I can't figure out why I don't have 14, so I'm just going to blog on what I thought about the book in general.

I'm not quite sure I liked this book. It seemed like it was written by PR practitioners who were trying to either persuade young minds to join the PR field or convince people who thought PR was evil that it really isn't, there are just some bad people.

When I registered for this class, as a senior in the advertising program, I was sort of scared that it might make me change my mind and decide to do PR instead. But this book sort of persuaded me not to. A lot of people don't respect advertising, but from what this book says, even more hate people who do PR. And that's a shame, because most people don't know what being a PR practioner really is.

And now I do feel like I know more about what people in PR do (which is much less glamorous than I originally thought) but I dont know what the day-to-day is. Like what do they do when they get to the office? When they stay late? But I think I just have a hard time imagining myself doing any "real" office job that requires a degree.

In conclusion, I did learn a lot from this book, but it wasn't what I thought I was going to learn. My favorite part of the entire class was the Frontline video. Oddly enough, when I was visiting my parents for thanksgiving, my mom mentioned Coltiare Rapialle to me and said she had read a review of his book and thought of me.

Ethics and Blogging (Late, not sure if it was an assignment)

I read the artical on flogging, and as an avid reader of blogs, I think this is pretty lame. That's the thing about wal-mart though, every thing they do to improve their images is lame. The reason why people think so badly of wal-mart is because they hang on to their terrible corporate culture. Instead of fixing it, they create PR campaigns to try to change people's opinion. But just because you make commercials about helping a community doesn't mean that people are going to change their mind. In order for people to think more highly of them, they must change their policies.

Also, bloggers, and the people who regularly read them, by definition think for themselves. I doubt anyone in the blogosphere actually came across these and didn't think them suspect.

From old blogs I didnt do, I'm assuming we were supposed to post our press release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For more information contact:

Katherine Alonzo, (940.395.4112)

plingyplang@gmail.com

PHASE ONE OF PAN-DEMIC PLANNING COMPLETED

Training to Begin This Month

DALLAS- November 19, 2006- The first phase of planning for a possible pan-demic has been completed and employee relations and safety professionals will be visiting all company locations to meet with employees to discuss pandemic and emergency planning.

All discussion will take place face-to-face as a part of each branch office's monthly meeting. "We think it's important to meet with employees face-to-face," said Human Resource Director Susan L. Liot, "and we'll be asking all employees to register for direct deposit of paychecks at this time. We'll be providing information about the company's plans for working through a pandemic or other long-term emergency scenario."

Department heads from across the company have worked on a pandemic planning committee for six months. Its recommendations include: enacting direct deposit of paychecks for all employees, creating a list of essential and non-essential employees, realigning worker sick leave and disability guidelines in case of pandemic, erecting glass-enclosed booths for customer-contact employees, working with the company's health insurance provider for special services, and updating employee emergency contact listings.

"Our company has a tradition of working courageously in emergency situations," Thomas Winkler, SEM president and CEO, said. "Of course, it is our hope that we never need to enact this pandemic plan, but the first phase of planning is complete, and we now need to listen to employee concerns and questions about the plan."

Southwestern Energy Matrix is an electric energy generation and distribution for 5 million customers. SEM has 8,000 employees in two states, including 2,200 union-represented employees.

For more information on the possibility of pan-demic flu, visit www.pandemicflu.gov.

Chapter 14

It seems like every semester I learn about international business in one of my classes. I always really liked the parts about people going to foriegn lands and saying something silly or not correctly translating a slogan. My favorite international business story is the one about the couple on business in Korea. They had thier dog with them at the restruant and none of the employees spoke English. The dog was hungry, so they motioned to the dog and the waiters nodded their heads and took the dog to the back, apparently to feed it. After the couple ate dinner they inquired about the dog, who had been gone for some time now, and realized they had been served their french poodle.

The chapter talks about Rossman's system of studying culture by paying close attention to attitudes about time, attitudes about formality, attitudes about individualism, attitudes about rank and hierarchy, attitudes about religion, attitudes about taste and diet, attitudes about colors, numbers, and symbols and attitudes about assimilation and acculturation. I liked the section about symbols and how powerfull they can be.

Also, I never knew that people always say the swiss are always on time.

Chapter 12

Crisis planning is one of those things I dont really understand. I know it says that most crises follow patterns, but it just boggles my mind how you can plan for unknown events.

The book talks about the four stages of a crises, the warning stage, the point of no return, clean up, and things return to normal.

I don't know why they call it things return to normal if things change after a crisis like they should.

It also talks about how to plan and who to hire to plan for a crisis. I liked the part about keeping away pesky journalists.