Maggie Scruggs in Comm 355

Chapter 4 was about the public in PR. The book defined public as, “Any group whose members have a common interest or common values in a particular situation.” I thought this was interesting because I have always thought of the public as everybody whether they have a common interest or not. I think it makes sense that they say that it is a group who has a common interest since anything that a lot of people listen to or watch has some common appeal to that group of people. I also think that the public are the people outside of that group. I think anyone who could be reached by the message being given is the public. The chapter also puts the public into different categories. It also talks about the relationships that organizations have with their public. It also goes through the questions that a PR practitioner must ask in order to know how the public can influence the relationship with an organization and vice versa.  

• Leave a comment... (1)

Chapter 3 in the book talked about the history of PR. The history of PR taught me a lot about PR and how it has gotten the reputation that it has today. Over the years a lot has happened to give the PR industry a bad name and a good name. PR was started and then went away for a while. When it came back it got a bad name because of people who were publicizing different things than they were actually doing. Now PR is thought of as more of a good thing. PR is used to make a relationship with the public instead of just persuade them to do one thing or another. One example that was given in the book was the Red Cross and9/11 attacks. PR was used to spread word about the donation program for survivors but was actually used as something else. This was a misuse. The good that came out of it was that PR was used to gain a good reputation with the public again when they started informing the public of exactly what their donations were being used for.

• Leave a comment... (1)