Public Relations Division Research Articles

The computer as an aid to public relations writing

This article proposes that the Public Relations Division of AEJMC takes the lead in applying computer-assisted instruction techniques to the teaching of writing in public relations and other areas of communications. Noting that university level student writers have not yet mastered the basics of grammar, punctuation, and style, and that teachers of writing are consequently required to use inordinate amounts of vital class time on these fundamentals, the paper calls for two channels of action to be led by the Public Relations Division. Committee action to state requirements to the computer industry for interactive computers with programmes geared to teach and reinforce the mechanics of grammar, punctuation, spelling, abbreviation, capitalisation, word-compounding, titles and other stylebook forms. It is also suggested that these basic course programmes be applied in departmental communications computer centres. Committee action to consider long-term requirements for standardised interactive terminals and p...

Accrediting public relations education

The small, though improved, number of accredited public relations programs has been a continuing cause for concern among educators and professionals, especially in light of the substantial increase in the number of schools now offering courses in public relations. Some critics of the accrediting process have complained that sequences and programs cannot be properly evaluated by an accrediting organization dominated by journalists. The authors of this article use existing literature and extensive correspondence among public relations professors and practitioners to explain the accreditation dilemma. In addition, they analyze the results of a survey they conducted among the members of the Public Relations Division of the Association for Education in Journalism.

Survey on licensing public relations practitioners

Governmental licensing of public relations practitioners has often been a subject of debate. Under the auspices of the Professional Freedom and Responsibility Committee of the Association for Education in Journalism, Frank Tennant surveyed the Public Relations Division members of AEJ to learn their attitudes toward the licensing issue. While he found that more than two-thirds of the PRD members who responded to the survey are opposed to government licensing, he also notes in this report that the pros and cons given by members pose several unanswered questions.

The AIP in 1976

In forty-five years of operation the American Institute of Physics has achieved a preeminent position in the scientific publishing business. The statistics tell the story: AIP publishes almost 90% of the research articles published in physics journals in the United States (about 16 000 articles in 1976), and has become the world's largest publisher of primary journals in any one science (about 97 000 pages in 1976). Developments related to AIP publishing activities are accordingly emphasized in this report of Institute activities in 1976. But AIP is more than just a journal publisher; it seeks to serve the Member Societies—and the entire physics and astronomy communities—in many other ways too. This report therefore surveys also the contributions to this goal made by the public-relations division, the Center for History of Physics, manpower statistics and placement divisions, and the Society of Physics Students.

The Biggest Chautauqua Ever

chautauqua, as Robert Pirsig reminds us his recently published chautauqua Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is an old-time series of popular talks intended to entertain and edify, to improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ear and mind of the hearer. And way, Britannica 3, the new Encyclopaedia Britannica, is chautauqua intended to do the same for the reader. Below I will suggest another contribution Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance makes to our understanding of the new encyclopedia, but here it is sufficient to note that everyone would have been better off if our friends from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (which drew heavily on the intellectual resources of the University of Chicago), instead of sending out an elaborate press kit whose cover Proudly Announces Britannica 3: A New 3-Part Encyclopaedia 30 Volumes, had contented themselves with humbly announcing Another Chautauqua or The Latest Chautauqua or The University of Chicago's Chautauqua or perhaps after Ziegfield's Follies, Mortimer Adler's Chautauqua. You wouldn't know it was chautauqua to read all the high-sounding propaganda put out by the Encyclopaedia's public relations division, which goes on and on at encyclopedic length about how the new Britannica includes not only Micropaedia (10 volumes) for ready reference with 102,214 short entries covering every field of knowledge; Macropaedia (19 volumes) for knowledge in depth with 4,207 treatises by more than 4,000 scholars and authorities 2,093 on general subjects, 2,114 on biographical and geographical subjects; and Propaedia (1 volume), an outline of knowledge that charts the whole of human knowledge by means of 10-part of learning, and also includes guide to the Britannica with more than 5,000 references. It is, we are told, a university without walls. En cyclo paedia Greek means circle of learning. But strip away the Greek labels and what is left is stationary chautauquastationary because 30 volumes are too cumbersome to move around like the original, traveling institution of the nineteenth century used to dowith all of the biases, limitations, arbitrariness, and randomness, although not all that much of the entertainment, one might expect from such an enterprise. And this latter omission is shame since given the Mortimer Adler-Robert Hutchins role as joint intellectual godfathers of this edition (Adler was director of planning and Hutchins chairman of the board of editors), it would have been no less appropriate if, addition to (or instead of) the Micropaedia, Macropaedia, and Propaedia, the editors had included Centipaedia, summarizing the 100 Great Books of Western Civilization. That's what chautauquas are all about. In his introductory essay to Part Ten of the Propaedia, Mr. Adler refers to Aristotle's notion that the highest form of intellectual activity is thinking about thinking itself. And lot of that has gone into Britannica 3, make no mistake about it. As an abstraction it is beautiful to be-

Diets for Patients with Ulcers of the Stomach and Duodenum

THE Ministry of Food, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, has prepared a twelve-page pamphlet of diets for patients with ulcers of the stomach and duodenum. This pamphlet, which is not intended for the general public, since the dieting of cases of the above type is a matter for expert supervision, is approved by the Food Rationing (Special Diets) Advisory Committee of the Medical Research Council and will, it is hoped, help general practitioners, and others professionally concerned with the feeding of such patients, to cope with difficulties of war-time food supplies. The pamphlet contains rules for feeding and planning diets, weekly menus and recipes for patients who have either recovered from the acute stage of peptic ulcer or from whom symptoms due to the ulcer have almost disappeared. In planning the menus, the aim has been to provide a reasonably varied diet based on the foods available under present conditions to these patients. Copies of the pamphlet may be obtained by those professionally concerned with the problem, on application to the Secretary (Public Relations Division), Ministry of Health, Whitehall, S.W.1.

British Food Journal Volume 46 Issue 4 1944

British Food Journal Volume 46 Issue 4 1944