Thanks, Mike. Look forward to elaborating further at the Cencom.org event in early November:
http://www.cencom.org/programDet...il.aspx?
id=1712
Jack, can you say it in two sentences or less? Smile.
Yes, Peter, it's OK to do it wrong as long as you are listening to feedback and fixing it. Thanks for talking about my book--the key thing is to admit that what you are doing is probably wrong, so you might as well get on with it and listen to what customers say so you can fix it a little more each day.
This is for all PR people and especially the leadership of the PR Society that is based in New York.
Below are some recommendations for the Assembly that are based on my attendance at about 35 Assemblies and on discussions with senior PR Society members. The recommendations are being presented to COO Bill Murray by senior members. We believe Philadelphia (birthplace of our democracy) is the apt place for delegates to create their own “Declaration of Independence” that would remove dominance by the national Society and replace governance practices from the 1950s with web and e-mail era practices.
1. Bar any voting in the Assembly this year by the 46 leaders (17 national board members, 19 section chairs and 10 district chairs) since they are the executive branch of the Society and should not be members of the legislative branch which puts them in the position of voting on their own proposals. This suggestion was first made by the Houston chapter in the 1980s.
2. Vote to remain in continuous session electronically and
otherwise until the next Assembly.
3. Abolish the three-year rule for Assembly delegates and urge chapters to send experienced, independent members who have no agendas except the interests of rank-and-file members (not interested in new business leads, titles, etc.). National should not be telling the chapters who they can send as representatives.
4. Eliminate any APR requirement throughout the bylaws (as urged by the 1999 Strategic Planning Committee).
5. Eliminate the rule that board members have to have headed chapters, districts or national committees or have voted in the Assembly. These rules have choked off the supply of candidates for decades and are the reason Society leaders want to replace the ten districts with five “regions.” Only nine people showed up this year for seven national board and officer positions.
6. Pass a bylaw banning directors from returning to the board as officers or in any role. For the first 50 years of its existence, no director or officer ever returned to the board. Because of the shortage of candidates due to the APR and other rules, two former board members ran for officer positions this year.
7. Call on Society leaders to admit that staff costs on the annual conference are close to $2M and the reported staff costs of $100K-$189K have been grossly understated. The only staff time costs being counted are those of 35 staffers at the conference in the 7-10 days they spend at the conference. About half the staff spends half the year preparing for the conference, say former Society presidents and treasurers, and that cost should be reflected in the audit. The main concern of the Assembly should be making sure members get the best value for their money. Tactics & Strategist could be sent via PDF to members, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
8. Ask Society leaders to show what the balance sheet looks like with $2M in dues deferred. There’s no law against showing financials several ways. All the major professional associations—doctors, lawyers and CPAs—defer about half of a year’s dues.
9. Ask that senior members join h.q. when job openings occur. The appointment in September of non-member Joseph DeRupo as associate director of PR after a six-month search is an act of disloyalty to members and especially to APR members. We’re not asking that he be fired but that a half dozen seasoned Society members join him. At least 17 staff members have left since 2005. Their names were in the 2005 Blue Book but are not now listed on the Society website.
10. Ask that all leader speeches and a complete financial report be given to the delegates three weeks before the Assembly. Ban Assembly leader speeches. The current Assembly binder has set a new record for lack of materials. It does contain any financial information.
11. Ask that the printed members’ directory again be published (the Society had $4.3M in cash as of June 30 and could well afford to do this). Telephone books (which the directory was) have not gone out of style. It’s far easier to look up a member in a printed directory (which is 90% accurate even after a year). There’s no guarantee members will instantly update records in the online directory.
12. Allow “at-large student membership (any student could join as a student member of PRS), which would help them in job-seeking and bring in revenues to PRS. Opposing this are some PR educators who say there already are not enough PR jobs for PR graduates. But with the Princeton Review recommending a general education for PR jobs, there will be fewer such majors. The more popular major now is “communications” which the Princeton Review points out can lead to either a PR, marketing or journalism career.
The PR Student Society has had only minimal impact on America’s college students. PRSS has only 9,600 members out of an undergraduate population of 19 million (as measured by the U.S. Dept. of Education). Only 286 of the 4,000 colleges have a PRSS chapter.
13. Reconsider the excellent proposal by the Central Michigan chapter last year that would have made the Assembly the “principal policy-making body” of PRS (just like the Houses of Delegates of the ABA and AMA are for those organizations).
14. Allow local-chapter-only membership which is the practice in many leading associations including the American Society of Assn. Executives, American Marketing Assn., American Bar Assn. and the American Institute of CPAs. The $225 national dues block many PR people from joining local chapters.
Editorial by Jack O'Dwyer, Editor, O’Dwyer’s website, newsletter and magazine
PR SOCIETY CREATES “STAR CHAMBER.”
PR Society leadership, the most secretive and publicly unavailable in the history of the Society (CEO Rhoda Weiss has yet to appear before the membership of a single chapter and COO Bill Murray has appeared before only one), on Sept. 6 created a secret e-mail group open only to the 300 or so 2007 Assembly delegates.
The delegates are able to reach the entire list with a single e-mail via creation of an “address book.”
There was no announcement of this on the Society website, only a private e-mail to the delegates.
This development flies in the face of the basic principles of democracy, openness and fairness.
Secretive deliberative and legislative bodies have been excoriated as “Star Chambers” even since the 16th and 17th centuries when the original Star Chamber under the Stuarts (King Charles I) was used to punish anyone who breathed a word against the crown.
The Chamber, whose proceedings were secret, could order torture (such as cutting off ears), ruinous fines, imprisonment and whipping although it could not impose the death penalty. There was no right of appeal and punishment was swift.
King James I and his son, Charles used the court to “suppress opposition to royal policies,” says the Britain Express historical website.
“Star Chamber” came to symbolize “arbitrary, secretive proceedings in opposition to personal rights and liberty,” says Britain Express.
We hope the Assembly delegates will demand that all members be able to see what the delegates are saying in this e-mail group and give rank-and-file members the ability to e-mail to the entire group with one e-mail.
The Assembly is meeting Oct. 20 in Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy. It is the apt time and place for the Assembly to pass its own “Declaration of Independence.”
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