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.

Week 9/Ethics and blogging

It doesn't suprise me that a PR firm that works for wal-mart would fabricate blogs about consumer experiances at wal-mart. I read a year or so ago that wal-mart will forever have a bad reputation with consumers as long unethical busniess practices go on. This is a perfect example.

When creating a fact sheet for prospect 1, I would suggest:

-Having a master list of employees AND with what form of communaction they have available at home. Not everyone has access to e-mail, has a lan line or recieves text messages, etc.
-Have every employee back up their work at the end of every work day and have list of where all information is stored.
-Language that will be used by organization (ex: isolation vs quarantine)

Perspective 2
-List of doctors willing to assist companies
-How to properly dispose of waste

Week 8

I couldn't find a comany that had their business continuity plan online, but there were several websites advertising business continuity plans. I dont know that you could pay someone who didn't know every detail about the way a business is conducted to design a business continuity plan. But some of the companies just offered tools and software to help avoid crisis. I think someone designing a business continuity plan should be familure with every aspect of working for a company.

The wikipedia entry for business continuity uses the possibility of virus outbreak in it's sample plan. What I thought was interesting about the plan was testing organizational acceptance.

Quarantine is when you may have the virus, and isolation is when you do have the virus.

Week 7

I read the news a lot and consider myself pretty well aware of what is going on in current events. But I can't think of a recent article where I read about a company standing out for it's ethical behavior. If I have it has probably been about usuing environmentaly safe material and I forgot immediately. And it was hard to find a news story about an ethical company. I guess it's news when a company is unethical but not when it behaves well.

Last month the HP scandal made it to the front page of Newsweek. In the October 16th issue Carly Fiorna stated in an interview, "My firing was not about performance. So I can only conclude it was about a set of personal agendas and dysfunction."

Week 6 blogging (better late than never)

I think the color coding system was a failure because few people even today know what to do when the terror threat is heightened. I don't even think that a possible threat of terrorism could be measured and described in colors. The language that the department of homeland security used was also very vague. Whenever I see that the levels have changed the only thing I remember about the system is that people kept making fun of it on talk shows.

Ethics/Starbucks

I think ethics are very import for companies to have. A companies ethics should be well know through out the company on every level of employment. Unfortunatly, everyone has a very different idea about what is ethical.

Starbucks has gone through great lengths to keep it's ethical image. I think it has worked for them because they don't just create pamplets about their ethics but actually conduct business in a very ethical manner.

Chapter 4

Chapter four is about different types of publics (employees, government, domestic, international).

This chapter was less interesting than chapter three, and I was dissapointed that bloggers were not mentioned in the news media section.

Chapter 3

Chapter three discusses the history of public relations from it's premodern roots to the aftermath of September 11th.

I thought this was the most interesting chapter that I have read thus far. It was interesting to read how changes and advances in PR correspond to the evolution of mass media and history in America.

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.

Definition of PR

My definition of PR: The practice of nurturing favorable feelings toward an organization by it’s publics through planned communications.

Some of the definitions use more of a socially responsible feel. To me all of the definitions said, as indirectly as possible, the same thing: create favorable opinions among the publics of an organization. But some definitions stressed social responsibility more than others. PR often has a negative connotation and many people believe PR professionals try to smooth over mistakes made by an organization or cover them up entirely. By stressing the fact that PR must be based on the values and goals of an organization in order to be effective these definitions give the impression that PR can benefit the publics it is trying to reach.

TEXTBOOK SUMMARY

Chapter one defines what PR is and gives examples of how it’s practiced. The chapter also outlines what PR isn’t and gives examples of common PR misconceptions. At first I felt that the chapter sounded like it was written by a public relations specialist trying to promote PR as a career choice. But I was happy to see that the author pointed out that a positive press release will not make up for an organizations short comings when they fail to follow their own values listed in their mission statement.