978-1319058517 Chapter 12

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Chapter 12

Public Relations and Framing the Message

In this chapter, we will:

• Study the impact of public relations and the historical conditions that affected its development as a

modern profession

• Look at nineteenth-century press agents and the role that railroad and utility companies played in

developing corporate PR

• Consider the rise of modern PR, particularly the influences of former reporters Ivy Lee and Edward

Bernays

• Explore the major practices and specialties of public relations

• Examine the reasons for the long-standing antagonism between journalists and members of the PR

profession, and the social responsibilities of public relations in a democracy

Preview Story: Public relations professionals often try to influence audiences through social media outlets

like Twitter and Facebook. However, not all interactions can lead to positive results, leaving the

professionals to work harder to shape the outcome.

I. Early Developments in Public Relations

A. P. T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill.

B. Big Business and Press Agents.

C. The Birth of Modern Public Relations.

1. Ivy Ledbetter Lee.

2. Edward Bernays.

II. The Practice of Public Relations

A. Approaches to Organized Public Relations.

B. Performing Public Relations.

1. Research: Formulating the Message.

2. Conveying the Message.

3. Media Relations.

4. Special Events and Pseudo-Events.

5. Community and Consumer Relations.

6. Government Relations and Lobbying.

C. Public Relations Adapts to the Internet Age.

D. Public Relations during a Crisis.

III. Tensions between Public Relations and the Press

A. Elements of Professional Friction.

1. Undermining Facts and Blocking Access.

2. Promoting Publicity and Business as News.

B. Shaping the Image of Public Relations.

C. Alternative Voices.

IV. Public Relations and Democracy

Case Study: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis

Examining Ethics: Public Relations and Bananas

Media Literacy and the Critical Process: The Invisible Hand of PR

Digital Job Outlook: Media Professionals Speak about Jobs in the Public Relations Industry

LECTURE IDEAS

I. Early Developments in Public Relations

• Describe the role of P. T. Barnum, Buffalo Bill, and railroads and utility companies in the

development of corporate public relations.

• Detail the rise of modern public relations, noting various PR tactics pioneered by Ivy Lee and Edward

Bernays.

• John Stauber, who runs the Center for Media and Democracy, said that Ivy Lee would probably

have shared the mantle of “Father of Public Relations” with Edward Bernays “if he hadn’t made the

fatal career mistake of going to work with the Nazis, and then dying before he could clean up his own

image.”

II. The Practice of Public Relations

• According to Jack O’Dwyer’s Newsletter (one of the industry’s touchstones), PR firms have

recently begun to have relationships with their clients that are much more like those of ad agencies

(indeed, more and more are actually owned by ad agencies). That means unbridled enthusiasm for a

client’s goals and complete client confidentiality. In fact, the world of PR has become increasingly

insular.

• The median annual salary for PR managers in January 2016 was $96,294 according to salary.com.

• Because the PR industry has tended to skew female in the last two decades, men have an advantage

when applying for jobs and promotions.

• Successful PR professionals have developed their digital skills, including:

1. understanding how to use the analytical tools that capture what is being said on social media sites

(e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Snapchat, and Instagram) and how to interpret

the results of these social media measurement tools and connect them to traditional media

measurement results;

2. knowing how to manage an online community so that it feels as though the client is interacting

and engaging with its audiences;

3. knowing how to create content that is suited for a variety of digital platforms, going beyond text

and understanding how to effectively use video, audio, and images; and

4. understanding search-engine optimization (SEO) and knowing how to optimize text, images, and

video so that people can find them easily.

(Adapted from a September 21, 2010 blog post by Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen, a holding

company for a group of worldwide PR consultancies. Available at:

https://timdyson.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/what-digital-skills-should-a-pr-pro-have.)

• Today, most PR departments are almost universally called “communications” departments, an

indication that PR firms are detecting bad vibes from their own name. So instead of PR campaigns,

communications departments now create “communication programs” or “communication efforts.”

The name “public relations” has also evolved into “strategic communication.”

• Review today’s PR tactics (including the use of social media), and discuss their effectiveness.

• Corporations use a variety of ways to make their “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) visible and

to give the public a positive view of their brand. Ask students if their high schools had an exclusive

agreement with any athletic clothing corporation (e.g., Nike) or beverage company (e.g., Coca-Cola).

Did any corporations make a large donation to their college in exchange for having a campus facility

named for a brand?

• Two of the biggest attractions in Atlanta are corporate headquarters. Coke has a popular museum,

and CNN gives tours. Both corporate headquarters have gift shops, too.

• Apple initiated the practice of donating computers to schools, a sure way to generate good PR.

Apple’s donations, along with those from other computer companies, however, are tied in with a

marketing strategy for accustoming young people, their parents, and teachers to a certain computer or

software brand. Donations also enable the company to make future sales and upgrades because the

school has already committed to its brand. Other companies outside the computer industry donate

computers as well, and although these moves are also widely regarded as philanthropic, these

companies are usually undergoing a computer upgrade and need to get rid of their old systems

anyway. Some computer donations have been contingent on students and their families shopping at a

certain local store and collecting register receipts to prove it or on writing letters to relatives and

friends begging them to buy magazine subscriptions in return for more school equipment.

• To enhance consumer relations, retailers such as Pier 1 Imports invite their “preferred” customers

to do secret surveillance of the company’s own employees. Pier 1 mails credit card customers a form

asking them to come to the store, document their consumer relations experience, and mail the

responses back to the company, all for a discount on their next purchase. The PR strategy works in

more than one way: It brings customers back to the stores, it ensures that store employees are on their

toes in terms of individual consumer relations, and it gives the consumer a sense of control and

ownership in how the store is run.

• American Express spent $6 million to tell us about how they had donated less than $2 million to

renovate the Statue of Liberty. American Express was one of the first companies to do “cause-

related” marketing, a strategy whereby a company supports a cause but generally spends more money

to celebrate its own generosity than to help the cause. In 1983, American Express offered to support

the renovation of the Statue of Liberty over a three-month period. The more people spent on their

credit cards, the campaign urged, the more funds would be raised for the project. The campaign raised

$1.7 million toward statue renovation. Ultimately, the generosity came from people being inspired to

use their American Express cards to help preserve the landmark. As they created more debt for

themselves, more profit was ultimately generated for American Express, a percentage of which went

to the statue renovation project.

• Where do stories come from? The answer is often PR Newswire, which publishes press releases. PR

Newswire says its content reaches “nearly 10,000 websites portals, and databases” across the world.

Its “media portal PR Newswire for Journalist has more than 37,000 active monthly users.” Visiting

https://prnmedia.prnewswire.com can be eye-opening, especially for students considering careers in

journalism.

• Explore online press releases and other information offered online directly by a major company.

Although any number of companies or sites would work, one possibility is the site for General

Electric (http://www.ge.com). Click the “news” tab to find fairly traditionally formatted press

releases, links to news articles about GE, and video and audio produced by the company for use by

the press and the public.

• The environmental and financial damage to the Gulf Coast from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil

spill will take decades to clean up. However, one element of the news story that might never be fully

cleaned up is BP’s public image. This damage occurred both through traditional news reports and

through constant coverage of the disaster on the Internet. From a live feed of the massive amount of

oil gushing from the burst pipe in the Gulf, to viral video parodies of the company’s often-inept

responses, to YouTube videos of disaster-relief efforts, the digital messages about the disaster took on

a life of their own. In a segment aptly titled “PR-mageddon,” Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert

Report, discussed these Internet phenomena and observed how BP’s public relations team tried to

exert control over Web coverage of the spill. The clip (some strong language) is available at

http://www.cc.com/episodes/55xano/the-colbert-report-june-8–2010—mark-frauenfelder-season-6-

ep-06073.

• Discuss ethics in public relations. Consider new ethical issues that arise with the use of social media

and other Internet tools. You might wish to refer to the spotlight on Examining Ethics: Public

Relations and Bananas in the textbook.

III. Tensions between Public Relations and the Press

• Discuss the conflicted yet “codependent” relationship between PR professionals and journalists.

Show examples of obvious press releases that became newspaper or broadcast news stories.

• VNRs are particularly effective in highlighting the tensions between PR and press as well as the

tensions between government regulators (usually the FCC or FTC) and broadcasters. Show students

the “Rescue Sleep” VNR without telling them it is a VNR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xo0HlYXHlQ.

• Begin 25 seconds into the video, where the VNR actually begins (the first 25 seconds give

away that it’s a VNR and were not designed to be aired). End at 2:05, before the “Suggested

Tag.”

• The PR Watch report, “A First for the FCC: Fining Fake News!” (available at:

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2007/09/6478/first-fcc-fining-fake-news), documents FCC action

to fine Comcast for airing the VNR without disclosing its source.

• A 2006 Toronto Globe and Mail article reported that between 2000 and 2003, ExxonMobil Corp.

gave more than $8.6 million to think tanks, consumer groups, and policy organizations to configure a

PR assault on the idea of global warming. Despite the World Meteorological Society’s

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consensus on climate change, ExxonMobil and a

large contingent of oil and related industries have promoted the “research” of a minority of scientists

who generally receive undisclosed amounts from industry interests to undermine the IPCC consensus

and instill disagreement (or the notion of disagreement) in the science community. The assault against

the global warming consensus is an example of what PR practitioners call “the echo chamber

technique.” A PR firm finds a scientist (often retired or past his or her prime) who says there is no

global warming to worry about. The PR firm then takes this statement and promotes it, and the

scientist goes on the road giving speeches, talking to reporters, doing press briefings, and making sure

the message is repeated over and over.

• Here are some tactics used by corporations or politicians to try to “kill” a negative story, as

documented by Alicia Mundy in the Columbia Journalism Review:

• Trying to take the story away from the reporter by threatening legal consequences if the story is

pursued, printed, or aired. Managing editors then ask themselves if the story is worth the hassle.

• Trying to control the timing or placement of the bad news such as by releasing it on Friday

afternoon or, better yet, Friday at midnight.

• Playing on the competitive nature of journalism. If information is released to one news

organization, its rival will often feel obliged to find a new angle or will ignore the scoop.

(See Alicia Mundy, “Games PR People Play; Corporate Damage Control Turns Tough,” Columbia

Journalism Review, September/October 2003, p. 10.)

• Two PR consultants, Al Ries and his daughter/consulting partner, Laura Ries, have predicted the fall

of advertising in favor of more ambitious PR campaigns. “All the recent brand successes have been

basically PR successes, not advertising successes,” they wrote in a 2003 Ad Age article. They name

Red Bull, Harry Potter, JetBlue, Linux, Palm, Starbucks, PlayStation, and Microsoft’s Xbox as

examples of products that relied almost solely on public relations to get them into the public

consciousness. “No new brand is as clearly a PR success as Botox. Imagine trying to use advertising

to introduce a new product with the theme ‘Let us inject a toxin made from the bacteria that causes

botulism into your forehead to cure your wrinkles.’ Yet PR did just that. In eight years, with no

advertising at all, Botox became a $300 million brand,” they wrote. The Ries’ strategy is to first use

PR to change minds and then turn to advertising to keep people from changing their minds back.

• The “Will it blend?” campaign, launched by BlendTec in 2006, is a mixture of PR and advertising.

BlendTec created a series of videos, shot for under $100, that featured a nerdy/cheesy, science-guy

host putting unlikely objects into the BlendTec blender: a video camera, golf balls, an iPod, marbles,

glow sticks, and so on. BlendTec released the videos on YouTube hoping to generate a social media

marketing buzz. The result was an enormously successful viral video campaign that, according to one

media analyst, “is the stuff of marketing legend, like Apple’s ‘1984 Macintosh’ campaign or Wendy’s

‘Where’s the beef?’ advertisements.” The company drove more than six million visitors to its Web

site (http://www.willitblend.com) in less than a week, and sales went up 43 percent.

IV. Public Relations and Democracy

• Explore the impact of good and bad public relations on democracy. For example, point out the use of

pseudo-events and “Twitter-wars” during the 2016 election.

• U.S. Government Accountability Office found two examples in which the U.S. government broke the

law in 2004 by using video news releases and issued a notice to all departments and agencies

regarding the transgressions. The seven-paragraph memorandum/admonition, “Prepacked News

Stories” (available at http://www.gao.gov/decisions/appro/304272.htm), provides a brief and helpful

summary of the law regarding use of taxpayer funds for publicity or propaganda.

• The rescue of Private Jessica Lynch is an example of how easy it is to manipulate the press in time of

war, but it also shows how such manipulations can backfire. An injured Lynch was captured by Iraqi

forces after her Humvee took a wrong turn near the southern city of Nasiriyah in March 2003. She

was rescued nine days later, when U.S. troops stormed the hospital where she was kept. In the first

version of her story, the Washington Post, quoting U.S. officials, wrote that Lynch had sustained stab

and bullet wounds while fiercely resisting capture (“fighting to the death” was the chosen expression).

The paper reported that Iraqis had then taken Lynch to a local hospital, where she was slapped about

while being interrogated. She was saved thanks to the intervention of an Iraqi lawyer, Mohammed

Odeh al-Rehaief, whose wife was working at the hospital. Al-Rehaief had risked his life by telling

U.S. authorities where they could find Lynch. After the rescue, the Pentagon released a five-minute

film showing the assault on the hospital, saying the troops had come under fire but had managed to

whisk Lynch away by helicopter.

Six weeks later, a different story started to emerge, most notably thanks to a BBC documentary that

included interviews with the Iraqi doctors who treated Lynch. They said Lynch had no bullet or stab

wounds but had suffered a broken arm, a broken thigh, and a dislocated ankle when her Humvee

crashed. They said they gave her the best care they could under the circumstances, had tried to deliver

her to U.S. forces, but had turned around when they heard gunfire as their ambulance approached a

U.S. checkpoint. They also said there were no Iraqi soldiers in the hospital at the time of the U.S.

assault and that Iraqi military had fled the area the day before.

Al-Rehaief, the Iraqi lawyer, was granted asylum in the United States and was offered a book deal

and a job in Washington. In another twist to the story, the Al-Rehaief book was promoted by Lauri

Fitz-Pegado, who is best known for her work coaching a Kuwaiti girl in her phony testimony that

she’d seen Iraqi soldiers murder Kuwaiti babies.

Lynch herself was able to tell her story seven months after the fact when she left the army. Her

biography, written by former New York Times feature writer Rick Bragg, came out in November

2003. A made-for-TV movie about Lynch’s ordeal was also released that November.

(Two interesting sources on this story: John Kampfner, “The Truth about Jessica,” Guardian, May

15, 2003, 2; and Christopher Hanson, “American Idol: The Press Finds the War’s True Meaning,”

Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2003. Also interesting is the Washington Post original

story: Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb, “‘She Was Fighting to the Death’: Details Emerging of W.

Va. Soldier’s Capture and Rescue,” Washington Post, April 3, 2003, p. A1.)

MEDIA LITERACY DISCUSSIONS AND EXERCISES

RESHAPING A CONTROVERSIAL IMAGE

Imagine that you work for a high-powered PR firm, and a controversial client (e.g., a tobacco company, a

pharmaceutical company, the government of Saudi Arabia) hires your firm to reshape the client’s image.

To perform this job, what strategies would you employ and why? (Before you begin, your class may want

to discuss whether the firm would refuse to work for any clients.)

HELPING YOUR COLLEGE RELATE TO ITS PUBLICS

Pre-Exercise Question: What’s a recent public relations disaster at your college or university?

Identify a problem or situation on your campus that could use PR strategies to improve relations with

groups on or off campus. (Recent examples include bad publicity that focused on campus sexual assaults,

racist and homophobic incidents, deceptive marketing by for-profit colleges, and fraternities and

sororities.) Next, agree on a general goal or solution for the kinds of strategies that could serve to meet

your goal and improve public relations. Do the strategies meet the PRSA Ethics Code?

(See “PRSA Member Statement of Professional Values” in the textbook or http://www.prsa.org for the

complete code.) Could the strategies backfire?

Do the strategies embrace a democratic process and serve all parties’ “public interest”?

THE INFLUENCE OF PRESS RELEASES

Pre-Exercise Question: What influence do press releases have?

In this Critical Process exercise, track three to five press releases from the time they are released

through any resulting news stories. First check with a PR organization that issues releases. For example,

you can check with your university’s PR office or the athletic department’s sports information office.

Both offices may post their press releases on a Web site as well. On the day that the press releases are

issued, track the local print and electronic news stories that are generated. (Alternatively, you could track

broadcast news stories.)

1. Description. Describe your list of stories. How many stories are there? Which newspaper(s)/news

organization(s) used the press releases?

2. Analysis. What kinds of patterns emerge? Do most publications and broadcasts seem to be willing to

report the information in a press release? Did the reporters do any additional investigation, or did they

take the point of view of the release? Did certain types of releases fail to get any coverage? What

kinds of stories received more prominence and coverage?

3. Interpretation. What changes, if any, were made between each press release and the corresponding

news story? Why do you believe that these changes were made? Do newspapers/news organizations

ever print releases verbatim? Should they? Which version—the press release or the news story—

represented the better story? Why? (Keep in mind that each story has a different purpose and

audience.)

4. Evaluation. How much should press releases drive a newspaper’s/news organization’s coverage of an

institution like a local college or university?

5. Engagement. Are there potentially significant stories on campus that don’t get reported because they

are not likely to be suggested to the press via a press release? Research some of these ideas, and

develop the information a little further. Then pitch the story idea to a local newspaper (via phone or e-

mail).

PERSUADING PEOPLE TO ACT FOR THE GREATER GOOD

Pre-Exercise Question: Why don’t some people recycle?

This Critical Process exercise is a case study for nonprofit public relations; it involves the process of

persuading citizens to make a minor personal investment of time and energy for the good of the

community.

As the new environmental coordinator for the make-believe city of Murphystown (population

100,000), your duty is to get the citizens to reduce, reuse, and recycle their household garbage. More than

six months ago, a citywide curbside recycling program went into effect. Each household received plastic

bins for separating its paper, metal, glass, and plastic products. Pickup is every two weeks, on the same

day as weekly garbage collections. Many citizens of Murphystown, though, are not recycling or are

forgetting to put out their recycling bins on time and then later overloading the containers. Others are

incorrectly sorting their recyclables, and still others are putting nonrecyclable waste into their bins.

Moreover, few citizens are composting yard waste, such as leaves and grass clippings, and many are still

putting those items into their garbage cans, a practice that is now illegal. So, after six months, the new

recycling program has been deemed a failure, and you have been hired for the unenviable task of fixing

the situation. A survey indicates that Murphystowners are accustomed to a throwaway convenience

culture, and they believe that recycling and composting are too time-consuming, with little benefit for

them.

The recycling program needs to be a success. The program will extend the life of the city’s landfill

from twenty to seventy years, and it will also provide (through the sale of bulk recycled garbage) an

important revenue source for the operation of the city’s environmental management system. Your job

success depends on your ability to turn the program around. The city’s mayor has privately demanded that

you dramatically improve the citizen participation rate in the program in a year; if you don’t, you’ll be

fired.

Your Job:

1. Identify all the public relations problems in this scenario. Who are all the “publics” you need to

consider? How will you communicate with them?

2. Your solutions should shun top-down administrative edicts and, instead, encourage open, democratic

communication and creative participation. How will you frame your strategies and messages to do

that? How will you get all residents of the entire city of Murphystown to make a personal investment

in energy and time for a long-term plan for which they may not see immediate tangible benefits?

3. Consider not only the message but the entire organizational process. Are there things you could do to

change the entire recycling process that might create higher participation rates and improved

performance? How will you find out which parts of the process to improve?

TRACKING RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE PUBLIC RELATIONS INDUSTRY: A

SEMESTER-LONG CRITICAL PROCESS EXERCISE AND PAPER

In this exercise students discover the most recent developments in the industry, and they become familiar

with industry trade sources. The paper they produce is due in sections, which correspond with the steps in

the Critical Process.

1. Description. Read industry trade sources to get a sense of the main issues affecting the public

relations industry. Look at the Web sites of industry trade associations and professional societies.

(Links to Web sites of some industry trade sources are given in the Classroom Media Sources below.)

Take notes on topics that have multiple stories or mentions in the current year. What issues or

developments in the industry have received a lot of recent attention, discussion, or commentary in

industry sources? (Focus only on information from the current year—and only from trade sources.)

Write a one-page synopsis of the information you found about current topics in the industry. Cite your

sources properly.

because this section is your interpretation of the trend. (Save any ideas you have about whether the

trend is “good” or “bad” for the Evaluation step of the Critical Process.)

4. Evaluation. Is the trend “good” or “bad”? For the industry? society? culture? democracy? us? What

do you think might happen in the future?

5. Engagement. Are there any actions you can take (related to your trend and the industry)? Possibilities

include posting your views on social media, creating a petition, contacting people in the industry to

see what they think of your interpretation and evaluation, or going to an industry event if any are held

nearby. (This step need not be required if students are not motivated to take action.)

Note: This exercise works well if each step of the Critical Process is due two weeks after the prior step is

due. Limiting students to only trade sources and only information from the current year helps keep them

on track. Your institution’s librarians should be able to provide students with information on how to

access industry trade sources.

CLASSROOM MEDIA RESOURCES

LAUNCHPAD FOR MEDIA & CULTURE: http://www.macmillanhighered.com/mediaculture11e

Give and Take: Public Relations and Journalism (2009, 3:44 minutes). News editors, publicists, and

advocates debate the relationship between journalism and public relations. Featuring Dino Corbin,

Shana Daum, Mickey Huff, and Bob Speer.

Filling the Holes: Video News Releases (2009, 3:29 minutes). Television and public relations experts

explain the increasing use of VNRs as business concerns drive networks to cut costs. Featuring

Jonathan Adelstein, Shana Daum, and Robin Sloan.

Going Viral: Political Campaigns and Video (2010, 3:21 minutes). Online video has changed political

campaigning forever. In this video, Peggy Miles of Intervox Communications discusses how

politicians use the Internet to reach out to voters.

VIDEOS/DVDS/CDS

Counterfeit Coverage (1992, 30 minutes). This video explains how the first Gulf War was not merely

reported but marketed to the American public. It includes interviews with several public relations

firms, network news-show officials, Amnesty International, Citizens for a Free Kuwait, and a large

polling service, and it shows actual broadcast footage and newspaper photos.

Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire (2006, 76 minutes). This video

places the George W. Bush administration’s original justifications for war in Iraq within the larger

context of a two-decade struggle by neoconservatives to dramatically increase military spending

while projecting American power and influence globally by means of force. Distributed by the Media

Education Foundation, 800-897-0089; http://www.mediaed.org.

Our Brand Is Crisis (2005). A documentary about U.S. PR work in foreign politics.

Our Brand Is Crisis (2015). A fictional film starring Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton based on the

2005 documentary.

Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land: U.S. Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2004, 80

minutes). This video provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the

crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced

false perceptions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Distributed by the Media Education Foundation,

800-897-0089; http://www.mediaed.org.

Public Relations (1996, 24 minutes). This program examines PR’s three broad functions: promotion,

image-building, and image protection. The video also features a number of case study examples from

a PR agency, a nonprofit organization, and a small business. Distributed by Insight Media, 800-233-

9910; http://www.insight-media.com.

Thank You for Smoking (2005, 92 minutes). This darkly satirical fictional account of the inside of the

tobacco industry’s public relations campaign creates a framework for discussions about public

relations, journalistic ethics, and personal ethics. Starring Aaron Eckhart, Katie Holmes, and Maria

Bello.

Toxic Sludge Is Good for You (2002, 45 minutes). A critical look at the PR industry with PR Watch

founder John Stauber and cultural scholars Mark Crispin Miller and Stewart Ewen. Distributed by the

Media Education Foundation, 800-897-0089; http://www.mediaed.org.

Wag the Dog (1997, 97 minutes). This fictional film shows how a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer

join efforts to “fabricate” a war to cover up a presidential sex scandal. Starring Robert De Niro and

Dustin Hoffman.

WEB SITES

O’Dwyer’s Inside News of Public Relations & Marketing Communications: http://www.odwyerpr.com

PR News: http://www.prnewsonline.com

PR Newswire: http://www.prnewswire.com

PRWatch: http://www.prwatch.org

PR Week: http://www.prweek.com

Public Relations Society of America: http://www.prsa.org

Public Relations Student Society of America: http://prssa.prsa.org