Who Deserves the Blame for Poor PR Writing?
On his PR Junkie blog, Mark Ragan highlights a mystifying “challenge” the public relations industry confronts on a daily basis — the consistently poor writing shoveled out at agencies. As a person who teaches ”Writing for Public Relations” at my university, I can certainly understand Ragan’s disgust. “Every once in a while I’ll sit down with a jug of Jack Daniels and a bottle of Advil and dig through old press releases to see if PR agencies have learned how to write,” Ragan says.
And I believe him. Often, I have felt similar alarm as I review industry releases. I ask my students to read 10 releases each week while they take the writing course, which most often exposes more bad than good PR writing.
Ragan believes the problem resides at the feet of young professionals. He explains, “There is a reason for the template, of course. None of the kids hired by the agencies and billed out at $150 an hour have the slightest idea what they’re writing about. They don’t understand the product or the client. They have no background in the industry, and they never learned how to write in college.”
I agree with this statement to a degree. Just like the training lawyers and budding business executives receive, the PR programs at most colleges do not fully prepare students for the real world. Even students who have supplemented their classroom education with several internships still face a steep learning curve in the professional world.
The real problem, however, is the agency structure, not the young professionals forced into cookie cutter training programs.
Here’s my reply to Ragan’s post:
“One area to blame is the school system. I basically have to eliminate all a student’s bad writing habits, THEN figure out a way to get them on the path toward professional writer status. Certainly this is almost impossible in a mere 15 weeks.
The second area of blame falls on the agencies. They are so top-heavy on client teams that they are perpetually understaffed. This results in little hands-on mentoring and pushing off the pitching/writing to new grads who don’t have the experience or skills to do the job adequately.
The templates the firms force their junior people to conform to are horrible, but allow releases to be completed quicker, which saves money. I’ve had fantastic student writers get jobs at agencies, then have their skills beat right out of them because of time restraints, etc.
If agency leadership wanted to put a stop to this poor writing, they could. But, it’s cost effective and, at the end of the day, must prove that they don’t care all that much about writing quality. My hope is that I teach my students the best methods I know and then someday when they are execs, they implement that style at their agencies.”
Basically, my viewpoint is that we could blame young professionals, but it is really a systemic challenge that points to some major flaws in the typical agency structure. Agencies need to pay more than casual lip service to mentoring and training, certainly the writing that is being done is evidence of this point.
That’s my two cents…What do you think we can do to improve PR writing both while students are students and then once they get out into the professional world?
June 4th, 2008 at 05:36
Bob,
I can’t tell you how good it is to read a blog by a PR educator who CAN write and who appreciates good writing in his students.
My daughter is a communication major at an American college in Europe. I have been teaching her how to write as she plunges into her coursework, often coaching her sentence by sentence.
During our first lesson, I taught her the importance of simplicity and clarity. All good writing is clear and simple, I said, choosing to ignore Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy and Henry James (at least for now). We went through a recent book review she wrote for her political science class and converted passive sentences to active ones. We omitted needless words. Finally, we brought every sentence “down the abstraction ladder,” making sure it was a model of conversational simplicity.
Her grade for that book review was a B-. Her teacher explained that her essay was not “sophisticated enough”.
You can see this happening in PR agencies all over the country. “We can’t send this out, it’s too simple. It doesn’t make us sound important enough. Put in a sentence about how we’re ‘leveraging our synergies.’”
It’s very depressing, but thanks to people like you it WILL get better.
June 4th, 2008 at 12:07
Bob:
Thank you for addressing this important subject. I have very strong feelings about the need for both the working professional and the graduating Mass Comm/PR major to be able to write really well. Call me old school, but I believe that writing clear, concise, accurate, and compelling copy is the fundamental skill that people in the communication/PR/IMC profession simply must have. This skill begins to develop in college, in our departments, if we do it right.
I believe that the problem is mostly due to changes in the way English is taught in K-12 grades. My colleagues and I at Towson are continually dismayed at the poor knowledge of the English language evident in students. It is doubly distressing when such students declare as PR Majors.
You asked: “What do you think we can do to improve PR writing both while students are students and then once they get out into the professional world?”
I can’t speak for PR agencies, but I’d like to address our role as educators. I teach two sections of PR Writing every semester, plus one section in summer session. My students, about 40 total in fall and spring semesters and about 25 in summer session, have 18 assignments that cover all the types of writing tasks that any typical practitioner will ever have to write, whether working for an agency, corporation, nonprofit, or government entity.
My motivation for developing these assignments is my 35 years of earning a good living as an organizational communication/PR/IMC professional and consultant. These assignments are, to me, the underpinning of skill that must be evident if a practitioner is to call him or herself a “writer”.
My instruction and subsequent assignments range from traditional news releases, backgrounders, and fact sheets for print/broadcast media to social media news releases to blogging and Websites. I cover every specific type of writing and format that working professionals must be able to handle.
Of course, a certain amount of theory on which effective communication/PR/IMC is built has to be taught. But, my course work is very much “applied” in nature. My goal is to prepare students for career success in communication/PR/IMC. That means teaching them to write a wide variety of typical assignments really well.
Thanks for your leadership on this, Bob.
Les
June 4th, 2008 at 13:43
A good first step would be to reform our junior high and high school English classes, so that students master punctuation and grammar before taking college classes. Students still work on mastering these basics in upper-level classes at universities. If students could come to us having mastered this foundation, we could better focus our time on teaching advanced techniques.
One book that helps my students is “Made to Stick.” It is about simple, concrete writing. In one exercise, students take abstract writing like Mark’s “leveraging synergies” example and make it concrete.
Everyone who can take responsibility for this problem should: teachers, the writers themselves, and managers.
June 5th, 2008 at 09:04
I agree with you and Tiffany– good writing stems from pre-college education. After graduating from USF, I actually wrote a thank you note to my high school journalism teacher who drilled proper grammar, clarity, and AP style into my mind. Having that foundation helped me further my writing in college whereas some of my peers were having to learn the craft all over again.
My best advice is to encourage students to supplement PR writing classes with creative writing and literature courses. This helped me because it showed me how to write for different audiences using varying language (like the literary, sophisticated type), a vital tool in the PR field.
Of course, because I’m so new to agency life, I don’t know how this issue can be addressed at that level, but I’m very interested to see how those in the industry respond.
Take care!
June 5th, 2008 at 10:17
Mark, I’m thankful that you had the boldness to address an issue that we all know to be truth, but still gets overlooked by agencies (and corporations too, for that matter). What you do with your daughter, I do with about 100 students each year…focus on what I call the “holy grail” of writing — writing that is precise, concise, and uses active voice. So, while we spend time learning the strategy and process of different communication vehicles, we continually work on these basics.
In the corporate world, a colleague and I (10-year vet of AP) clandestinely began changing releases to make them focused on the customer benefit and eliminate jargon. We didn’t ask for permission, we just figured we’d do it until someone told us to stop. No one did. That is one of my fondest memories of working in Corporate America.
Thanks again for bringing this critical issue to light.
P.S. I urge my students to use Ragan resources and learn from the fantastic information you all provide. Thanks.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:24
Hi Les,
As I’ve often thought since you and I met “virtually,” I think we’re somewhat birds of a feather. I tell my students directly that I’m getting them ready for when their butts hit the seat in a cube at their first job. It sounds like we emphasize the exact same things in our classes. I’m a veritably newbie compared to you in terms of experience, with about 10 years of experience, but I use that knowledge to really get students to understand what it takes to be successful in this career. I’m almost 100% “applied” in my “Writing for Public Relations” classes. They need to understand the strategy behind a certain document, but I really hone in on overall writing skills.
I don’t think great writing is a god-given talent, like so many do. I tell them it’s like plumbing, the more one practices and reads, the better one becomes. Good writing is good writing, whether it’s a love letter, novel, memo, or press release. Good writers have the ability to apply the skill, regardless of vehicle.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:30
Hi Tiffany,
Ironically, I just checked out your blog and profile on the Oregon Web site yesterday. I’m envious of you being there. It is such a wonderful university and state.
I agree that much of the challenge we face starts in the K-12 environment…and probably even before that in the home. However, I think that students themselves shoulder much of the blame. Our PR majors are really the cream of the crop at USF, supposedly some of the top students at the school. In many instances, they just aren’t willing to work hard enough to improve. And, they are in college, so one assumes that they excelled in high school, etc.
Thanks for the “heads-up” on the book. I’ll check it out.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:34
Hi Meg,
Obviously, you are one of those future leaders that will do the proper kind of mentoring and training once you’re running an agency.
From discussions we had in the past, I know you saw firsthand the difference between students who worked hard at improving their writing and those who didn’t. There is definitely an opportunity for college students to greatly improve their writing skills if they are willing to work hard enough.
Thanks for your insightful comments. Say “hello” to DC for me.
June 23rd, 2008 at 07:09
Bob, I found my way to your blog from one of your students’ blogs. He could clearly write so kudos to you. I wrote about the importance of continually writing on my blog recently. I think social media, especially bloging and microblogging, can be a good tool for improving students’ writing. Continual work and improvement in this area is essential not just for PR students and new grads, but PR professionals throughout our careers.
August 6th, 2008 at 09:14
Bob:
This particular post addresses the very issue that I have been learning about in my public relations writing course this summer. My professor continually stresses the importance of proper writing skills in any type of public relations or communications profession. As a young student, a year away from entering the workplace full-time, it is refreshing to learn about these types of issues before its too late.
Fortunately, my pr writing professor has been a working practitioner for over 35 years and knows what it takes to be successful. Using his knowledge and experience, he prepares assignments that teach us how to properly complete documents that any communication practitioner will be responsible for. Currently, we have learned proper formats for news releases, feature stories, radio and television spots, and much more. This type of knowledge allows students to enter the workforce with an advantage.
I also agree with Les Potter in his response to your post, concerning education in the K-12 grades being a determinate in the poor writing skills of students. Personally, it was eye opening to see how much more there was to writing once I attended college. It seems as though vital writing skills, such as grammar are left to the wayside in grade school. If schools presented proper writing skills in these grades, students would not have to waste time re-learning how to write. Instead, students could spend time refining their writing skills, further readying themselves for the workforce.
What I also find eye opening is that pr firms will sacrifice quality for time and price. So, even if students spend their entire college career learning how to write, their own employers will be a hindrance to their progress.
Thank for you bringing these issues to the plate. They are all very important knowing that I will soon face each of these issues.