Media and Public Relations

Visit this interactive resource. You should briefly review each of the eight primer modules and note any resources or templates you find especially useful. These resources and templates may be helpful as you undertake a public relations campaign at a future date. We will refer back to this primer elsewhere in the course for specific examples supporting subunit topics ahead. For now, it gives a useful overview of the public relations craft and some tools at its disposal. This primer was prepared to help government and business leaders in the former Soviet Union transition from a centralized system to a market system. They were expected to interact with a more free and independent media. The concept of "public and media relations" was new to many of these leaders, so this primer provides a fundamental overview of PR's basic ideas and tools.

FOREWORD

Public relations (PR) is one of the fastest growing occupations in the United States – employment of public relations specialists is expected to increase faster than the average for all occupations. As organizations throughout Russia and the FSU come to interact more with independent news media, the role of the public relations specialist there will become ever more important as well.

This primer provides some fundamental principles of PR as they have developed in the United States. You will have to be the expert on how – or even if – these principles might be applied in your own homeland.

In any field of expertise, books and charts can only teach so much. The bulk of experience leading to expert levels of performance comes from the direct application of knowledge in the field. This presentation is meant to provide some basic principles of public relations, allowing for a minimum of theory leading to more successful direct practice.

That said, I would like to thank the many insightful writers and instructors who have helped me develop my foundation for public relations; much of what is said here is their contribution, not mine. I am especially grateful to my committee advisors at Jones International University, Drs. Beata Krupa, Lynne Svenning and Paula Noonan. And I thank my professional colleagues in the field who have shared with me their own personal public relations triumphs and disasters along the way.

Source: Steven Van Hook, http://web.archive.org/web/20150326183434/http://wwmr.us/primer/
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