Week 2

Before I questioned my respondents they admitted to knowing little or nothing about PR. One said that she thought PR practitioners planed parties and charity events. Another said they get celebrities names in print. One even whinced at the thought of having to explain what PR is.

None of them could name a high profile person that worked in public relations. Although one did mention Samantha Jones, a fictional character on the show popular show "Sex and the City". All three of them thought for a while, but could not name one singlewith a high profile PR job. When I mentioned it was probably the Press Secretery, all three for the most said something to the effect of "why didn't I think of that?"

When I read them the text book definition and the one I made myself, my roomate actually said, "Huh. That's something I don't think about because I don't really care." Another person said they had never thought of it that way.


TEXTBOOK SUMMARY

Chapter two discusses the different types of PR positions and their corresponding duties. I thought that the “Working Conditions and Salary” and “What’s Important in a Job” were very lame. Again, to me these sections sounded as if they were written to encourage students to work in PR. The surveys and studies the author used to show how much money one can make in PR and levels of job satisfaction were conducted by the PRSA, which has its own agenda to paint PR in a favorable light. The author even admits after listing the averages in annual wages that the numbers could be distorted because of the way the research was conducted. The same survey also showed that 73% of practitioners are “somewhat satisfied” or “extremely satisfied”. The fact that an unknown percentage of that 73% (which itself is not that convincing of a number) are only “somewhat satisfied” does not lead me to believe that a sizeable majority of PR practitioners are happy with what they do for a living. In fact, the only credible study noted in these two sections (conducted by the BLS) reported that PR practitioners do not have set schedules and are often not paid for overtime.