AEJMC: A New PR Professor's Report

Since I wasn't able to go to the AEJMC (that's Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication) convention this year, I asked a number of professors who did go to report on it. Three were first-timers.

I asked each one to give me two or three paragraphs. One, Jeanette Drake, a new member of the public relations sequence, wrote three pages that I found especially interesting.

I'll have the views of other Kent professors/conference-goers next week.

Here are Jeanette's comments:

View from a newbie

It was my first time at AEJMC, but I’ve been attending academic conferences for the better part of a decade, so I went to San Fran both a little green and a little jaded. Plopped down during the first week of August, AEJMC is an invigorating intellectual warm-up for the academic year.

Overall impressions?

I was surprised with how relevant the conference was, how well organized the PR Division is and how I found myself shopping for the better part of an hour one day rabidly buying up research papers that fascinated me.

I limited myself to just 32, and at 50 cents each, I could’ve easily kept going but for the luggage problem. Can I help it if everyone and her grad assistant are writing about framing, environmental communications, corporate social responsibility, social change and activist publics?

At the conference, my priority was simple: Network. Secondary goals: Check out current research and look for research ops.

Be careful what you wish for

As a result of the conference, I walked away with an offer to co-author a textbook chapter on service-learning, an article appearing in October’s PR Tactics about why practitioners should consider getting a master’s degree, and a column that will appear in the fall issue of PR Update: “What Business Do Public Relations Students Have in Master’s Programs?”

If you want the answer, you’ll have to read the article or ask me sometime when you’re ready to hear a passionate soliloquy about the “ideal” master’s program. [Hint: Chris Roush stole my thunder with his article that just came out in the latest JMC Educator, “The Need for More Business Education in Mass Communication Schools.” Can you tell I’m a little sage with envy?]

All in all, I was more than satisfied with the conference. Meeting so many other public relations educators was beneficial in that I was able to:

• Get my hands on a copy of an elusive book that’s out of print and overviews U.S. public relations master’s programs.

• Pick up several new texts.

• Have valuable discussions about the “ideal” PR curriculum at the master’s level.

• Learn about the innovative collaboration between Kent and Tri-C.

• Chat with members of the PRSA Commission on Education and get a preview of their report coming out in November, the first since 1999 that prescribes undergraduate and graduate curricula.

• Meet a whole lot of JMC educators for whom I have a great deal of respect.

A Golden Flash

The conference crystallized one thing for me—Kent State has a gem in (CCI Dean) Jim Gaudino. Let me back up and say that Kent State JMC has a lot of gems, but this Jim, it became clear, stands out in a crowd. I suspect he was probably trying to avoid the newbie-glom factor, so I didn’t happen to run into him at all in San Francisco.

More times than not, though, after I introduced myself and my school to someone, the conversation would go like this: “Oh! You have Jim Gaudino there, don’t you? Tell Jim I said hello.”

True confession: I appreciated the way Jim’s name opened doors for me. I guess you could call it gild by association.

Any particularly interesting presentations?

Dean Kruckeberg of Northern Iowa restored my faith in the potential for PR scholarship. He presented an intriguing paper that challenged some of the bedrock concepts of public relations.

Do public relations folks really want to be “part of” the dominant coalition? Kruckeberg argued that we don’t albeit we still need to be a part of the decision-making process. Public relations practitioners who become a part of the dominant coalition, he suggests, are more likely to fall victim to groupthink, which would impair their ability to truly act as boundary managers or to serve as that corrective two-way lens.

Kruckeberg proposes an organic model of public relations which, rather than placing the organization self-importantly at the center, recognizes that each organization is only one part of the social system. However, the metaphor he used at the conference, a three-legged stool, didn’t work so well for me. Kruckeberg explained the legs as government, civil society and organizations that support the seat, which is society. There are some practical problems with the stool.

First, oftentimes, government and industry are more closely aligned than two separate legs convey. In fact, civil society organizations, such as churches, nonprofits or NGOs, are just as likely to be co-opted by government or business in the 21^st century, so the model of discrete entities is problematic. Second, are the legs inclusive? From a frames perspective, the media could be one additional leg, particularly in an age where we less and less experience things first-hand. Finally, stools simply are not organic [pun unintended].

Nevertheless, Kruckeberg’s concept is reminiscent of Lana Rakow’s critical perspective of the traditional public relations model (1); she also questioned the self-centeredness of organizations. Rakow suggested turning the model inside out. PR ain’t panties, but could it be done? Her radical model places the public smack-dab in the middle, “directing the actions of institutions,… and not the other way around” (p. 178). Hmmm… enter citizen journalists and social media?

The “duh” factor

I had a great time in San Francisco, but don’t get me wrong. I sat in on the requisite “duh” presentations—it’s all part of the price of admission.

And that’s about the time I realized I couldn’t sit through one more session. So I went out to conduct some market research [Read: Tasting Ben & Jerry’s new socially conscious flavor, American Pie.]

Their cool, young “position paper” sits on tables and fits on a tri-fold no bigger than a postcard. In a colorful, non-threatening way, it shares Ben & Jerry’s thoughts on federal spending: “Our kids deserve a bigger piece of the pie!”

Mmmm… research has its privileges. ~Jd

(1) Rakow, L. F. (1989). Information and power: Toward a critical theory of information campaigns in C. T. Salmon (ed.) Information Campaigns: Balancing Social Values and Social Change (164-184). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.