The Excellence Discussion Continues
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008[My reply to the conversation as it turned to Dr. Grunig’s speech at The Institute for Public Relations: “After 50 Years: The Value and Values of Public Relations”]
While not in the audience that evening, I’ve read Dr. Grunig’s speech many times on the Institute Web site. I don’t find any magic bullets in it.
As a matter of fact, I think the speech reveals some of the faults of the Excellence work. Although I loved being a professional communicator and love teaching public relations even more to hundreds of students each year, I don’t see PR playing the role of the white knight swooping in to keep evil organizations from pillaging the public.
Dr. Grunig advocates PR playing a do-gooder role based on symmetry that “helps society.” Yet, in his examples from the speech, take Ivy Lee and Rockefeller for instance, was Lee truly advocating for the public or rather for Rockefeller to take steps so that he ultimately achieved his objectives? And, I’m really looking forward to the day when some bright scholar calls Bernays out for his gimmickry and self-promotion, turning the supposed “Father of PR” into the “Father of Publicity,” which is a more accurate picture. But, I digress.
Dr. Grunig also takes a rather elitist view of the standoff between his beloved “elite practitioners” and the lowly “mass of tacticians and technicians.” I think many professionals would lose their lunch if given that section of the speech.
Dr. Grunig constructs a false fight between strategists and tacticians, but ultimately places the latter in the camp of “buffering” and those who “make decisions in isolation from publics.” Please, let the thousands of people teaching PR in on the secret to become an “elite practitioner” because I don’t want my students merely becoming one of the masses who “fly by the seat of their pants or simply do what employers or clients ask them to do.”
Furthermore, what is the good, “bridging” strategist doing after whispering in the CEO’s ear, other than going back to a staff of lowly tacticians to implement that plan?
And, while Fraser did not address this point, I’d like to ask why PR academics _automatically_ assume that as soon as one mentions any form of integrated communications that it means that PR must take a secondary/subservient role? The hangups over defining PR — for the millionth time — and posturing about its place as management or not management obfuscates the true meaning of integrated communications. Simply, that different communications divisions work together toward the goals and aspirations of the organization.
