Museum of PR to Unveil Lost Ivy Lee Manuscript

Baruch College’s Museum of Public Relations tomorrow will unveil an unpublished manuscript written by legendary PR figure Ivy Lee, as well as other recently discovered, century-old artifacts belonging to the early PR pioneer.

Ivy Lee

The unveiling comes as part of the Museum of PR’s first-ever event to explore Lee’s life and contributions to the communications industry. Other works on display will include a recently discovered sound-film recording from 1930 and an unpublished Lee manuscript regarding the practice of PR, as well as Lee’s personal address book, which contains the names of some of the early 20th century's top business tycoons.

Discussing Lee at event will be Dr. Ray Eldon Hiebert, PR scholar and preeminent Lee biographer, whose work, Courtier to the Crowd, is being re-published in honor of the event. Hiebert will be interviewed by Old Dominion Universit professor and Ivy Lee historian Dr. Burton St. John III.

This discussion will be presented live via Skype, where questions may be asked from viewers globally.

Lee, the son of a Georgia minister, was press agent for the Pennsylvania Railroad and was later hired by J.D. Rockefeller to clean up the Standard Oil Company’s union busting image.  Considered by many the father of modern PR, he invented the press release, and his work surrounding a fatal 1906 Pennsylvania Railroad crash is widely seen as the template for modern crisis management. He also penned his famous Declaration of Principles, which offered the first code of ethics for PR professionals when speaking with the press.

The program will be emceed be Fraser Seitel, an NYU communications Professor and O’Dwyer’s contributing editor who is author of the Prentice-Hall textbook The Practice of Public Relations. Seitel, like Lee, was also the Rockefeller family’s longtime public relations counsel.

A networking reception will follow.

The Lee event takes place tomorrow, March 29th, from 6-9pm, at Baruch College, 55 Lexington Avenue (at 24th Street), Suite 14-270 New York, NY. It is produced by the Museum of Public Relations and Corporate Communication International.

A month-long exhibit of the Ivy Lee Collection will also follow tomorrow’s event, to be held at the Museum of Public Relations, is located at Baruch College’s Newman Library Archives and Special Collections, 151 East 25th Street.

Registration is required to attend tomorrow’s event.