What PR is and what it is NOT

“Oh you’re majoring in PR, that’s so exciting…but what is that exactly?” This is a pretty common question for me when I tell people my major. PR Daily recently posted two articles about what public relations is and what it is not that I think really clear up this question.  Public relations is not “a business function that deals with the media and/or bloggers and NOTHING else” and it is not “the only place to house social media.”  We are definitely in a world ruled partially by social media and yes, it does play a key role in the PR world but it is not the only tool that public relations professionals rely on.  PR is about using different outlets for different clients based on what’s best for them and what is best for getting their message out to the public.  Public relations doesn’t just deal with the media, it deals with many different audiences from many different areas. 

Journalists hate PR and PR professionals hate journalists.  That seems to be the common understanding of the relationship between PR and journalism.  PR Daily addresses the relationship by stating that PR is not “journalism’s peon [or] always best carried out by former journalists [or] a vocation that idiots who could not make it as journalists go into.”  Those are indeed some of the stereotypes that go alongside PR and its relationship with journalism, and the PR world is working hard to get people to see past them.  This relationship exists because, as the article posted by PR Daily states, PR is “misunderstood—especially by journalists.”

PR is not synonymous for “spin,” and that’s what many people seem to believe and this is a big part of the aforementioned misunderstanding.  When it comes down to it, PR is “an industry with enormous growth potential” and “a craft that requires fundamental understanding of human needs and wants.”  Public relations lives and breathes and it is a business revolving around people.  PR professionals, hopefully, are emotionally intelligent people with their client’s best needs at heart. According to PR Daily it’s “something oodles of people are passionate about” and that is wonderful to hear.  It’s a great industry that is only going to continue to grow and the sooner people learn what PR is and what PR is not, the better.  

To read more about what PR is check out this article on PR Daily and to find out more about what PR is not refer to this article from PR Daily.

This guest blog post was written by PRowl Public Relation's staff member London Faust.