In response to Bailey...

Thank you for posting some great thoughts about the print vs. PR debacle we often find ourselves in! It stirred up some thoughts of my own on the issue. (Soapbox in place... here I go. No height jokes, please.)

I admit, as a print journalist, I have been guilty of feeling animosity towards PR students. Then I realized it is stupid and pointless and that I probably felt that way because I thought I was supposed to. Also, my dear mother has been involved in PR for many, many years. She works hard, she does honest work, and she does it well. Then why did I all the sudden harbor hostility toward the profession?

I think because we are grouped together in this happy little communications bundle, we feel the need to hate eachother and tear eachother down. But why? Our fields are extremely different. It's not like we're even working towards a common goal. And I, personally, have always thought of PR as being grouped with the advertising and business side of things. Yes, print and PR both share common turf- media, the press, ethics, etc. But that does not mean we have to hate eachother. If anything, we need to work together.

Journalists report the facts (and ideally, the truth), and PR people are devoted to their clients. That's why PR exists- so entities can highlight their good aspects. But just because we have different goals doesn't mean we need to fight. We need to first, understand eachother's fields. Second, we need to respect eachother's field. Our jobs are very different, but what good is it to disrespect eachother? We are all just doing our jobs. I don't want to think that hating eachother is inevitable. Every field has bad eggs. There are smarmy journalists and scheming PR people who work for corrupt forces. But that doesn't mean there aren't good people who just want to keep to themselves and do their job. Can't we defy the inevitable and try to get along?