But for the apostrophe, it was a perfect lunch

Any student in the Creative Communications program at Red River College, where I teach PR, will tell you we're a little bit nuts about accuracy and grammar in writing. Whether you're majoring in journalism, advertising or public relations, it's pretty tough to build a successful career if you can't write properly.

Misspell a proper name in our program and your assignment gets an "F," no matter how brilliant it is otherwise. Sound harsh? Maybe... but not if you're a working communications professional. I've thrown more than one resume/cover letter into the recycling bin after seeing the company name misrepresented: if you can't spell the name of the company correctly in that high-stakes document, I'm guessing you're not that careful on the job, either.

In the PR major, every typo or glaring grammatical error costs you 10%. Guess how long it takes PR majors to dramatically cut down on the number of grammatical errors in their assignments in my class. [Answer: not long.]

Why does it matter so much?

In our business, credibility is vital, and clean writing contributes to credibility. Whether you realize it or not, errors in grammar and spelling send a message to your audiences, and that message is "I'm not really polished, and maybe not as professional as I should be."  A journalist who commits grammatical errors will raise the ire of his/her editor (if the editor is worth his/her salt, that is); a newspaper or news site containing more than the occasional error will be harder to believe than one offering accurate, polished writing.

In PR, our employers often count on us to write and to be the last set of eyes on organizational documents before they're released to the public; if our writing is strewn with errors, the company's image takes a hit.

Today's lunch

Today, I was treated to a delicious lunch at one of Winnipeg's finer restaurants. I had only been there once before, years ago, shortly after it opened: it's a high-end steakhouse, and as I remember it, featured a staff member at dinnertime offering guests "le tour du boeuf," a platter displaying the impressive cuts of beef on offer that evening, complete with a full explanation of their exceptional quality. It was pretentious, but then, pretentious can be fun (especially if you're in what Oprah calls a chi-chi-poo-poo restaurant with a gift certificate). 

It was a lovely environment, and my husband and I were both very much enjoying our little taste of the high life for an evening.

But then, it happened.

As I read the menu, I noticed glaring errors in the French, and the spell was instantly broken. As I remember it, it was like the needle being dragged across a vinyl LP mid-song: what had moments ago felt like a special evening in a special environment now had the feel of little kids playing dress-up in their parents' formal clothes.

Fast forward a decade or so, to today, at lunch.

I had recounted this story to my friend when we made the date, and we'd laughed together about it (she's a PR guy too, and an excellent writer). Today, we sat on the beautiful terrace on a gorgeous day, and enjoyed a delicious lunch together. A duck and her ducklings waddled along the grass past the terrace. And the menu didn't contain a single error (that I noticed, anyway). I greatly enjoyed my lunch, and vowed not to wait so long before coming back the next time.

Shortly before we left, I walked to the ladies' room laughing at myself for having been so anal about the typos in the French.

And then, having reached my destination, I stopped and stared at the engraved brass sign on the door.

"LADIE'S"

PR's new career path starts in school, not the newsroom

In the next week, 70 or so first-year Creative Communications students at Red River College will declare their "major" area of study for their second year: Advertising, Journalism, Public Relations, or Media Production (formerly "Broadcasting").

Many already know what they want to do when they leave college, but some are still on the fence, weighing their options and trying to figure out which major will be the best fit for them.

A fair number have come to ask me for advice, and I tell them all the same thing: they should major in whichever of the fields they plan get a job in, because that's what their portfolio will be best-suited for when they graduate.

I read an interesting article on the New York Times Education blog recently, about Mary Ellin Arch, a news editor who'd been 'downsized' from the newspaper where she worked, after 29 years in the news business.

Not yet ready to retire, she did what many journalists had done before her: she decided to look for work in public relations.

And after four months of  “no bites, no interviews, no calls, no interest whatsoever,” she realized she was losing all the PR jobs to people who were educated in PR.

The way it was

Not that long ago, it was a pretty normal thing for journalists to make the move to PR once they either realized they weren't going to become Walter Cronkite/Barbara Walters/Bob Woodward/Carl Bernstein, or they decided they wanted a job that might be a little more family-friendly.

In fact, if you talk to many veteran PR pros today, they'll even tell you that you should go work in a newsroom before making the move to PR, because it'll make you a better PR guy.

They say that, because that's how it worked for them, back then.

It made sense, really. Even a decade ago, a good understanding of how the mainstream media worked was sometimes the most important characteristic of a successful PR professional. The mainstream media represented one of the very few ways we could practically get our messages out to our external audiences. Logically, who'd know better than someone who'd been on the other side, right?

On top of that, working in a newsroom was how you learned to write like a journalist, which is what PR folks aim to do.

The way it is

Today, a few variables in the equation have changed.

First, public relations programs have grown and expanded in colleges and universities around the world, at the certificate, diploma, degree, and graduate levels.

Students in these programs learn the fundamentals of organizational communications, and put them into practice. They learn what they need to know about their audiences in order to get -- and hold -- their attention. And they explore the creativity they need to figure out how to break through today's noise with a meaningful and persuasive message, on top of learning how to write for PR.

The "learn-it-by-watching-it-from-the-outside" approach of reluctant journalists doesn't hold up as well anymore. They are competing for PR jobs against people who can show employers work samples illustrating the range of skills they're looking for. PR grads don't have to say "trust me -- I have experience in a related field, so I'll probably be pretty good at PR."

Secondly, while understanding how the media work remains important for PR pros, organizations' reliance on media relations for mass communication will decrease steadily as social media grow.

There's a reason newspapers and magazines are fighting for audiences these days -- and it's because those audiences are getting their information online. Today's PR pros do need to understand how to work effectively with the mainstream media, but they also need to be able to communicate much more broadly -- a skill that requires a far greater breadth of PR knowledge and experience than having written for a newspaper.

Don't get me wrong

Please don't think I'm saying it's impossible for a journalist to switch into PR today, because it isn't. It continues to happen, and I expect it always will, for certain people.

When I was the director of a corporate communications department, I hired a number of former journalists -- all of whom demonstrated in their portfolios and in interviews their understanding of how PR works.

I also interviewed and declined to hire many more, who didn't.

If you want to work in PR today, you'd do yourself a favour by entering a formal PR program in a post-secondary institution, and by building a portfolio that shows your understanding of the fundamental principles of effective communications and how you respond creatively to a range of communications challenges.

Writing articles is only one of many writing-based skills a PR pro needs -- not to mention the need to understand different stakeholder motivations, to be able to create effective strategies to reach them, and how to use the growing number of communication tools at our disposal effectively.

I got lucky.

I entered this profession in the mid-1990s, before the Internet was even widely used. I received my PR education "on-the-job," when I was mentored by a partner in the communications firm that hired me based on my English degree, my strong writing, and the strength of my interviews.

Today I wouldn't stand a chance. There are far too many grads of public relations programs who can prove they already know what they're doing, and are ready to hit the ground running for their client.

My PR majors would have beaten me out for that first job in a minute, I can guarantee it... and I'd have been back to school.

Dispatches from The Dark Side

I was alerted yesterday to an article on Yahoo hotjobs entitled “Good Careers with Bad Reputations” featuring – you guessed it – PR.

This wasn’t news to me; I’ve become well accustomed to references to PR as “The Dark Side”. We all know that journalists are universal truth-seekers who selflessly dedicate their lives to exposing lies and protecting democracy, while PR people hide “the truth”, deflect attention from things that really matter, and protect liars and thieves, right?

Right.

The fact is, as the Yahoo article points out, there are good practitioners and bad practitioners in every field. Just as there are dishonest PR people, there are agenda-driven journalists – and either side of that equation inevitably leads to misinformation in the public discourse.

Ethical public relations practitioners help their clients communicate with their audiences, period. Yes, it’s our job to help the client put its best foot forward – but if that’s dishonest, then so is anyone who trims a beard, irons clothes or applies makeup before going out.

Good PR people are not in the business of obfuscation or dishonesty; we are in the business of communicating effectively. That can involve a number of strategies and tactics, but it isn’t dishonest: we recognize that we communicate in a noisy world, and that we have to be smart about cutting through the clutter with the information that really matters to our audiences.

Likewise, good reporters aren’t in the business of imposing their opinions or slanting coverage to suit a personal agenda; they are in the business of telling stories objectively.

I’ve worked with a large number of excellent reporters over the course of my career in PR, who have come to my clients for comment on a wide range of issues. Their stories didn’t always paint my clients in the most flattering light – but then, my clients weren’t always on the most desirable side of the issues in question. These reporters gave us fair opportunities to comment, and relayed our positions accurately. Unfortunately, I’ve also had the misfortune to deal with a far smaller number of reporters, who didn’t uphold those same standards of fairness in their reporting. Fortunately for our entire mass media structure, those individual performances don’t taint their entire profession.

Good PR people advocate for the interests of the public (and for those of the media, I might add) within their organizations as much as they advocate for their organizations externally.

PR shouldn’t have a bad reputation. What PR really needs is… PR.