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It's a fact: PR people are just as ethical as dental students

Next time somebody throws out the old tripe about sleazy flacks, I’ll just say, “Au contraire! You obviously are unaware of the scientific research conducted by two Johnson Legacy Scholars at the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication at Penn State University!”

Okay, I may have to write that down.  But I’ll explain how some smart people did the first empirical study to measure PR people’s moral standing in comparison to other occupations.

“It turns out that public relations professionals are good ethical thinkers,” said scholar Renita Coleman in a press release.  “They show similarity to other professionals with comparable levels of education such as journalists, nurses and dental students.”

Even more interesting, public relations pros scored better on the moral compass than accounting and veterinary students, orthopedic surgeons and even “business professionals.”

No doubt that general executive category includes the bosses of the Boeing company spokesman who just got caught posing as an independent blogger so he could sit in on a competitor’s briefings.  You sure don’t see dental students doing stuff like that.

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Selling the public school option

"Schools are really getting that they can't just expect students to show up any more.  They have to go out and recruit."

-- A marketing director with Denver Public Schools on why shrinking school districts around the country are running business-like advertising and PR campaigns. New students bring schools up to $8,000 a head in much-needed state funding, as well as promoting community support for their continued operation.

Source: Wall Street Journal  |  Hard-Hit Schools Try Public-Relations Push

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The skinny on government anti-obesity efforts

Can so-called "obesity taxes" get Americans to stop eating so much bad food?

Maybe.  Business Week reports that recent studies show kids weigh more if they live in communities where fruits and vegetables are more expensive.  Another study finds that the more alcohol costs, the less American consumers drink it.

With U.S. obesity rates and related health costs sky-rocketing, findings like these are helping push along the kind of government-funded behavioral change campaigns that convinced most Americans to not smoke and buckle their seat belts.

Many states already have taxes on vending machine sweets and sugary sodas.  And New York City won a key victory when a federal appeals court upheld regulations requiring many chain restaurants to include calorie information on menus and menu boards.  Restaurant owners argued that the city violated their First Amendment rights by forcing them to emphasize calories over other buying decisions like savory goodness.  That didn't go down well with the judges.

Even so, local and state governments hoping to influence healthy behavior face many challenges.  At the same time time New York City is forcing consumers to be more aware of what they eat, the state is proposing to raise sales taxes.

On health clubs.
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RELATED NEWS

Washington Post  |  Initiative Takes Aim At Obesity In Children

"A coalition of health groups and insurance companies yesterday unveiled an initiative, billed as the first of its kind, to help battle one of the nation's biggest health problems: childhood obesity.

Officials of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a joint effort of the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, said the initiative is designed to give children better access to health care to fight obesity. Participating insurance companies would pay for at least four visits to a dietitian and four visits to a physician each year to provide guidance to children and their parents on how to eat better and take other steps to reduce and control their weight."

Best of Scatterbox - 2009 Edition

Based on comments, links and other highly unscientific measurements, here are the top ten Scatterbox posts from the last year:

Five things you didn't realize you learned from Obama's victory

Good intentions aren't good crisis management

Best worst excuse to avoid jury duty: Your studly hotness

Big brand doody from the toilet paper wars

What's missing from your communications plan

The low risk, high rise of phony grassroots groups

Hate mail and other comments from our readers

Blah Blah Nation: PR people promote the value of blogging by boring readers to death

John Edwards scandal shows conflicting truths about mainstream media

How the PR business is changed forever (And why you might not be in it)

... Have an idea or link to suggest? Send to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.

Ten big-picture predictions for 2009

Welcome back from the holidays. Here are 10 predictions that might influence what you'll be communicating about in 2009. Or not:

1.  A dean of Russia's foreign ministry academy predicts that the United States will explode in civil war in 2010, leading to the nation's collapse and disintegration. (Colorado will be part of a new Canadian-controlled republic. But we're not playing Kanuck football. That's where we draw the line.)

2.  James Carville says the Republican Party will be confronted with a "near catastrophic ideological rift."

3.  "America's #1 Psychic" Sylvia Brown predicts that trained psychologists will start offering hypnotic past-life regression, which will be common practice by 2011. (She doesn't predict what the insurance co-pay will be, however.)

4.  Business Week thinks Chrysler will merge into General Motors. They also think Americans will start buying a lot of boxed wine.

5.  Wired.com's senior editor says we'll see hundreds of new on-line magazine start-ups as entrepreneurs take advantage of low competitive barriers and journalists willing to work cheap.

6.  Technology industry guru Mark Anderson predicts China will be rocked by huge and deadly riots, causing its GDP to plummet as the West recognizes the country as a "polluted place, rife with economic turmoil and starving people."

7.  Personal finance columnist Jeffery Strain says the credit crisis will cause many beloved small, locally owned businesses to disappear forever. (This will also include many small advertising and PR businesses.)

8.  Industry analyst Yankee Group is confident that free microblogging service Twitter is the new Facebook. (Except for the minor fact that it generates zero revenue and limits messages to 140 characters. Hype on, Internet phenom.).

9.  WSJ columnist Evan Newmark predicts Wall Street will cut jobs, people and bonuses by another 25 percent -- forcing many Masters of the Universe to seek their fortunes in consulting. Or government jobs.

10.  A former Mafia boss says top-level tennis matches will be a prime target for gambling corruption.

Send any other predictions worth noting to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.

Go get 'um, my friends.
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Crisis? What crisis?

My post How the PR business is changed forever (and why you might be in it) got a variety of strong reactions from Flackville.

Robert French, a veteran PR guy and faculty member at Auburn University, took serious issue with my opinion that this recession will result in far fewer communications jobs and many more qualified people eager to take them. Where, he demanded, are the case histories proving that "What used to take a floor full of staff can be accomplished by one talented person with a laptop and Blackberry"?

Writing at length in his PROpenMic network, he added:

"Look, you may be right. But, when someone wants to scream, "The sky is falling", I'd really like to see some evidence. Is the economy in the tank? Yes. Is the future of PR in flux? Yes. Is much of traditional journalism on weak knees as a business model? Yes. All that is true. But, can you point out solid examples that say you're right (on a broad national scale)? I doubt it."

Others agreed with my take on the industry's future and how PR people should respond.

"Take Silvers' advice and find a niche, become an expert," wrote public affairs officer Kristina Summers in her blog. "This is no time to be a generalist. Hopefully there is something you love that you can grab onto tightly and become THE "go-to" person for that subject... The point is to become indispensable."
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How the PR business is changed forever (And why you might not be in it)

It's a tough time to be in the public relations business.

It's going to get a lot worse.

Recessions always thin out the marketing and influence industries.  This downturn will prove particularly brutal.  Companies and agencies are laying off PR people as budgets and revenues dry up.  Many struggling companies are eliminating their communications departments altogether.

When the smoke clears, there will be considerably fewer jobs for communications specialists and marketing publicists.  And there will be many more qualified people who are desperate to have them.

Here are three reasons why the market for PR people will never be the same:

The commoditization of information ... What used to take a staff can be done by one talented person with a laptop and Blackberry.  The need for general-purpose PR worker bees is dwindling faster than doing a Google search.  Companies forced to cut the fat aren't going to bring those jobs back.

Shrinking media outlets ... Newsrooms are getting much smaller.  Even National Public Radio had layoffs.  The financial crisis is exacerbating what the Project for Excellence in Journalism called "the new paradox of journalism... more outlets covering fewer stories."   That means employers and agencies have too many publicists pitching the same decreasing numbers of reporters.

Reporters at the gate ... The market is being flooded by laid-off reporters, columnists and TV anchors.  Many have excellent skills, great contacts and deep understanding of the industries they covered.  Whether they can make the transition to being PR people -- what many called flacks before they needed jobs -- is always a question.  Even so, unemployed journalists will take many of the positions that would otherwise have gone to corporate and marketing communications people.  Count on it.

How you survive the years ahead depends on how you respond to these new realities.

If you're a generalist PR staffer, hone your writing skills and become expert in something relevant. Fast.

If you're a PR student, consider changing your major.  Seriously.

Many of you are in for a big disappointment.
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Economy drives what parents want from public schools.

Parents are changing what they consider most important about how public schools educate their kids.

Pollsters working on local school bond elections report that small class sizes are no longer the priority -- despite being consistently the most important campaign message in years past. Parents now say they're most concerned with how well schools prepare their children to find good jobs in a global economy.

This isn't surprising given daily headlines of outsourcing, financial failures and international buy-outs of American companies. Expect to see this employment theme played out in school-funding campaigns around the country.
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Because accuracy is always an option in political debate.

Hey, citizens. Check the facts before you call to defend your favorite presidential candidate against the obviously biased rants of that fascist-neocon or commie-socialist radio host. Visit Congresspedia to research actual voting records, issue positions and issue-group rankings. Who knows. You might actually be right. I mean, uh, left. Whatever.

The highly valuable Wiki-style site is operated courtesy of the left-leaning Center for Media & Democracy.
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Celebrate freedom with a performance-enhancing melon publicity research stunt.

Just in time for the long July 4th weekend, the Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center at Texas A&M University announced that watermelon has some of the same manly benefits as Viagra.

The center's web site says it exists to "support and strengthen the total vegetable industry through research."

Yea. This will pump things up a bit.
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