In defense of (and clarifying) #schoolPR

Some people really don't get school public relations (or even PR in general). Repeat after me, public relations is greater than media relations. It's even worse when someone has worked in the field and still doesn't get it.

Public has no clue what school PR pros do. "New York Taxpayers Foot the Bill for #SchoolPR Services" http://t.co/gvGrqHgYTQ #edchat
— delainanicole  (@delainanicole) June 25, 2013

Thanks to Delaina Biernstein for sharing an article that perpetuates a silly mischaracterization and miscalculation of what is/is not school PR. In the Yahoo! Contributor Network article, "New York Taxpayers Foot the Bill for School Public Relations Services," the writer suggests:

School public relations specialists are essentially hired to spread the word about the good things being done by students, with the hope that getting the information out into the media will help districts get their budgets passed.

These specialists do photography at student recognition nights at school board meetings, write press releases on the latest district news, and assist with school publications. 

They prepare newsletters, flyers, posters, brochures, and articles for district websites. Additionally, school public relations specialists attend major district functions, such as board of education meetings, homecoming, and graduations, to compile stories and photos for dissemination to local media outlets. [emphasis added]

Tactics, tactics, tactics

That brief description above is just a bunch of boring tactics. School PR is more than what this writer purports. I believe school PR pros must approach the position from a strategic communication vision. 

The Texas Association of School Boards HR Services Division defines the Communications Officer [school PR] function as one that: 

“Manages and directs the dissemination of public information regarding the district. Coordinates the exchange of information with media outlets and the general public. Develops public relations programs and materials to promote a favorable image of the district and its activities.” [2012 Position Detail Report for Communication Officers]

Did you catch that? Coordinates the exchange of information with media outlets and the general public.

To be fair, I'll cut that writer some slack since he claims to have three years of experience working in school public relations. My guess is he likely served in a tactics-driven specialist job and was never given the great professional opportunity to write PR plans using the RPIE process. What he described is the implementation of some tactics that, whether he knows it or not, are from a strategic vision for a district. 

It's also worth noting that in New York, as in other states, a school district's operating budget must be approved annually by vote. This no doubt adds an interesting (challenging) dimension for school communicators, but a strategic process is still in play.

Education leaders must keep school PR in and around their vision and strategy discussions if they hope to have any success in program or campaign implementations. The media may well be a key audience, but it's certainly not the only audience to consider.

Smart PR save from a high school yearbook mistake

High school yearbooks these days are massively creative homages to the school year. Yearbook editors are carefully selected and with the help of their staff piece together pages with the days in the lives of their peers. The vast majority of times yearbooks are published and distributed to classmates without problems.  

But sometimes there are problems, big problems, media-attention problems, problems having serious implications for teens. (Yikes.)

So naturally my heartbeat quickened when one of our high school's journalism/yearbook teachers called me last week asking if I had seen some of the negative reaction to their yearbook.  (Uh oh.)

Their crime: misspelling our school district's website address on one of the first few pages. (Whew!)

Yeah, that's supposed to read www.mansfieldisd.org instead of www.mansfiledisd.org. Oops. Thankfully, the typo really isn't that big of a deal. According to the teacher, the editors and staff started to see some students at their school and from the out high schools in the district making fun of the typo and posting on social media.

Instead of tucking tail and hiding their faces in shame, the yearbook editors, staff, and teacher took a more proactive and creative response and turning the joke on the detractors. They bought the misspelled domain and set up a website to poke a little fun at themselves for the mistake.

From the 'About This Site' page:

Hey Bronco Nation, we at the Arena and the Rider Online realized that very often parents, teachers and even students misspell ‘Mansfield.’ Statistically, it’s bound to happen. In typing just those two sentences we hit the backspace button twelve times. Now, normally we would just suggest simply retyping the url and continuing on your way to mansfieldisd.org, but we came to the realization that there was an entire untapped market of people who came to mansfiledisd.org and were very saddened and confused when it led them to a giant 404 error. We felt this was a grave injustice, and we dedicate this page to those poor, lost souls. Welcome, friends, to Mansfiled ISD, home of the typographically challenged.

In addition to funny bits about yearbook mistakes, Photoshop disasters, headline errors and Funny Sloth Video, they included a downloadable page to print and place in yearbooks with the corrected web address. This page printing or in some cases, printed stickers to cover up offending mistakes has become the norm since reprints can often cost in the tens of thousands of dollars for many schools.

No harm, no foul.

I think the yearbook sponsor and his students learned a good PR lesson: How you react to mistakes determines your ability to recover and move on.

First Follower Leadership and the Communications Pro

In the last few months I've had various people share or present on the (now widely popular) video, First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy. 

It's a pretty simple, great video lesson on leadership from Derek Sivers. If you haven't already, take three minutes and watch it:

"...Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire..." [full transcript]

So why is the first follower leadership lesson important for communication professionals? We have dual roles for movements within an organization: Communicators should serve as (one of the) first followers or promoters of the first follower(s) for senior management. From an internal communication perspective, the communication and public relations team should be on the front-line to help propel a movement for employees. We should look for and share the bright spots in programs and initiatives to fan the flames of positive progress so others can see the how and the why and importance of things.

Sivers sums it up nicely: 

"It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader. There is no movement without the first follower."

Are you a first follower?

Scope media coverage before sending your news release

Yesterday, a horrible bus accident occurred in Irving, TX on a major highway. A private charter bus carrying seniors to an Oklahoma casino veered across a busy DFW freeway and crashed. First responders, onlookers, and local media outlets quickly portrayed a chaotic scene for rescue of dozens injured or trapped inside and unfortunately, recovery of two people who lost their lives.

As the story developed, national news coverage broke with local affiliate footage from the scene as well as area hospitals where trauma teams awaited the arriving ambulances. The media echoed the calls from first responders to alert area motorists to avoid that and nearby roads. Additionally, reports came in citing the clean record of the bus company. The investigation will continue, but for the most part, I think it was a solid example of textbook media coverage for area outlets. As residents in DFW, our hearts go out to the victims and their loved ones affected by the accident.

So what does this tragic accident have to do with public relations? Yesterday was not the day to send irrelevant news releases to local media. I was reminded of this as we had some district information to share in partnership with a local hospital on something pretty fun for elementary students. But...yesterday was not the day to send out our news release. It was not the time to bother with something lighthearted in comparison to the day's events on the roadway.

The lesson: PR pros must pay attention to what's happening in local media coverage before pushing send on news that will fall on deaf ears because of something much more important. Situational awareness is a valuable asset.

Get to know the PRSA Code of Ethics like the back of you hand

Score one more for the value of the Public Relations Society of America. Last week, PRSA launched an app for the Code of Ethics.

Oh no, public relations ethics. How boring.
Wrong!

PR ethics is what separates the wheat from the chaff. It separates those public relations professionals who are useful and valuable to an organization from those that are all but worthless.

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is committed to ethical practices. The level of public trust PRSA members seek, as we serve the public good, means we have taken on a special obligation to operate ethically...Each of us sets an example for each other - as well as other professionals - by our pursuit of excellence with powerful standards of performance, professionalism, and ethical conduct....We believe our professional values are vital to the integrity of the profession as a whole.

Codes of ethics are not unique to PRSA, a quick search of a few other related communication organizations, National School Public Relations Association, International Association of Business Communicators and the Society of Professional Journalists, found well-crafted and robust ethics guidelines.

According to the announcement, the ethics app provides easy reference to PRSA’s Code and Statement of Professional Values and Code provisions. It also includes:

• PRSA ethics-related blog posts
• Professional Standards Advisories which offer timely guidance on emerging ethics issues such as illegal recordings, ethical use of interns, professional conflicts of interest, use of VNRs as a PR tool, etc.
• Email access to members of PRSA’s Board of Ethics and Professional Standards
• A short Ethics Quiz

The PRSA Ethics app is available for free for Android devices on Google Play and Apple iOS devices. Is this mobile ethics app a game-changer for the profession? Probably not. What it tells me is that the PRSA continues to find ways to provide resources to its membership for the benefit of the public relations profession.

Good work and thank you, PRSA.

We Choose Texas Public Schools

Over the last decade, it seems numerous groups have thankfully formed to advocate for public school districts across Texas. While these groups have strong commitments to public education, each has its own vision, mission, and objectives, often leaving school districts, parents, employees and public school supporters without a simple unifying message or call to action. My hope is for more people to stand up and say, "We Choose Texas Public Schools."

We Choose Texas Public Schools is a concept campaign offered freely for public school district communities, parents, students and staff. I came up with it for a public education celebration rally in February that my school district hosted with four other districts in North Texas. We had yard signs (pictured above) made to distribute to attendees. (The cost of these signs was covered by a sponsor.)

School choice continues to be a major topic of debate and conversation both in the Legislature and out in the public space. Texas public schools educates nearly 5 million students. I'm not going to delve into the arguments for/against restoring state education funding, school vouchers, high stakes testing, or other un-funded mandates in this space. Again, there are other public education advocacy groups already making positive steps for these debates. Healthy debate is good in my opinion. I offer this simple idea as a counter-message to the negative notion repeated again and again that students are “stuck” in public schools. In actuality, many families simply choose public education. I want to give a unifying message for those parents who freely choose Texas public schools.

Be proud, Texans and share that choice.

Please feel free to share, use, distribute the We Choose Texas Public Schools concept. I've shared the PDF of the yard sign art for others to use. I look forward to seeing how this concept develops.

Texas Rangers Ryan-Daniels Drama Power Play or Publicity Stunt?

The Texas Rangers issued a press release at the end of the day on Friday, March 1 at 4:54 p.m. CST with a headline that read, "Jon Daniels Named President of Baseball Operations/GM - Rick George Named President of Business Operations." This left the obvious question hanging out there of what's going to happen with Nolan Ryan, who up until Friday was President/CEO? The release explained that like this:

The Texas Rangers announced today the promotions of General Manager Jon Daniels to President of Baseball Operations/General Manager and the promotion of Chief Operating Officer Rick George to President of Business Operations.

In their respective roles, Daniels and George will continue to oversee the day-to-day baseball and business operations of the Rangers organization under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer Nolan Ryan.

And so the Dallas/Ft. Worth sports media proceeded to go absolutely nuts. One of the first to do so was longtime baseball writer/columnist and ESPN radio host, Randy Galloway who was quick to speculate that this move might signal the end for Nolan Ryan. Others piled on over the weekend and well into this week in the local jock media kingdom and abroad. 

The media has portrayed this move as a power struggle between Jon Daniels and Nolan Ryan. At one point we've heard Nolan Ryan could be out by season's end or as early as the end of spring training. Speculation and rumors have been swirling since day 1 and it has truly been interesting to observe locally as a sports (and Rangers) fan and as a public relations pro. 

Bungled PR or Savvy Publicity Stunt?

One of the common themes that's out there is that the Rangers front office had bungled the public relations aspect of this news. At first, I was on board with this assessment. First, they release the news at the end of the day on a Friday anticipating some level of attention, but hoping the weekend takes care of most of the issues. I didn't see/hear/read anything from the Rangers organization until Tuesday of this week with the new President of Baseball Operations/GM, Jon Daniels basically saying all is well, nothing really has changed. By that point, the narrative of major speculations and rumors had taken over. 

The media had settled on this was either a power grab by Jon Daniels or ownership being more interested in keeping Daniels (the young baseball mind) over Ryan (the Hall of Famer and well-loved veteran). If you frame this as a fiasco waiting to happen, then the Rangers' ownership has seriously miscalculated the fans' potential for push-back and disdain. 

At least that's how the media has portrayed this mini-drama will/would play out.

But what if it was orchestrated this way? What if the Rangers ownership, Nolan Ryan, Jon Daniels, and Rick George (who ever that is) were all in on this as a way to get major media attention. Since the announcement, the Texas Rangers have been at the top/front page of most local media outlets sports pages and newscasts. If it is/was an elaborate ruse to get tons of coverage while in spring training, it's working. 

A quick look at the local sports landscape is good for this type of play. The Dallas Cowboys are not major news right now, the Dallas Mavericks are struggling to keep playoff hopes alive, and the Dallas Stars are trying to get people to remember they like hockey. The Rangers lost some key players, personalities, and bats. They are continuing with their youth movement. The team, in my opinion, will be contenders again, but will do so with the strong players on the 40-man roster as well as minor league talent. But all that doesn't keep the attention of the casual sports fan until the season starts (or well into the season). This team news provides that narrative of controversy and puts the Rangers front and center. 

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is a sign of real fissures within the team management and foreshadows rough days for the team in the very near future especially if the fans revolt. But all it would take for this to stop would be for Nolan Ryan to come out and say publicly, in his classic country drawl, "everything is good, I'm fine and we are looking for another great season of Texas Rangers baseball." If he said that, the story would have nowhere to go and we'd move on. If he said that, this episode might have just been all a publicity stunt. And it will have worked.

(Photo credit: phoca2004 via Flickr Creative Commons)