CIPR Conference

The second CIPR academic conference, held at Lincoln University this week,  was taglined Partnering Academia with Industry. There were a host of fascinating papers, some horny handed and practical, some that would have most account executives reaching for the dictionary...

Those of a certain bent would gleefully point out that the very theme of the conference highlighted the divide between those who do and those who teach. And it is surprising that some of the most prominent thinkers in PR research still can't make up their mind about what it is that they are studying...

My own paper, As Clear As Your Conscience, argued that it is hard to practice ethical PR if you don't know what sort of PR you do - and reluctantly recognises that policing ethics is all but impossible...

But I think this is to miss the point. As one colleague pointed out, no-one associates such identity problems with, say medicine or the law. Maybe medics do agonise over tying together under one theoretical discipline the work of, say, a GP and a brain surgeon, or proactive or reactive treatments; I don't know, but but it doesn't seem to bring about the collective crises of confidence seen in PR - and nor should it.

Highlights

On one level my Sunderland colleague Chris Rushton's paper Changing Modes of Editorial/PR production, or how newsrooms want - and don't want - to receive press releases could not have been more practical; we all know that in days of paper and faxes, the short trip between desk and waste paper bin was swift and well travelled. In the email age of free delivery and lazy targeting the proportion of carefully crafted releases that are deleted instantly and unread is quite astonishing.

The statistical data Chris gleaned from visiting all North East newsroom would be valuable for any communications department - but it also raised serious theoretical issues about news overload, about manging news flows, and the cultural impacts of changing balance beween growing PR teams and shrinking reporting staffs.

Similarly practical insight were provided by Jennifer Andrewes, of Cardiff Council who presented research into the development of online press offices. Discussions showed the marked divergence in understanding about the pace of change in comms technology. This is not to split delegates in to 'Geeks' and 'Dinosaurs', the title of a useful paper from a Queen Margaret University team, but it did show that how incredibly difficult it is to meet the needs of an ever more fragmented audience;it is not just academic who are accpeting change at differing paces - so is everyone else. The 'Why can't you keep up?' approach shuts out important audiences.

At the other end of the scale, both Lee Edwards (Power in Public Relations) and Fiona Campbell (The Meaning of Reputation Management in Public Relations) gave highly articulate papers that showed how the intelligent application of cultural studies theory can bring valuable new insights into a discipline that is shaping the world in which we live. I am not sure that Fiona dared to mention the word 'propaganda' in open session but afterwards we talked about the desirability of bringing the much-discredited P-word back into the mainstream.

Early on Ralph Tench and Jo Fawkes, from Leeds Met, presented Mind the gap – exploring different attitudes to PR education between academics and employers. Course leaders up and down the country will be combing through these findings - perhaps drawing inspiration from the not too daunting gap, but certainly finding useful ammunition for internal political turf wars.

Valuable stuff. My biggest regret on the drive home was that the arcane and frustrating rituals of acdemia mean anyone who didn't attend will have to wait months, even years before getting their hands on this material. I understand there are some very good reasons for these procedures and protocols but personally I'd like to see everything on the web straight away. It is indeed hard to partner a fast-moving comms discipline with an academia that works to geological timescales....