For the last three days, I was immersed in a meeting of the measured minds of practitioners and academics at the Institute for Public Relations Measurement Summit. It was the first time I have attended this summit – I was invited to go with my good friend, Andrew Laing, president of Cormex Research in Toronto. …
Category Archives: Public Relations
My Business Cards
I am going to put a blog logo on my business cards. Here’s what my cards look like now on the front… … and on the back … Here is the blog logo that I am going to put in to the next version of the business cards: So that’s what my new cards will …
Terry Fallis reads from his new book, The High Road, and donates his archives to McMaster University
I just got back from a book signing event featuring noted Canadian public relations professional and political satirist, Terry Fallis, who read from his new book, The High Road, which is the sequel to The Best Laid Plans. The event was co-hosted by McMaster Chief Librarian, Jeff Trzeciak and Mark Lefebvre, from Titles, McMaster University’s …
CSMM at McMaster has a new “Professional and Organizational Communication” stream and three new PR courses!
For those of you interested in what we’re up to in the communication studies program, at McMaster, a little update. We used to have three areas of concentration that students could specialise in: (i) Mass Media; (ii) Performance Studies; (iii) Language and Social Life. We have decided to do away with the linguistics component of …
How I became an academic: from tenure until the present
During the last month, I have been recounting the story of how I became an academic. In this, the final blog entry in this series, I discuss what it was like settling into the reality of becoming a middle-career academic and learning to savour life a little. During the last two years before tenure, I …
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Excellent first on-line MCM733 CommTheory Class
Tonight I led my first on-line tutorial with my class of professional communicators in the Communication Theory course I teach for the Master of Communications Management program (joint between McMaster U’s DeGroote Business School and Syracuse U’s Newhouse School of Public Communication). We had an excellent session. The students in the class, whom I have …
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Public Relations and the Social Media Revolution
Mass broadcasting systems permitted the marketing revolution of the 50s and 60s. Now, the social media revolution is opening up the same radical possibilities for public relations. PR is the business of building relationships, in Canada that means preferably symmetrical relationships between an organization and its various publics. In the past, it was very hard …
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We live two lives, in two realities: physical and online
People no longer live one life, but many. Physical. On-line. With whom are we really communicating? You may think that this is a silly topic, if you’re someone who hasn’t grown up on-line or thrown yourself into the world of the Internet and social media. But you would be mistaken – a significant proportion of …
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Summer 2010 residency for MCM733:CommTheory complete
Yesterday, we completed day 5 of the summer residency for MCM733: Communication Theory, offered in the Master of Communication Management Program at McMaster University. It was an excellent class – quite intense, quite a whirlwind, very engaging. The class was very active – we had many in-depth discussions on how a solid grasp of communication …
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Video: Public Relations and Edward T. Bernays
Public relations was born out of idealism, elitism and a desire to perfect democracy. The founder of the field, Edward T. Bernays, was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. He created the field and named it on a whim. This video, produced in the United Kingdom and called The Century of the Self, while quite critical …
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