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Saturday, May 12, 2007

Should PR be a Business Major?


Absolutely not. At a recent PRSSA meeting, one of the speakers expressed his concern for the administration at the University of Oregon talking about turning PR into a business major. I feel this would be detrimental to the PR industry because business professors don't incorporate grammar-specific writing exercises into their curriculum and the students are therefore a little, umm, less fortunate in the area of writing, if that's the right phrase. I'm not speaking for everyone in the business school because I'm positive that there are some individuals who write beautifully as a business major, but then again I'm almost positive that at least one person in the business school couldn't tell a passive verb from a predicate nominative (nightmarish flashback from Grammar 101).

Moreover, there are differences that walk a fine line between business (i.e. marketing), public relations, and advertising. Marketing has sales goals, advertising has awareness goals, and public relations has behavior-influencing goals. If public relations turned into a business major, business executives would likely end up regurgitating a bunch of messages containing jargon and unclear writing.


With the rise of business blogging as a new way to create a bond with consumers, having a PR practioner to manage the blog is that much more important. According to a recent article on Yahoo news, "Writing Blogs Can Be Hard, So Get 'Help,'" growing numbers of writers and Web design firms are writing and posting blog entries on behalf of clients who want to have blogs but are poor writers. This is where our job as a public relations practioner comes in.


Let's leave the creation and effective communication of business messages up to the PR folks, and the marketing/sales strategy up to the business folks, please.


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