Public Relations At Its Finest [Seventh Lecture]

We started talking about Public Relations today. It comes at a time when I’m primarily confused as to what specialization I want to pursue. I decided on Journalism before I had even really heard about PR, and what exactly it is. Mark has talked about the job security and availability of jobs in the field, and I have to admit, it’s tempting. The more we learn about how to write for PR in our other classes, the more intrigued I am. I technically have until January to switch courses, since I choose Journalism for now. I guess we’ll see.

So we talked about the book Toxic Sludge is Good for You, and how it is essentially out of date. People have already accepted that it is good for them, mainly because of how amazing PR practioners can be. I think now it’s the realization of this and what to do about it. It’s also scary to note that 35% of news has been produced by PR companies. In reality, news isn’t even about providing information anymore. It is basically hidden commercials and a head nod toward companies that may not be doing the best of things for consumers.

We also talked about education systems and how they came to be. Before the 18th century, there was no such thing as children. There were young adults who learned what their parents did early on and followed on with the family tradition. Now there are all these stages in a person’s life (infant, toddler, child, adolescent) that have to be taken into consideration when growing up.

I wasn’t surprised to hear that sexual industries are the biggest underground economy because of the web. Sex is everywhere, and this fact reminded me of a book I saw at Chapters regarding how sex is constantly present in today’s society. It’s called A World Made Sexy: Freud to Madonna, by Paul Rutherford,and it is seems to be pretty interesting.

On another note, I decided to go with analyzing two chocolate commercials for my paper. I found another really good commercial, along with the first one I talked about before, which will better explain what I want to say. I figured analyzing these two commercials are different than the normal “female body image” topic, and yet I still plan to talk about women and society.

Works Cited:
Stauber, John and Rmpton, Sheldon.Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. Monroe MA, Common Courage Press, 1995.