Thoughts on Public Relations?

If you were to go back to college, would you rather take a career in public relations than journalism?

 

Personally, no. The pay is usually better, the job security better. But anytime I've felt like a shill, I've worked to move on, and PR work, largely, is accepting the life of being a company's shill, no matter what decisions that company makes.

Usual caveat: there are exceptions to this rule, and great people that work in PR. I just personally don't have the stomach for it.

 

There are many, many types of communications jobs aside from journalism or public relations. (not all of them sexy)

Social media for large companies, writing proposals, sports information, in-house/HR communications, communicating with customers, public affairs, etc., etc.

 

^^^^^^
More true than I realized for many years, as I hung on to a career in journalism because I hadn't envisioned alternatives that would capitalize on my background in writing and reporting while still being interesting and rewarding. Now I do internal corporate comms for a large company and basically use all the same skills I did before, while getting paid a lot more and having better job security. I still dabble in sports writing, but it's a hobby and it's a lot more enjoyable for me to treat it as such. It's not all roses. Definitely now work with people who are more buttoned up/corporate, but it seems like a small tradeoff. Of course once I'm downsized I'll rail against this place, but it wouldn't drive me back to journalism as a career. It'd just drive me to another communications job.

 

I'm another big no on public relations. I don't want to lie or bend the truth to the public, which I realize is rare at most companies. But it still happens (right Toyota?).

 

After two frustrating years as an entry-level sportswriter/copy editor (this was in the early '80s), I had the opportunity to leave the first newspaper I worked for and take a grad assistant position in the SID office at my alma mater. I was tempted and thought about it long and hard, but then decided I wasn't ready to give up on newspapers and journalism. It looked like a good decision two years later when I was hired by a major metro and I can't really say I regretted it, but I do wonder sometimes what the grad assistant position (which would have paid for a master's degree while providing SID/PR experience) might have led to -- for example, a guy I worked with on the school paper who took a similar grad assistant job with the SID is now an associate AD at a Big Ten school.

 

You asking if I went back or if I had it to do over again? Either way, I'd say yes, but I'd give a more emphatic yes if I had it to do over again.

But, I wish I had gone into advertising, more than PR

 

Would you rather fly on magic carpets or be reborn cross-eyed ? Jobbing up Public Relations with journalism is like coupling men's room smells with apple trees. The logic is a cross-eyed fail and I hope it always will be.

 

except it uses most of the same skills and involves many of the same contacts. but yeah, otherwise you're spot on...

 

I'll go with the magic carpet if I can get a seat belt installed. Those things don't look too safe.

There are all kinds of jobs under the PR umbrella that may be less distasteful. SID, communications/spokesman for government agency, etc. The spokesman jobs lap up newspaper and TV reporters.

 

Not any more. Just ask that frat at Virginia.