The Public Relations Piñata

OK. As of this morning, I've counted about a half dozen people using public relations as their piñata in the blogosphere.

I'm not giving them Google Juice by singling them out; but some of these folks enjoy taking a whack at my industry of choice on an ongoing basis. And some of them dangerously resemble that which they condemn. Hey, it's good content and even better links/search results/traffic.

I'm drafting specific responses to some of these threads (that pesky day job is getting in the way, the one where I actually practice public relations). In the meantime, I want everyone to know that I am proud to be a member of the public relations industry.

My career in public relations allows me to work alongside talented, creative people who also wind up teaching me about words like integrity and character.

So go ahead, have another swing at us. This metaphor has you wearing a blindfold but maybe it should be a pair of blinders instead?

tags: public relations, media relations, PR

Comments

[Todd Van Hoosear]

Don't link to them, but definitely challenge them. I tried to steer the Kryptonite conversation at Scoble and Israel's blog (http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2005/07/kryptonite_argu.html#comment-7615449) away from attacking PR as a profession toward a)understanding the technology and b)improving the way the corporate communication function works. I'm going to try my best to speak up for the profession, and I encourage you to take your views to the blogosphere (just eschew the links). We won't solve PR's image problem, but we'll make a few more people think a little differently about the PR function and not be so quick to blame the communicator for a bigger problem.