Working With Public Relations In A Digital Age

About This Topic

When I started blogging in 2001, it was for two principal reasons: 1) getting around my employer's firewall, and 2) I felt it was the best media relations platform ever. Since journalists often (rightly) complain that PR people don't read the works of those they try to pitch, why not provide proof-positive that I did read that work and developed a (non-billable) opinion about it?

Fast-forward seven years later: Public relations folks (like journalists) are characterized in the popular imagination by the least of their members. PR people and the corporations they work for are expected by many to achieve a much flatter communications structure than in the past. Meanwhile, that same effect has moved journalism from "lecture" to "conversation" -- something you just don't find in most J-schools.

Let's explore that shaded center of the Venn diagram here in this forum.

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I'm a VP at Edelman (the world's largest independent PR firm) and a founding fellow with the Society For New Communications Research. I've been blogging since 2001, which some seem to think makes me the first PR person to do so. Ten years in Silicon Valley. Eighteen months in El Lay. Won some awards. Launched some clients. Etc. etc.

I now live in Chicago with my wife, Leticia, a visual communications consultant who is currently working on her Masters degree at DePaul. We keep up with friends and family at YouJustDontGetUs.