And What Is PR?

Dear Cousin,

I appreciate your inquiry as to what exactly Public Relations is and what it entails. You are not the first to ask this question; in fact I spent a whole day trying to convince Grandma PR didn’t stand for Personal Reform (true story). Anyways a short definition of public relations is managing the relationship between an organization and public by tailoring a message to serve both the organization and public’s interest.

As you may gather from the definition public relations is all about communication which is done through writing. Good PR writing takes into account the diversity of publics (a group of people tied together by a common factor), emerging issues on the horizon and good planning before the writing is released. In a way PR writing can be looked at as broad as it always reaches more than one public or group; yet narrow as it is verified and targeted to a specific priority public, or a group whose opinions are especially important.

Another imperative trait of good PR writing is that it creates a channel of communication not only from the organization to the public but from the public to the organization. This is done by utilizing different forms of media like publication in addition to other mass or specialized media.

Some attributes a good PR representative must have include a broad education, expertise in many areas, good writing skills and good judgment. I feel I possess these attributes but am working to further them in school.

I hope my explanation of what PR is made sense to you and you can see why I have chosen this field. I feel PR will be an exciting yet challenging profession. Let me know anytime if you have more questions.

Sincerely,

Hanna