SMU Launches PR Major, We Give Free PR Tutorial
SMU will now offer a public relations major, the Daily Campus reports.
That’s great! I get plenty of story ideas from thorough, thoughtful PR people. I also get about 50 emails a day about rock formations in Chechnya, a raw, unfiltered honey company from Iowa, or “What the LIBERAL media won’t tell you about Ayn Rand.”
So, you could spend (checks SMU’s tuition, fees, and housing costs, dry heaves into a trash can) $199,680 over four years for PR instruction, or you could read these tips:
1. Do not invite me to an event the day OF the event. Unless that event is “An elementary school is on fire,” I will probably be doing something else, like most people with jobs do.
2. Know where my publication is located. “Would you be interested in an interview with Seattle-based author Shelby Kincaid on the eve of her new novel, Book That Has Nothing To Do With Dallas?” No, I would not, but thanks for filling up my inbox.
3. Be an adult and don’t use stupid fonts. Comic Sans has no business in email.
4. Make sure you have the name of my publication right. Look, I get that you’re sending emails to the Observer and the Morning News as well. But you should probably take out their names when you write “I think this would be a great story for the Dallas Observer to cover,” when I write for People Newspapers.
I have a place for these kinds of emails. I print them out, rip them up, and throw them in the trash. I don’t even recycle them, that’s how angry I am about the laziness.
5. Please keep sending me insanely conservative and libertarian releases, especially you, dude who tabulates electoral college votes and declares John McCain the winner of the 2008 election if he was running in just the Confederate states. True story.
I’d also encourage the wildly liberal to get on the PR bandwagon, because I’d enjoy making fun of your emails as well, I just don’t get any.
6. Lastly, just don’t lie to me. If you call an event a “groundbreaking” or a “topping-out ceremony” and it isn’t, that just makes everyone look foolish.
So that sums it up. Can I have my $199,680 now?
Hahaha!
Good tips, Bradford. Did I miss Dan’s soon-to-be-annual pep talk for the various school organizations publicity people? We had our meeting with the district recently, but I enjoyed his comments here last year. I think it would be worth revisiting. We publicity peons appreciate your support of our organizations. I’d like to make it easy for you to include my news, so have at it!