Franklin, B., Hogan, M., Langley, Q., Mosdell, N., & Pill, E. (2009). Key concepts in public relations. London: Sage.

Reviewed by: Richard Stanton

A few years ago, in the introduction to the New Granta Book of The American Short Story, editor and distinguished author Richard Ford (2007, p. vii) wrote "short stories by nature are daring little instruments and almost always represent commensurate daring in their makers. [ ... ] short stories want to give us something big but want to do it in precious little time and space". I agree. But the short story genre, like poetry, has suffered from a reduced popular interest in recent years due to a number of factors.

While it may not be particularly poetic (though the ‘key messages’ entry could almost be imagined as part of Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar (1968), a new and immediate work by Bob Franklin and friends ignites the short story genre in the field of public relations.

Franklin, along with Mike Hogan, Quentin Langley, Nick Mosdell and Elliott Pill — all of Cardiff University — has created an alphabetical short story book around topics that matter to public relations. Like the short story anthology of old (think The Esquire Treasury--Gingrich, 1954) this edited volume is something to be dipped into and out of as the mood prevails.

In its 253 pages it offers a rich selection of short stories that together, make up the field of public relations. Short stories though, are not meant to be squirreled away in the mind of the reader; they are best shared and expanded in the telling.

So it was that I shared two of the stories with my corporate communication strategy masters students at the University of Sydney towards the end of the first semester 2010 to get a feel for how they might engage, given that the introduction, while providing a UK-centric view of the field, expressed limited ambition for the work.

My class had spent the semester immersed in corporate strategy selection and were wrestling with the idea that Leon Mayhew’s New Public (1997) somehow or other weaved itself into the fabric of corporate existence. While Key Concepts does not purport to represent the complexity of the field, and indeed, the introduction goes out of its way to suggest it is an elementary work designed to provide a ‘preliminary overview informed by up to date research’ the authors have nonetheless embedded some qualities that, on deeper reading, are desirably innovative.

The clue to the real value of the work, for me at least, lay in the discovery that reading the stories aloud revealed a hidden quality — a fundamental emphasis on particular words and phrases that sometimes gets lost in silent reading. The public classroom reading of the stories, rather than asking students to read them independently or for me to paraphrase them in PowerPoint, drew forth potential inferences either consciously or subconsciously placed by the authors.

For example, the story about corporate communication (p. 61) leads with a wonderful piece of imagery invoking English weather. It employs earthy metaphors in its choice of words — ‘grounded’, ‘core’, ‘footing’  — which assist the listener to grasp such a nebulous topic as corporate communication.

Equally, the next story on corporate social responsibility (p. 62), which gets a full page, offers an example from Royal Dutch Shell Group on the application of CSR that may provide little relief to the mid-2010 problems of one of its global competitors, British Petroleum. The CSR story provides a valuable base from which to contemplate the reality of its existence a decade into the 21st century  — 25 years after it was heralded, along with the notion of triple bottom line accountability, as the saviour of western corporate existence.

There are other important aspects to this book, notably the extensive reference list that, if annotated, would be a worthy addition to any public relations library. There are also some irritating elements, and, in my opinion, some irrelevant entries. I am less concerned with the irritating elements - typos (p. 61; p. 171), poor typesetting and kerning (p. 1; p. 77) - than with the inclusion of entries such as lobbying. I can understand why it is there and why other entries such as advertising and propaganda also get a run. What I don’t particularly like is the story line that identifies the ‘private’ practice of lobbying with the ‘public’ actions of relationship building. Lobbying is an activity that does not have a public face and thus is not part of the two-way symmetrical ideal of contemporary public relations theory.

Nonetheless, I can live with such irritations and commend the book to anyone who wishes to visit the short stories of public relations.

References:

Brautigan, R. (1968). In watermelon sugar. New York: Dell.

Ford, R. (2007). The new Granta book of the American short story. London: Granta Books.

Gingrich, A. (1954). The "Esquire" treasury: The best of twenty years of "Esquire", fact, fiction and laughter. London: Heinemann.

Mayhew, L. H. (1997). The new public: Professional communication and the means of social influence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contributor biography: Dr Richard Stanton is director of the graduate program in public relations at The University of Sydney. He is the author of a number of books and book chapters on public relations and journalism. He is the editor of Political Communication Report, a joint online publication of the International Communication Association and the American Political Science Association. He is a regular media commentator and his Twitter name is silvermullet.

Purchase information: The book is available from good bookstores or direct from Sage at http://www.uk.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book229309

Back to: PRism 7(1) Contents Page
Back to: PRism home page

If you are purchasing within New Zealand you receive free postage and help contribute to PRism's ongoing site maintenance and hosting outlays by clicking the link below to purchase from Fishpond. (We are a Fishpond affiliate, meaning you help us to survive in these cost-cutting times when you buy from them.)