PRSA Delegates Not Ready for the Future Yet
The PRSA National Delegate assembly voted down a non-binding resolution today asking the association’s Board to regularly consult the elected delegates on “issues of concern” by submitting them to the assembly’s electronic discussion group. The vote was 95 for, 118 against. Unfortunately for PRSA, this vote told me that the association is even more entrenched [...]
PRSA Fails to Strike APR Requirement for Board Service
The PRSA Delegate Assembly today voted resoundingly against removing the requirement that potential national board members hold an Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) in order to stand for election. The vote, which required a two-thirds majority, failed to even garner a majority, falling 104-172. The voted ended a passionate and looong debate this year for [...]
PRSA Looks to the Future
The PRSA National Delegate Assembly is coming up next month, October 17 in Washington, D.C. I’ll be there representing the Silicon Valley Chapter. The assembly is a requirement of PRSA’s bylaws, and past assemblies have been mind-numbing affairs in which delegates from around the country were asked to consider and vote on administrative minutiae regarding [...]
“Vitch” is the first new PR catchword of 2010
Why send a plain old written PR pitch when you can send a “vitch” — a video pitch? That’s right, the new thing is to make your pitch via video. It’s certainly simple enough to do — plan your video, shoot it with an inexpensive video camera, upload it to Youtube and spread the link. [...]
Company Gets $500,000 in VC Funding to Bridge the Gap Between PR and Media
I am one who believes there will always be a chasm between the media and PR, unless and until the media dies and all media is PR. Which I hope does not happen. I’ve been working on the media/PR divide much of my career. I was known as a sympathic media person who helped PR [...]
Vote Yes on PRSA Bylaw Revisions and Move on to What’s Really Important
The PRSA National Delegate Assembly will take place this Saturday in San Diego. I’m a delegate but I can’t make it, so I’m sending a proxy voter. She asked how to vote and I told her she was free to vote as she pleased. But I wanted to go on the record to the industry [...]
In the end, it’s all corporate communications
One of the reasons I became disillusioned and left the mainstream media was that while it purports to be “independent” and “objective,” it’s really just corporate communications. That is, the media of today is largely owned by massive corporations who want to make money, and they do so by researching and reporting “news” and delivering [...]
Rachel Maddow Deftly Injects Anti-Racism Into the National Mainstream
Racism has been one of the greatest stains on the American experiment and remains an insidious and destructive force in today’s society. The election of Barack Obama has done two things: 1) it has shown that a majority of the electorate is now ready and willing to trust a non-white as the nation’s President and [...]
Pitching Business Media Is Getting Tougher and Tougher
One of the untold stories of PR over the last quarter century has been the great rise in business journalism, from a media backwater to a front-and-center element of the media. It just so happens that I had a front-row seat for this transformation, as I entered business journalism in 1981 as part of the [...]