PR and communication grads are writing to tell us about their experiences in the job market and asking for advice.
It's pretty late in the day for advice, we tell them. Only a few will get jobs and the rest are victims of broad forces of which they have little understanding.
They certainly didn't learn about these forces from their "professors," almost all of whom practice PR on the side or even as their main jobs.
Almost none of the students who contact us ever heard of any of our five news and informational products, including O'Dwyer's Directory of PR Firms, a basic job-hunting tool.
Professors generally don't like students reading the PR trade press because a different picture of PR emerges from what they're teaching., The 10,000 students who are in the PR Student Society never see any O'Dwyer ads in Tactics because the PR Society won't allow them.
O'Dwyer products are competitive with the Society's own products. Politics is being played at the expense of the students.
Although PRS bans our ads and won't even let us join, the nearly identical IABC is running a full-page ad in its current Communication World and let us join.
Grads Mostly Get Internships
Tactics interviewed eight grads or near grads for its May issue and the results were similar to what we are hearing. Only one of the eight even has prospects of a job.
Jenna Hamel of Kent State University, says she had an unpaid internship at a "boutique entertainment PR firm in L.A." last summer and will intern two more times with the promise that the firm will give her a full-time job in December when she graduates.
One grad complained that "many" of the unpaid internships require 40 hours a week while another said "most recruiters at career fairs" are pushing internships rather than jobs.
Our advice is that if you are going to work 40 hours a week for nothing, do it for a local business rather than a PR firm. Find out how a business really operates.
The chilling thought we have is that unsuspecting PR students are sheep who have been led to a high-priced slaughter.
Here's what we're telling these callers. You should have developed a specialty in college and particularly in healthcare, tech or financial. It's too late for you but at least get the word out to undergrads.
As for what jobseekers can do now, we say, "Remember the three P's — press, politics and personal."
Politics and reporting are good routes to PR jobs. So is getting to know local movers and shakers and helping them with all sorts of personal issues.
Ben Sonnenberg, one of PR's biggest success stories, helped clients with their personal lives. His mantra was you'll never lose a client if you do a favor for a spouse, son or daughter. He got to know what was in clients' "heart of hearts" (which may have nothing to do with marketing or profits) and the result was a 12-story New York townhouse filled with art treasures.
We're telling the grads to avoid going to a big city and looking for a job. Stay in your own backyard and be a volunteer for as many local charitable and civic groups as possible. Get to know the business leaders and their spouses. Deal with CEOs, not marketing people.
Other advice is contact local restaurants and businesses and see what help you can give, such as building a website for them. Many PR people started by doing PR for a restaurant in exchange for meals. Lots of other products can be bartered for communications services. Barter is a huge, secretive business.
Murray Must Not Be Renewed at PRS
PRS COO Bill Murray's contract is up Jan. 22, 2010 and must not be renewed.
PRS staff leadership by a non-PR professional is a disaster for PR as well as the Society.
Bill Murray |
A poll on odwyerpr.com is running about 60-40 against Murray being renewed.
Incoming chair Gary McCormick, whose background is the Scripps organization, is media-savvy but he needs a COO who is the same, as well as staff with this ability and fellow board members who acknowledge a partnership with the press.
Association and advertising professionals who have headed staff for most of the time since 1980, when the smaller chapters led by Pat Jackson took over, have given short shrift to the PR function at h.q. Typically, they have hired non-members or PR juniors as PR directors or have kept PR staffers under lock and key. Sometimes they just have no PR staffer at all (the case from June 1994 to June 1995).
Jackson's attitude toward the press was well known and freely expressed by him: "duck ‘em and screw 'em." He also chased all PR pros from the staff, a policy that mostly continues to this day.
COO Betsy Kovacs, an association careerist hired in 1980, did not hire PR director Donna Peltier until 1984. She was not allowed to lunch with the press without Kovacs present (we had three such lunches in the ten years Peltier headed PR).
Kovacs left in 1992 and was succeeded in mid-1993 by Ray Gaulke. Peltier stayed until June 1994 and it took Gaulke a year to find a successor, Steve Erickson who joined in June 1995.
Formerly VP-communications of the Arthritis Foundation, he handled both PR and Counselor Academy relations. He was the only staffer among about 50 at h.q. with a PR background.
Erickson lasted just over a year, exasperated by media-averse policies of staff and board. The final episode was a shouting match in September 1996 with then president Luis Morales. Erickson quit just before the October national conference when his services were most needed.
Next up as PR director was Richard George, a 1990 graduate who was with Weightman Advertising, Philadelphia. George, hired eight months after Erickson's departure (April 1997), also became exasperated with the same policies and quit just before the 1999 conference. There was no PR person at all in 2000 when payroll costs for media relations fell to $4,770 from $85,619 in 1999.
Lewton and Killeen Reform PR Policy
A new regime headed by counselors Kathy Lewton and Joann Killeen (2001 and 2002 president, respectively), took control in 2000 and vowed not only to "clean up the books," taking losses of $426,288 in 1999 and $678,893 in 2000, but to stop hiring juniors for the PR post.
Kathy Lewton |
Killeen, as treasurer in 2000, had discovered financial irregularities including years of failure to pay taxes on advertising income and product sales. PRS's "auditors" failed to catch them.
Lewton and Killeen advertised for a "chief PR officer" who would be paid up to $150,000. Another "senior staff post" was also planned for PR. Plans were to switch Gaulke from the Society to the Foundation, which was announced at the 2000 Assembly.
Joann Killeen |
Catherine Bolton, VP-communication, International Copper Assn., became PRS's first chief PR officer in September 2000.
With Gaulke at the Foundation, Lewton installed Bolton as president and COO in early 2001. She was PRS's first PR pro as head of staff since 1979 when Rea Smith was executive VP.
Libby Roberge, a PR veteran of 13 years and most recently with media-oriented G.S. Schwartz & Co., became director of PR in August 2001.
Roberge Was Most Helpful PR Contact
Libby Roberge |
Roberge was the best media contact at the Society since the 1970s, when Rocco Sacci and Art Young held that job. We lunched with them regularly and the media-friendly regime of Smith not only regularly invited us to h.q. but made us a Silver Anvil judge (along with other reporters) for three years.
Roberge not only lunched and talked with us but sent us numerous important documents, including the transcript of the 2002 Assembly and the list of chapter membership counts.
However, the leadership that succeeded Lewton and Killeen went back to the old ways of limiting press access.
Reed Byrum was president in 2003; Del Galloway in 2004; Judith Phair in 2005, and Cheryl Procter-Rogers in 2006.
Roberge found her press-friendly ways at odds with leadership and didn't come back after taking maternity leave in June 2003. She had lasted about two years.
Troy Signals New Era
Janet Troy joined as PR director in May 2004. Her 25-year background included posts as VP, marketing and PR, New York Board of Trade, and VP, marketing and communications, Coffee, Sugar & Cocoa Exchange.
She was not a member of the Society and told the Bergen Record that she was "flabbergasted" that PRS even existed and was "clueless to it."
Meanwhile, Bolton, whose background did not include handling administration for a staff of more than 50, found herself being criticized by the staff.
An e-mail to the board spelled out the criticisms in detail. She instituted legal action to find out the sender of e-mail so that she might institute a libel suit against him or her.
The sender fought the action in court resulting in extensive coverage of the criticisms in the New York Law Journal. The court granted Bolton's request but no lawsuit was ever instituted.
Bolton resigned as of Dec. 31, 2006, receiving $300,000 in severance pay, and was succeeded by Murray in January 2007.
Since that date, Society press relations have deteriorated further, becoming worse than they were in the 1990s or 1980s.
Murray, a career association executive, has shown almost no interest in press relations.
He has not talked to us or returned e-mails, except on a couple of rare occasions, since his first few weeks in office. He has not addressed the membership of the New York chapter.
An oddity in the 2008 audit that demands discussion is how can PRS justify only spending $2,317 on "ethics"? Also, it shows a $682,848 jump in seminar/teleseminar income to $1,356,300 while costs rose $704,181. Indicated profit on seminars is $682,848, its most profitable activity by far. Should this "member benefit" cost members so much? ... biggest PRS board caper we've seen in years is the move to pull from the Assembly its power to vet and elect officers and board while making the Assembly wait until 2010 for the exact rules on how direct elections by members will be accomplished. The other caper is trying to eliminate district representation from the board. Either one of these is enough to kill the bylaws re-write and shift it ahead another year which may be what the APRs have in mind … Mary Barber, 2008 PRS secretary, argued on PRSAY May 22 that allowing ad people to join the Society as full members would help create "a larger, richer or more diverse society." PRS needs to "broaden" its criteria for membership, she says, noting that only about 15% of PRS's national leaders have "PR" in their titles or company names. "Opening the Door to Our Tent" is the title of her essay.
The Society of Professional Journalists, saying "media credibility is waning," has announced a series of "town halls" in which the public can dialogue with reporters. Poynter Institute ethics fellows will moderate most of them, said the April Quill magazine of the SPJ…that sounds like something that PR people could be doing to help PR's image. We're not holding our breath until the PR Society does this. At the moment, chair Mike Cherenson is not even publicly rapping with members, much less the press…we have asked SPJ and Poynter on past occasions if press boycotts are ever permissible or ethical but have not received any hard and fast answers … Quill's April issue is also called its "Annual Ethics Issue" and there are several articles on ethical topics. As examples of ethical excellence, Quill describes the Washington Post's expose of conditions at Walter Reed Hospital and a story on an assisted suicide that ran in The Oregonian … we picked up a few pieces of info on our first trip to the new $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium May 19. We got two $48 tickets for $15 each by buying them from the "Stubhub" section of yankees.com where there is a daily auction for home games. On our first try at buying tickets, we were told that two $900 seats had been placed in our name. A bottle of beer (no cup) was $9 and, as before, there were long lines for food and drinks. The stadium is an improvement but commercialism is rampant with glitzy state-of-the-art graphics assaulting the eye non-stop.