G’day and greetings from ‘a land down under’!
Welcome to the third year that Robert has been encouraging and cajoling and relentlessly beating students into submission — welcome to the world of blogging, podcasting, vidcasting, social media, Web2.0 and a zillion other phrases that will, by the end of the first semester, slip off your tongue as easily as …as …well, as easily as something that easily slips off your tongue. 
Shel Holtz (who is a blogger you should definitely put onto your ‘must read’ list) has recently been discussing with colleagues whether PR practitioners deserve to be called ‘professionals’, indeed whether PR itself is a ‘profession’.
Fellow Marcomm contributor Kami Huyse recounted the exasperation that she felt when undertaking an exercise to fund the further training of PR practitioners in ethics. Kami had to excise the word ‘professional’ to get any agreement with a lawyer creating the formal endowment documents. The argument principally revolves around the question “what is a profession?” Here’s some definitions…
The American Heritage Dictionary — “An occupation, such as law, medicine, or engineering, that requires considerable training and specialized study.”
The Macquarie Dictionary — “a vocation requiring knowledge of some department of learning or science, especially one of the three vocations of theology, law, and medicine (formerly known specifically as the professions or the learned [pronounced “learn-ED”] professions); the body of persons engaged in an occupation or calling”
Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary — “a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation”
Each would seem to suggest that what you will be doing, and what the esteemed contributors to this blog are already doing, is the work of a professional within a ‘profession’.
Now that we are all pleased with ourselves, consider this:
I would argue that ‘PR’ as a discipline sits within a larger rubric of ‘Business Communication’. If that is the case, then one could argue that ‘Business Communication’ is itself a profession, making me (not a PR professional since I have never undergone extensive academic training in it) a ‘Business Communication professional’, a title of which I am proud and a reason why I belong to the IABC: the International Association of Business Communicators.
But every manager I have ever met, plus most of their subordinates, believes them self to be an accomplished, if not superb, business communicator. They hold this view of themselves despite a lack of any extensive and rigorous academic training, and just because they have been forced over the years to deliver a few PowerPoint presentations to small audiences or run some mid-year staff assessment programs. Usually I find that the more they ‘rate’ themselves as a ‘great’ business communicator, the more hopeless they actually are; there seems to be some correlation between their self rating and a love of hearing their own voice.
We could equally point to any number of PR ‘(un)professionals’ whose press releases are, by all applicable standards of suitability, relevance, timeliness, appearance and ‘good taste’, absolutely appalling. You don’t need to undergo university training to use a Press Release template in Word and crank it out to as many email and fax addresses as you can find. Thus, one could argue, ‘Business Communication’ and ‘PR’ are not professions, because ‘anyone can do it’.
So the question I ask you to consider, and to ask of Robert, is whether at the end of your years of turmoil, tension, agony, ecstasy, grief, epic and/or tragic romances, hangovers, dodgy late-night pizzas, blood, sweat and tears you will graduate with a piece of paper in your hand, or whether you will graduate with a piece of paper AND the knowledge that you are now part of a profession and must behave like a professional.
And if you are part of a profession, how will you explain that to your family, friends and work associates in a way that elevates your profession and your professional standing, and differentiates you from the scum that lies at the bottom of every barrel?
