Public opinion; Public relations; Publicity; Social psychology
The departments of a modern newspaper will show the great variety of
possible approaches on any subject from the standpoint of the press.
When this is correlated to the possible approaches on any subject
from the standpoint of human psychology, we see the diversification
of methods to which the public relations counsel can have recourse to
construct events.
In the metropolitan press, for instance, there are the news
departments, the editorial departments, the letter-to-the-editor
department, the women’s department, the society department, the current
events department, the sport department, the real estate department,
the business department, the financial department, the shipping
department, the investment department, the educational department,
the photographic department and the other special feature writers and
sections, different in different journals.
In a valuable study on the “Newspaper Reading Habits of Business
Executives and Professional Men in New York” compiled by Professor
George Burton Hotchkiss, Head of the Department of Advertising and
Marketing, and Richard B. Franken, Lecturer in Advertising at New York
University, there are several tables setting forth the features of
morning and evening newspapers preferred as a whole by the group to
whom the questionnaires were sent, and by various smaller groups within
the main group.
The counsel on public relations not only knows what news value is, but
knowing it, he is in a position to _make news happen_. He is a creator
of events.
An organization held a banquet for a building fund to which the
invitations were despatched on large bricks. The news element in this
story was the fact that bricks were despatched.
In this capacity, as purveyor and creator of news for the press as
well as for all other mediums of idea dissemination, it must be clear
immediately that the public relations counsel could not possibly
succeed unless he complied with the highest moral and technical
requirements of those with whom he is working.
Writing on the profession of the public relations counsel, the author
of an article in the _New York Times_[43] says “newspaper editors are
the most suspicious and cynical of mortals, but they are as quick to
discern the truth as to detect the falsehood.” He goes on to discuss
the particular public relations counsel whom he has in mind and
whom he designates by the fictitious name Swift, and remarks that:
“Irrespective of their position on ethics, Swift & Co. won’t deal
in spurious goods. They know that one such error would be fatal. The
public might forget, but the editor never. Besides, they don’t have to.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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