Grunig PR Masterclass: Insight into diversity and excellence

This post offers a video recording of a recent lecture given by Larissa and James Grunig at New York University – courtesy of Toni Muzi Falconi, who kindly introduces the video below. In addition, Heather Yaxley provides a brief overview of the highlights of the lecture.
We extend our thanks to James, Larissa and Toni [...]

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Closing the door on the gatekeeper role in PR

At a Sustainable Conversations event earlier this week (organised by Kantar Media), I started to think about the impact on both public relations and journalism of ongoing communications changes. In particular, it is clear neither occupation can maintain their traditionally exclusive roles as ‘gatekeepers’ in filtering and controlling the flow of information that is [...]

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Lies and Secrets: the currency of public relations

You don’t have to dig too far to find criticisms of public relations as involving lying and other less than ethical practices. The normal response from the industry is denial, citation of codes of conduct and finger pointing at isolated ‘others’.
But is lying really an absolute ‘do or don’t do’ matter? In reality, doesn’t [...]

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Relationship advice for PR practitioners

Relationships are in the DNA of PR – in fact, the name itself indicates the function manages relations with publics.  But the priority in PR practice is largely on writing skills rather than interpersonal ones; whilst although academic definitions and literature highlight two-way communications, they largely omit what is required to build and maintain mutually [...]

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“Intel inside&”? Reinventing our profession … before extinction?

In a nutshell: the world gets more complicated, communication as a dialogue function is increasingly demanding, all stakeholders claim a legitimate interest in a corporate and “pull” what they need, while the communication professional reminds me of the young Dutch boy trying to halt the water bursting through the dam by putting his little fingers in the cracks.

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To listen, to engage: empty buzzwords?

“Over the past years, we’ve seen very smart people make mistakes because they didn’t understand the context in which they were operating” – this sentence is extracted from an interesting op-ed column of last Friday’s NYT under the title ‘the power elite’

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And now, let’s work for the Stockholm Accords and the future of our profession!

The communicative organization acts on the insights that relationships have real value, that reputation is shaped through relationships, and that the organization’s own values must be lived in constant dialogue within as well as with its customers, partners and other stakeholders.

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Obama losing control of his narrative? Then why is Berlusconi successfully holding his?

It seems that, during his first year in office, President Obama is progressively losing control of his narrative. It also seems that Italy’s Berlusconi is, instead, holding on to his narrative with success.

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Reaching out to Generation Connectivity Online

Public administrations have a reputation for inertia, so it’s always refreshing to see innovative counterexamples. The French Office national d’information sur les enseignements et les professions (ONISEP) is tasked by the Ministry of Education to help students, parents and educators to learn about existing professions and various opportunities for training or further studies.

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The Communication Initiative and Haiti: how we, public relators, can hope to add real value

My good friend Warren Feek, from the Communication Initiative, has sent the following message…very relevant in general, but even more specifically for our professional community. Please read and, where possible, participate. Thank you.

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