resume. She's a journalism major and the experience is just going to be invaluable, but it's awful hat they're getting away with that. The papers are getting away with it, find arts organizations are doing it too. Every company in the country is crabbing those interns, and that's awful. The schools are aiding and abetting it too. But that is the way the world is, and it is really important or people to have that experience on their resume.
I don't think public relations can be taught as a set of courses. I think the proper training is a diversified liberal arts background to learn a little about a lot of fields. Public relations is applying common sense; it's taking the policies and programs of your institution and translating them to the public. It's not something that you need to break down into courses. What you need, and what I look for, is someone who can handle a whole slew of stories and events that require being conversant in at least more than one area. I think the term public relations is one that people sometimes try to equate with an aura of mystery. Public relations is human relations at the institutional level. It's not a science. It's something that should just come right away. Some people have a natural gift for it. They're interested in the public, and they're natural communicators.
I can think of just horrible examples of how not to do it. There was a hotel that circulated an internal memo about members of a minority group attending a jazz festival. It seems they were going to put out old towels and not put the more expensive finishing touches in the rooms. That memo leaked to the press, and the hotel called in three public relations consultants on how to handle the problems. They mediated for days and finally decided to come out and publicly apologize. It just struck me as staggeringly poor public relations. I couldn't understand why they didn't have somebody on the street corner an hour after the memo leaked out with microphones saying that this was a terrible error, that the person who wrote this memo has been reprimanded, and that they were extremely apologetic for what happened. But, they had to call in consultants and hem and haw for days before they did what seemed to be the most obvious thing to do!
The first thing that someone interested in public relations has to recognize is that most large PR firms or agencies will not come to the college career planning and placement office. The candidates have to actively seek employment with the agencies. Second, I advise prospective PR candidates to assemble a portfolio of writing samples. Third, I suggest that candidates think through a presentation to an agency with respect to its clients. Finally, I strongly advise a candidate to get some public relations or media experience before graduation with, for instance, college or commercial newspapers, radio or TV stations, political candidates, civic or cultural groups.
You have to like people and you have to have excellent writing skills. The following applies basically to newspapers, but I once had e summer job with a major daily, and I talked with the managing editor before I finished college, and he offered me a job. I said, "Wow, don't you want journalism major?" He said, "No. I don't want journalism major, I don't like journalism majors. I would much rather have people with a broad liberal arts education who know the right questions to ask because they are familiar with a lot of fields, than people who are going to come in here and tell me how to run my newspaper." That was what the journalism students were intending to do. He felt that in interviewing someone, in dealing with people, it was much more important to know something about a whole lot of different fields than to have a strong technical degree in journalism. I think that really applies to public relations as well, because you are dealing with a lot of people. If you are going to go into general public relations counseling, you really need a broad spectrum of knowledge about different fields, so that you can represent a client well.
