Public Relations

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PUBLIC RELATIONS

Varying in scope and duration, and differing in the methods used, all of the following examples have one thing in common—they were managed by practitioners of public relations and they would be recognized by any professional as public relations in practice:

Fifty years after Thomas A. Edison invented the electric lightbulb, Edward L. Bernays convinces industrial leaders to finance and support "Light's Golden Jubilee," a year-long nationwide celebration involving school children writing essays, inventors contributing their machines to an industrial museum, and an event in Dearborn, Michigan, attended by Edison, Henry Ford, President Herbert Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and a host of American inventors and presidents of corporations—a major "photo-op" if ever there was one.
A coalition of environmental groups, concerned about pollution of drinking water, pushes a state legislature to call a public referendum on a bond issue to mandate stronger control of pollutants. A grassroots campaign—costing little but involving hundreds of volunteers and a speaker's bureau— succeeds in passing the law and funding cleanups.
On the day of the initial public offering of its stock, the president of a software company rings the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange while his employees toss T-shirts and baseball caps to those on the trading floor—an event that is seen by hundreds of thousands on the cable business channel CNBC.
To raise money for a new pediatric wing of the local hospital, the mayor, city council members, president of the hospital, and other dignitaries agree to spend a day in mock "jail." They buy their way out of incarceration by phoning citizens and asking them to pledge contributions of money.
The manufacturer of a spray that eliminates shoe odors stages the "America's Dirtiest Sneaker" contest for kids, with regional winners flown to New York City and the grand prize winner appearing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Alarmed at the migration of manufacturing and service jobs from a decaying city center to suburbs and small towns, the city's Chamber of Commerce develops a partnership with labor unions, city government agencies, and the business school at a local university to implement an "It Pays to Stay" campaign, which includes a job fair, open houses at businesses, and a series of paid advertisements in the local news media.

In Lesly's Handbook of Public Relations and Communications (1998), Philip Lesly defines public relations by listing the following activities under the heading of public relations: publicity, communication, public affairs, issues management, government relations, investor public relations, employee relations, community relations, industry relations, minority relations, advertising, press agentry, promotion, media relations, and propaganda. Scott M. Cutlip and Allen H. Center, in their public relations textbook Effective Public Relations (1978, p. 37), provided a cogent definition of public relations: "Public relations is the planned effort to influence opinion through good character and responsible performance, based upon mutually satisfactory two-way communication." James E. Grunig and Todd Hunt, in their textbook Managing Public Relations (1984, p.6), further refined the definition: "Public relations is the management of communication between an organization and its publics [i.e., groups that can have consequences on the organization]." Public Relations News, an industry newsletter, defines public relations as "the management function which evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an individual or an organization with the public interest, and plans and executes a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance." The International Public Relations Association provides a slightly different perspective: "Public relations practice is the art and science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counseling organization leaders, and implementing planned programs of action which will serve both the organization's and the public's interest."

The pejorative words "hype" and "spin"—often favored by detractors of the public relations profession—are not even hinted at in these definitions. None of them even mentions "persuasion" or "selling," although the concept of "influence" is suggested. Among academics and professionals, the emphasis is on management and on two-way communication that benefits both the organization and its publics—a concept referred to as "mutually beneficial outcomes." That may be an idealistic view, especially when one considers that sports promotion, show-business campaigns, product marketing, and even the packaging of celebrities and political leaders are activities that fit in the tent of public relations. But every profession should aspire to an idealistic mission, so when the members of professional public relations associations renew their membership annually, their signature on the renewal form signifies that they agree to abide by a code of ethics that grows out of these definitions.

Development of Public Relations

Academics who study the history of public relations are fond of pointing to examples throughout American history: the Revolution against England (with that foremost of pseudo-events, the Boston Tea Party); the campaign for the drafting of a Constitution of the United States(with the eighty-five Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay); newspaper editor Amos Kendall's efforts to turn the image of Andrew Jackson from that of an unschooled bumpkin to a man of presidential stature; the suffrage movement to give women voting rights; and prohibition campaigns with angry teetotalers storming saloons with axes. Indeed, public relations-like activities were part of all these movements—the making of slogans, the distribution of leaflets and pamphlets, rallies and parades, speeches, and letters to editors of newspapers. And, of course, one always can point to the legendary ballyhoo and excesses of press agentry used by showman P. T. Barnum to lure audiences to his freakish circus attractions. Some push farther back in history to argue that edicts published and publicized in ancient Egypt and Rome to gain the compliance of those living outside the cities were public relations campaigns, as were the successful efforts to marshal support for the Crusades aimed at reclaiming the Holy Land between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries.

It makes sense, however, to chronicle the history of modern public relations from the time when the actual phrase "public relations" was coined and came into sufficient usage that people knew what it meant. The clearest example of the movement of the term into the mainstream language was in 1908 when Theodore Vail, president of the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (AT&T), titled the annual report of the firm Public Relations. Edward L. Bernays, in his book Public Relations (1952), said Vail was concerned that the company engage honestly and competently in practices that would pay a fair return to investors, thus assuring that there would be no basis for conflict between the company and its most important public.

Bernays, for his part, coined the term "public relations counsel" in the 1920s to describe a person such as himself who was more than a "press agent" disseminating press releases to the news media. The term "press agent" better described Ivy Lee, who in the early 1900s set up a "press bureau" to supply news that would provide publicity on the positions of coal mine owners during a series of bitter strikes against them by miners. In his Declaration of Principles, Lee laid the foundation for modern public relations by declaring certain principles. Among them was the concept that queries should be responded to promptly, that the information provided be complete and accurate, that business leaders should be open and honest with the press and the public, and that the press bureau was not to perform any of the functions of an advertising agency. Lee is probably most famous for his ability to rehabilitate the public reputation of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., following the bloody suppression of a coal mine strike in Colorado, blamed on Rockefeller. Lee convinced the reclusive Rockefeller to be more visible as a family man and encouraged him to allow more publicity about the millions he was donating to charity, particularly to medical research that would benefit all citizens.

Bernays is referred to as the father of public relations. Born in Vienna in 1891, a nephew of psychologist Sigmund Freud, Bernays served during World War I on the Committee on Public Information—also known as the Creel Committee after chairman George Creel—which developed the notion that mass persuasion could be based on the principles of social science. In 1919, Bernays established a public relations agency, along with Doris E. Fleischman, whom he married in 1922.

Bernays wrote Crystallizing Public Opinion, the first treatise on public relations, in 1923, followed by Propaganda in 1928. His textbook Public Relations was published in 1952. In his books, Bernays argued that publics were not sheep to be herded; they could be persuaded to do only what was in their best interest. He counseled management to let him find out what the public liked about an organization, and then he shaped messages that reinforced these beliefs. "Engineering of consent" was the Bernays approach, meaning that the gradual application of psychological theory would lead from identification with a cause to intensified interest and eventually to the action desired by the client organization.

Bernays lived past the age of one hundred, and he could list more than two hundred clients he had served in virtually every field of endeavor, including retailers, trade associations, big business, hotels, government, public-interest groups, and trade unions. Keenly interested in social welfare, he helped the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and similar organizations. On the other hand, those who consider him a master of "spin" point to gimmicks—like his promotion of cigarette smoking by women, accomplished by placing cigarette-smoking debutantes in New York's Easter Parade.

Colleges and universities began adding public relations to the curricula of journalism schools during the 1950s because corporations were hiring experienced newspaper and magazine reporters and editors to be in-house journalists, writing articles and placing them in the news media. In the 1960s, the growing focus on social responsibility and the consumer movement compelled businesses to switch from one-way message delivery to two-way communication, which meant listening to publics, responding to crises, resolving disputes, and maintaining relationships with key publics. By the 1970s, communication departments at many universities were taking on the role of training public relations professionals, using the tools of social science and preparing graduates to handle much more complicated tasks than publicity and public information.

The role of college preparation was examined in Public Relations Education for the 21st Century: A Port of Entry, the report of the Commission on Public Relations Education (1999). The group— which was comprised of forty-eight of the leading public relations practitioners and educators in the United States—summarized the status of public relations at the dawn of the millennium:

In recent years, public relations professionals have moved toward an emphasis on building and maintaining relationships and on becoming skilled active counselors at management's decision-making table. Driving the latest evolutionary movement are influential social trends: global business operations; mergers, acquisitions and consolidations; the empowerment of public opinion within the global village; segmented, fragmented audiences; the information explosion that has led to uncontrolled, gateless dissemination of messages; increased government regulation and oversight; issues of diversity and multi-culturalism in the workplace, marketplace and town hall, and the introduction of technology, including automation and computerization [pp. 9-10].

Increasingly, the professional recognizes the need for education beyond the baccalaureate to handle this complexity. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, approximately seventy schools offer master's degrees or graduate emphasis in public relations. A handful of universities offer the doctorate in public relations for those seeking careers in academic research.

Who are the people who shaped the public relations profession? The trade publication PR Week assembled a panel of experts to select "The 100 most influential PR people of the 20th century" (1999) The top ten, in order, were judged to be Harold Burson, founder of Burson & Marsteller, the largest public relations agency in the world; Edward L. Bernays; Arthur W. Page of AT&T, considered the first vice-president for public relations in a large corporation; Larry Foster of Johnson & Johnson, a former newspaperman who built that firm's public relations operation and gained fame for steering it through the Tylenol tampering crisis in 1982; Ivy Lee; Daniel Yankelovich, the researcher who developed polling to determine public opinion; John Hill, founder of Hill & Knowlton, a vigorous proponent of research and the first to seek clients overseas; David Drobis, CEO of Ketchum, who has led or served on the boards of most of the influential professional organizations in the industry; Larry Moskowitz of Medialink, who developed the video news release; and Scott Cutlip, the foremost architect of university public relations education, chronicler of the history of the field, and coauthor of a leading public relations textbook. The list indicates the variety of people who constitute the modern profession.

Settings, Structures, and Strategies

The four general settings in the field of public relations are (1) private and public corporations, (2) agencies and freelancers, (3) nonprofits, and (4) educational institutions.

Corporate public relations sometimes goes by the name corporate public affairs or corporate communications. In businesses, the chief public relations officer typically is a vice-president who sits on the management council and who has access to the chief executive officer in order to provide counsel and to receive information about any situation that may necessitate a communication program. As a senior officer of the corporation, he or she participates in planning and policymaking. The corporate public relations staff of anywhere from 5 to 250 people includes media relations specialists, investor relations people, speechwriters, publication directors, and video-conferencing specialists. Larger corporate operations have researchers, librarians, and special events coordinators.

This is not to say that all corporate communication is handled "in-house." Most businesses also use public relations agencies or freelancers to handle special tasks, such as running focus-group interviews, designing corporate brochures, making videos, or running a special community event on behalf of the corporation.

Public relations agencies may be worldwide in scope, with offices in half a dozen or more U.S. cities and as many places abroad. Those agencies often are allied with advertising and marketing groups so that they can provide complete communication services. There also are thousands of one-person agencies—often called John Doe and Associates or Jane Doe and Associates to indicate that the sole practitioner has support from free-lance writers, artists, and photographers. Mediumsize agencies of five to twenty-five persons may specialize in health care, product public relations, sports promotion, retail promotion, entertainment, travel and tourism, or fundraising, to name but a few areas of focus. Often, the principal person in a public relations agency has had prior corporate experience and left the corporate world to set up the agency. And corporations, which prefer and can pay for people with several years of experience, often hire away agency employees who have worked on the accounts of the corporation and are familiar with the company.

Nonprofit organizations have a different culture and usually need professionals with a somewhat different mindset. Most nonprofit organizations—arts organizations, health groups such as the American Cancer Society and Project Hope, environmental groups, consumer organizations, and community improvement associations—have two primary tasks: fundraising to enable the organization to survive, and public information to accomplish the goals of the organization. Public relations specialists working for nonprofit organizations must work constantly on ways to attract financial support and volunteers, as well as on ways to get their stories into the news media at little or no cost.

Educational relations is a burgeoning field, as universities and colleges become more and more competitive for students, for research money, and for public appreciation of the complex roles educational institutions play in society. Whereas universities once satisfied their needs with a small news bureau and perhaps a speechwriter for the president, the top research universities now employ well over one hundred people in marketing, community relations, legislative relations, business relations, fundraising, and sports promotion. Little wonder that on those campuses public relations also is among the fastest-growing undergraduate majors.

Whatever the setting, public relations is now so vital to an organization and so complex in its application that creativity and inspiration—which might have carried the day in another era—are not the hallmarks of the field. Strategic planning is the key. Because public relations is a management function and because practitioners must be able to demonstrate how they support the mission and goals of an organization, practitioners must be able to explain how their tactics support strategic goals and objectives.

Any organization has a broad mission, out of which grow general goals—and goals are achieved by setting specific and measurable objectives. Heads of public relations departments must set communication goals and objectives. A goal might be to increase information-seeking behaviors among mothers concerning the need to have children vaccinated for certain diseases. Out of that goal might grow specific objectives, such as increase by threefold the number of mothers calling an information hotline or requesting a brochure or, in one year, double the number of mothers bringing children to a clinic.

By its nature, then, the public relations function in an organization is one of coordinating the many parts and programs of an organization to assure that internal publics (employees) and external publics (community, consumers, governments, suppliers) receive the needed information.

At a conference sponsored by a public relations professional organization, there are generally one or two large sessions that are attended by everyone and feature a major speaker on a general topic. The rest of the time, attendees meet in their specialized divisions to talk about their special interests: financial public relations, health communication, travel and tourism, or environmental communication and technology. There are generalists in the field, but as in many professions, practitioners tend to gravitate toward specialties.

The tools and techniques used by public relations practitioners to achieve communication objectives are limitless. The list that follows— only a sampling—indicates many of the standard techniques:

Prepare a press kit introducing a new product and explaining its uses.
Disseminate a statement explaining the position of the organization on a public issue.
Prepare the president of the organization to appear on televised public affairs programs.
Design a program to encourage employees to volunteer for community organizations.
Select a celebrity spokesperson to represent the organization at public events.
Write a letter to the editor opposing the views expressed in an editorial of a newspaper.
Attend a public hearing to support or oppose a referendum affecting the organization.
Design a booth for the county fair to disseminate information about the organization.
Participate in a career program at a local high school.
Donate products or services to a local homeless shelter.
Publicize a program designed by the human resources department to help employees quit smoking.
Plan a one hundredth anniversary celebration for the organization.
Help raise funds for a new state or regional museum of arts and crafts.
Plan a campaign to introduce a new semi-professional sports franchise in the area.
Write a crisis communication plan for the organization.
Design a "letter to our consumers" advertisement on a controversial issue.
Form a coalition with another organization to leverage the public relations power of that group.

Whatever the tools and techniques, it is crucial that public relations practitioners be able to demonstrate they had a reason for selecting the tactics, and that those tactics were able to deliver on the stated objectives. It no longer is sufficient to agree that everyone "felt good" after a public relations program was put in place.

Thus, as in the allied fields of advertising and marketing, research now is of increased importance in public relations. Management wants numbers to prove that programs and departments are performing their functions. One has no hope of winning a Silver Anvil award from the Public Relations Society of America if research was not performed. Judges are instructed to look for evidence that there was formative research before a program was put in place and evaluative research afterward to assess results. And counting the number of "media hits" or news clippings is not enough in the evaluative stage. If a survey of a target public was conducted as part of the initial research, a follow-up survey asking the same questions of the same public is necessary to demonstrate the effect of a communication campaign.

In the past, practitioners had few tools for real research and/or little preparation in performing research. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, public relations textbooks provide guidance on sampling techniques, conducting focus group interviews, and content analysis of messages. To some extent at the undergraduate level, and definitely at the graduate level of education, professionals are trained to do research. Publications such as Guidelines for Setting Measurable Public Relations Objectives (Anderson and Hadley, 1999) enable professionals to track objectives and results so they can be reported to management in a meaningful way. In practice, much research is performed by outside agencies that are hired for that specific purpose.

Maintaining Professional Standards

Professions related to areas such as medicine, accounting, engineering, and law have requirements that include higher education at an accredited institution, passage of an entry exam, certification by a board, and maintenance of credentials through continuing education. Most mass communication professions, including public relations, do not have these requirements. A simple explanation is that many in the field do not believe that rigorous special preparation and absorption of a specific body of knowledge are necessary for most public relations positions, and the public has never demanded the same accountability it desires for doctors and lawyers. Another reason cited by some practitioners is that licensing or credentialing could interfere with the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech that mass communicators hold dear.

Bernays advocated licensing, pleading with professional groups to embrace it. He argued it was necessary in order to bring respect to the field and to prevent charlatans from passing themselves off as public relations counselors. He never got far with his campaign, and some said he was not the best proponent for licensing, given some of the dubious promotions with which he was associated.

While the public and the profession may not see a need for licensing, many feel that public relations may not be a universally trusted profession, and thus some form of credentialing is necessary to help clients and publics recognize which practitioners have education and experience in the field.

Some employers favor hiring practitioners who have a college degree in journalism, communication, or business and have taken courses teaching public relations skills. And some employers also favor hiring practitioners who have joined one or more of the several professional organizations in the field. However, considering that as many as half a million Americans work in public relations—or in public relations-like activities—and the combined membership of the major professional organizations is about fifty thousand, many in the field do not feel association is necessary.

The two largest groups based in the United States are the Public Relations Association of America (PRSA), which has nearly twenty thousand members, and the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), with nearly fourteen thousand members. There is some overlap in membership. In the 1980s, the two groups came close to merging, but the effort to create one dominant professional association foundered over issues of focus and identity.

Both organizations offer accreditation to professionals who take a day-long examination of their skills and knowledge. PRSA confers the distinction of APR (i.e., Accredited in Public Relations), and IABC awards the distinction of ABC (i.e., Accredited Business Communicator). Recipients of the designation usually identify themselves as John Doe, APR, or Jane Doe, ABC. Accreditation is not required of PRSA or IABC members, and it is most popular with counselors in small agencies who want the designation for their business cards. Some corporations automatically grant a raise to a public relations employee who achieves accreditation.

Examples of other organizations include the International Public Relations Association (IPRA), the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS), the Council of Communication Management (CCM), which caters to managers and consultants, and the Arthur W. Page Society, serving the needs of top public relations practitioners such as large agency heads and corporate vice-presidents of public affairs. There are organizations for many specialized fields, such as agricultural public relations and investor relations. All such groups enable practitioners to network, to benchmark with other organizations, and to enhance their skills and abilities. They accomplish this through publications, conferences, workshops, and award programs.

The field of public relations also benefits from a growing body of knowledge coming out of academia, and scholars are visible in the leading professional organizations. Foundations sponsored by both PRSA and IABC, along with the independent Institute for Public Relations (IPR), provide grants for campus-based research on public relations topics.

A study by three public relations scholars, titled "Influential Authors and Works of the Public Relations Scholarly Literature" (Pasadeos, Renfro, and Hanily, 1999), revealed that, unlike other disciplines, public relations is typified by a concentration of scholars, institutions, and topics. During the five-year period studied, James E. Grunig of the University of Maryland was by far the most cited scholar, and his coauthored textbook Managing Public Relations (Grunig and Hunt, 1984) was the most cited work in the field. The book Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management (1992), edited by Grunig, has been heavily cited in the field, as has his theory-building work with Larissa S. Grunig.

The most heavily cited serial publications in the public relations literature, according to the study by Yorgo Pasadeos and colleagues (1999), are Public Relations Review, followed by Journalism Quarterly, Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Journal, and Public Relations Quarterly. All continue to be leading journals in the field, except Public Relations Journal, which has been supplanted by other PRSA publications. Grunig was founding editor of the Journal of Public Relations Research, which is published in cooperation with the Public Relations Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). The scholars whose work is often cited—and who also are active in academic and professional organ-izations—include Glenn Broom, David Dozier, and Martha Lauzen of San Diego State University, whose work on public relations roles has been heavily cited and is the center of a major cluster of research. Robert Heath of the University of Houston had the largest number of published articles during the period of the 1999 study. He is the author of Strategic Issues Management (1997) and coauthor (with Richard Alan Nelson of Louisiana State University) of Issues Management: Corporate Public Policy Making in an Information Society (1986). Larissa Grunig, in addition to her theory-building work, is a leading authority on gender issues and research methods. Elizabeth Lance Toth of Syracuse University and Carolyn Garrett Cline of the University of Southern California are the editors of Beyond the Velvet Ghetto, an examination of women in the field of public relations. Judy Van Slyke Turk is the author of diverse articles and has examined the "information subsidy" provided to the news media by public relations practitioners in the form of news releases and videotape. Kathleen Fearn-Banks of the University of Washington is an expert on crisis communication, and Kathleen S. Kelly of the University of Southwestern Louisiana has been honored for her articles and books showing the relationship between public relations and fundraising. Douglass Ann Newsom of Texas Christian University was the first female academic to serve as president of PRSA. Debra Ann Miller of the University of Portland was the first woman of color to serve as PRSA president.

The Centrality of Public Relations

Say "television" or "radio" or "newspaper" or "magazine" or "book," and everyone knows exactly what is being talked about. People watch television, listen to the radio, and read the print media. It is very clear what these items are and what they do. Say advertising, and everyone has a clear idea of what that is: the paid messages encountered in the mass media—the main reason the media are free or cheap, because advertising is paying the bill.

Say public relations, however, and perhaps people are not so sure. It cannot be touched or felt. Most people cannot explain its role and purpose readily. So, does that mean it is a marginal form of mass communication? Hardly. Public relations plays a central role in much that occurs in the arena of mass communication. It is just that public relations often works best when its role is not apparent. Like a giant iceberg, seven-eighths of what goes on in public relations is below the surface in the sea of information we encounter every day.

Just as advertising provides important revenue to the media of mass communication, public relations provides a stream of information from which the media can select. Why did the local newspaper cover the grand opening of a new supermarket? Because a public relations agency hired a celebrity to cut the ribbon, and it informed the media that the celebrity would be available for interviews afterward. Why is a university professor appearing on a televised public affairs broadcast? Because the news service of the university included a profile of her and her area of expertise on a website where broadcast producers can find expert sources. Why is a town meeting on preventing crime being held at the high school auditorium? Because the mayor's public information department, aided by funds from the public relations departments of area businesses, has put the evening together and promoted it in the news media.

Professionals in allied fields often misunderstand the function of public relations and how it relates to their jobs. Certainly, publishers and broadcast executives understand the benefits of the "information subsidy" their enterprises receive when someone else foots the bill for pictures, text, and access to interview subjects. But reporters and editors may not appreciate the role of public relations in providing the raw material with which they work. That means public relations practitioners must be able to "pitch" their stories so the journalist sees the value of the information and feels aided in informing the public rather than pressured or annoyed into using material.

Similarly, advertising and marketing people are often not clear about what public relations people are doing. In an age when "integrated communication" is seen as necessary so that organizations speak with one voice and so that every message we see about a product or idea is consistent with other messages, public relations people need to work closely with the allied fields. One controversy that exists in the persuasive professions is whether advertising, marketing, or public relations people have the overarching perspective that makes them most central to a communication enterprise. Large public relations agencies either represent themselves as being "full service" or can tell clients they are associated with an advertising agency that handles creative work and media placement.

More and more public relations practitioners must take a global perspective because so many activities and enterprises have become international in scope. Most corporations do business abroad, so most large public relations agencies either have offices in major world capitals or they partner with local agencies in other countries. Even educational and nonprofit practitioners find themselves spanning national boundaries. Rescue and relief agencies in the United States regularly help other nations, and their fundraising is international. Educational institutions have exchange programs and distance education arrangements with universities in other countries.

The number one global priority for public relations practitioners in the twenty-first century is maintaining and strengthening support for the profession in the face of questions about the methods and the ethics of "PR"—the belief that if something is "just PR" it is not truthful communication. Counselor Chester Burger (1998) told professionals:

Perhaps too many of our corporate messages are being framed in exactly the same way they were presented a quarter-century ago. We seem to pretend that the cynicism and changed values of a new generation don't exist.… If public relations advocacy is to be effective and persuasive, our messages should be quiet and civil, not angry and adversarial. And, in the age of the Internet, we must be ready to respond instantly.

Similar to lawyers, public relations practitioners are counselors and advocates. And, similar to lawyers, they must work hard to earn respect for their profession.

Bibliography

Anderson, Forrest W., and Hadley, Linda. (1999). Guidelines for Setting Measurable Public Relations Objectives. Gainesville, FL: The Institute for Public Relations.

Bernays, Edward L. (1923). Crystallizing Public Opinion. New York: Liveright.

Bernays, Edward L. (1928). Propaganda. New York:Liveright.

Bernays, Edward L. (1952). Public Relations. Norman:University of Oklahoma Press.

Burger, Chester. (1998). "A Discussion of Truth and Credibility in an Era of Disbelief." Institute for Public Relations Distinguished Lecture, New York, Dec. 2.

Commission on Public Relations Education. (1999). Public Relations Education for the 21st Century: A Port of Entry. New York: Public Relations Society of America.

Cutlip, Scott M., and Center, Allen H. (1978). Effective Public Relations, 5th edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Grunig, James E., ed. (1992). Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Grunig, James E., and Hunt, Todd. (1984). Managing Public Relations. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Heath, Robert L. (1997). Strategic Issues Management. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.

Heath, Robert L., and Nelson, Richard A. (1986). Issues Management: Corporate Public Policy Making in an Information Society. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.

Lesly, Philip, ed. (1998). Lesly's Handbook of Public Relations and Communications, 5th edition. Chicago: Probus.

"The 100 Most Influential PR People of the 20th Century." (1999). PR Week, Oct. 18, p. 26.

Pasadeos, Yorgo; Renfro, R. Bruce; and Hanily, Mary Lynn. (1999). "Influential Authors and Works of the Public Relations Scholarly Literature: A Network of Recent Research." Journal of Public Relations Research 11(1):29-52.

"Would You Ever Recommend that Your Son or Daughter Pursue a Career in PR?" (1999). PR Week, Nov. 1, p. 12.

Todd Hunt

Encyclopedia of Communication and Information