PR Society of America, continuing its fight against technology, as Westhampton Beach is also doing, again wants to block an O’Dwyer exhibit at its annual conference.
Executives of the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, scene of the conference Nov. 8-10, said the Society will allow the O’Dwyer Co. to exhibit its six products in a room on the tenth floor if the O’Dwyer Co. accepts status as an “affiliate.” The hotel’s Atrium, Marquis and Imperial ballrooms/exhibit halls are either below lobby level or one floor above it.
PRSA, said Marriott, “has graciously approved your affiliation if the Atlanta Marriott Marquis sets up a meeting for the O’Dwyer Co. on the 10th floor in the Skyline meeting space. The hotel will agree to offer this space to the O’Dwyer Co. complimentary.”
Bowing to the Society’s anti-press, anti-information, competition-blocking, and anti-member policies for the fifth straight year, Marriott says the Society “owns” the space it rents and it doesn’t want the O’Dwyer Co. there. We hope Marriott/PRSA will reverse this decision. The tenth floor would be “Siberia.”
O’Dwyer Co. Covers as Well as Promotes
The O’Dwyer Co. wants to promote its six products to the 3,000 attendees but we are also covering the conference as press. Our reporters need to talk to the 45 or so exhibitors to gather news and information for our January PR Buyer’s Guide that lists nearly 1,000 products in 55 categories.
 Matthews |
Marriott is again going along with abuses that harm the Society as much as the O’Dwyer Co. They also reflect badly on Marriott and its former PR head Kathleen Matthews, wife of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who resigned in May after nine years as chief global communications and PA officer of Marriott.
Kathleen, 61, who was at the local ABC-TV outlet 25 years, is running for the House of Representatives from Maryland, saying she is “a strong fighter for human dignity, opportunity and equality.” Attempts over the years to reach Kathleen or Chris about the Marriott/PRS press boycott, via phone calls, emails and regular mail, all resulted in failure. Open letters to them on the O'Dwyer website also failed. No one from Marriott corporate PR responds. Individual Marriott hotels do not have PR staff. Marketing execs deal with the press.
PRSA Revenues Below 2006 Level
An indication of the malaise of the PR Society is that 2014 revenues of $11,159,091 were below those of $11,426,867 in 2006 eight years ago. The dip is despite a $30 dues hike in 2012 to $255.
Membership of 22,000 is no great growth from 19,600 in 2000. It includes retireds, associates, professors and others who pay a reduced rate. We can’t check out the numbers in such categories because the Society won’t let us join although many reporters and writers are members.
The U.S. Dept. of Labor reported 208,030 “PR specialist” jobs in May 2014. It predicts a 12% growth rate to 2022.
PR firms, as tracked by the O’Dwyer Co., are enjoying year-after-year growth. PR firms have a galaxy of information gathering and disseminating services and are a much cheaper alternative to advertising.
About 100 top PR counseling firms fled to the PR Council in 1998 when PRS refused to allow firm membership. Blue chip execs went to the Arthur W. Page Society and PR Seminar. Virtually all IR executives are in the National Investor Relations Institute. Governance abuses of PRS, including dominance of its Assembly by the board when the Assembly should dominate (as called for by Robert's Rules), is in this Directory of PRS Abuses.
Marvelous Communications Tools Ignored
 L-R: Jack Rosenthal, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Dean Baquet discuss the future of the New York Times, which is in its fourth generation of Sulzberger management. Photo: Sharlene Spingler |
What strikes us about PRS/national and WHB is that both ignore the marvelous communications tools that are available.
New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, for instance, appeared in a 90-minute live webcast June 15 that we watched on our computer. He told how NYT is coping in an era where most people get their news from the web and took questions from the audience for a half hour.
The New York chapter of PRS hosted a 90-minute webinar Sept. 8, 2014 on the topic of “PR on Trial.” The chapter not only webcast it live but provided a complete transcript shortly thereafter. Webinars often allow questions to be emailed to a panel or phoned in while the session is in progress.
Given the availability of such tools, the question is why aren’t the WHB board meetings webcast live and a transcript of them provided shortly thereafter? Mayor Marie Moore has made “transparency” a cornerstone of her administration and new trustees Brian Tymann and Rob Rubio have made the same promise.
Transparency is fine but “interaction” with audiences is also needed.
The ideal form of communication is the “dialogic loop,” defined by PR Institute CEO Tina McCorkindale as “any negotiated exchange of ideas and opinions.” Both parties must be “willing to be open and listen to the other parties even if there is disagreement,” she wrote for the PR Society’s online PR Journal.
 McCorkindale |
Current WHB policy is to videotape the meetings and then post the tape several days later. Residents who go looking for the tape on the WHB website will find that a tape of the January 2015 meeting comes up.
Some residents have told us they give up at this point since they’re looking for the latest meeting. Users have to put their cursor on the screen which results in an arrow popping up on the right side. That has to be clicked six times until the July 6 videotape comes up.
This is backwards! The July meeting should be first, preceded by the others.
Also, few people will feel like listening to trustees drone through 36 housecleaning motions such as “Appoint safety committee,” “Appoint marriage officer,” and “Appoint part time DPW laborer.”
The real action was No. 37—Remove medical and dental benefits for trustees. There was little discussion of that. It should have been first.
Citizen comments also deserve to be at the start of the meeting and not at the end. We gave a ten-minute description of the multi-million dollar threat to WHB, Southampton and Quogue from the East End Eruv Assn. which wants to construct eruvim Jewish religious boundaries in the three communities.
WHB’s offering of a videotape of its meetings is “half a loaf.” The tape, like just about all other tapes, should be accompanied by a transcript that can be quickly perused to locate the interesting parts. Residents are not going to watch a half hour of trustees reciting appointments. They want the meat and potatoes right away and should be able to locate that quickly.
PR Society’s Assembly Sinks from View
Oddly, the PR Society used to audiotape its annual full-day Assembly meeting, its governing body, and supply not only the tape to the press and others but a transcript that often ran to more than 400 pages.
However, in 2005 it clamped down on information flow. Not only were the tapes and transcriptions ditched, but also its printed directory of members, a decision not run by the Assembly.
Also removed from public and even member view, except for Assembly delegates themselves, was the list of 250 or so delegates. The list of 40+ staff members and their contact points vanished, replaced by a list of 8-9 managers.
A database of the 110 chapter presidents including their contact info was the next casualty. Anyone who wants such a list must visit all the chapter websites. Reporters were barred from the 2011, 2012 and 2013 Assemblies.
PRSA Should Do PDF of Members
 O'Dwyer publications |
If the O’Dwyer Co. can post a PDF of its 330-page 2015 Directory of PR Firms, including 10 four-color pages and more than 400 logos, which is the only printed directory left in PR, the Society could easily post a PDF of its 22,000 members since type takes up much less bandwidth than graphics.
The other O’Dwyer directories that the Society does not want its members to know about are the PR Buyer’s Guide listing nearly 1,000 products and services and the 12 O’Dwyer monthly magazines, each one a directory of PR specialties such as tech, healthcare and financial.
The 48-page July issue has profiles of 36 travel PR practices and a ranking of the travel billings of 39 firms.
PRSA-NY today announced its five honorary co-chairs for its Big Apple Awards ceremony gala slated for TAO Downtown on Nov. 15.
PRSA-NY president Carmella Glover today issued a "heartfelt apology" on behalf of the chapter for her Oct. 14 message that "caused disappointment and hurt to some of our valued members."
The leadership of Public Relations Society of America is backing a move to change the current “must-have” APR accreditation to “strongly preferred” as a requirement for a seat on its board of directors.
Public Relations Society of American today named Linda Thomas Brooks CEO, succeeding CFO Phil Bonaventura, interim chief since July 2019.
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