Behind The Spin

Some pictures aren’t worth any words at all…

Mike Gilmore, who helped compile two of the most startling collections of images for Borkowski PR (Improperganda and Unseen), wonders if newspapers know how to use photos properly anymore.

Of course, you’re all great students of the work of Kung Fu Tze.  Or maybe Confucius.  Or possibly not.

It was either Tze or Confucius who said “one picture is better than one hundred sayings”.  Either way, both could have saved themselves a lot of time if they’d followed their own advice.  They could have dashed off a few sketches one afternoon and cut out years of sitting around being inscrutable.

PR in sport – a playground for PR graduates?

Personal BR and branding is where the worlds of sport and celebrity overlap. Some adventure sports people survive on a combination of occasional jobs, writing and sponsorship.

When she is not being Director of the MSc in Public Relations at the University of Stirling, Jacquie L’Etang is a keen sportswoman and triathlete. Here she highlights opportunities available in various areas of sports PR and explains some challenges in the field

PR Books for a Desert Island

Let’s play an academic parlour game. Imagine that warming, rising sea levels are about to flood our libraries. We get in a rowing boat and float up to the third floor where the PR books are. The academic fireman said you can only take 12. For taking or leaving, for wet or dry, here are the Desert Island PR texts chosen by Kevin Moloney of Bournemouth University.

Cricket's Barmy Army

How Sylvester the Cat and the Pink Panther (with a little help from Andrew Flintoff) are keeping English cricket alive

Maria Hopwood, who lectures in Public Relations at Teesside University, has been researching the impact of the Barmy Army, the dedicated supporters who follow England all over the world, on the reputation of the game

Are PR degrees worth it?

Two years ago Ify Anyaegbunam graduated from the College of St Mark and St John with a degree in public relations.  She now works in the corporate relations department of the Unilever company Lever Faberge. She says it’s now time to stop the endless debate about the value of such courses, and turn them to advantage.

Champion of Democracy

Public relations is an old and noble profession that can only flourish in a democracy, writes Dejan Vercic. Most of the time we work on the mundane activities of trying to sell a product, service, organisation or idea to people that seem not to care about it. But we are the essence of a free society, market economy and political democracy. And we should start thinking about ourselves as such.

Download dejan_vercic_on_pr_and_democracy.doc

Behind the Spin

Welcome to the web log of Behind the Spin, the magazine for and written by Public Relations students. Behind the Spin was first produced by students from the College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth, but was quickly opened to students, practitioners and academics across the UK. The print magazine is published three times a year, the blog will uopdated every Monday. Please send articles for consideration to Editor John Hitchins (you can of course comment anyitem by clicking Comment at the bottom of each post).