Academia 2.0
Edelman and PRWeek just released the Next Generation of Communicators, a report from their New Media Academic Summit 2007.
I wish that I had known about this conference! One of my major problems with academia is the wall between research and professionals. By the time a paper is peer-reviewed and published in a journal, it’s irrelevant. It’s frustrating to wait for studies to be released when you need the data now. More coordination is needed like this conference and subsequent report.
The PR field is better than most. Since the development of academic programs for public relations in the 1970s, the professional world has been deeply involved in most college programs. However, the average professor is not technologically savvy. Furthermore, the PR field just woke up last year to the world of new media. Too many communications departments are still operating under traditional media relations models, which were developed by Burneys and Lee in the 1920s. Hard to believe that even with technology, the PR field operates with 80-year-old methods, but I witness it everyday.
As Julia Hood, editor-in-chief of PRWeek notes:
Unfortunately, there are still PR programs that have not kept pace with industry momentum. Some students are exiting colleges without any notion that the everyday communication activities they engage in with their friends and family have very real applications in their future careers.
Hello! That captures my bachelor’s degree. Tennessee has an incredibly solid program for the technical aspects of communications. Thanks to UT’s School of Communication, I can write a mean press release and plan amazing events, but I learned nothing innovative. Too many PR programs are based on antiquated communications formulas.
To put it in perspective, I graduated in 2004. That was the same year that Facebook was released, Google launched their own e-mail platform and purchased a free program called Blogger. Things have snowballed just a little. Had you told me that working part-time in the IT department and blogging would help my career development, I would have sworn on my dog-eared AP Styleguide that you were crazy.
I fear that programs aren’t adapting quickly enough. It’s difficult enough to convince existing practitioners that the world has changed. The last thing we need is inadequately equipped new graduates.
H/T SixtySecondView
I agree the business has changed more in the last three years than in the whole time I have been in it . . 20 plus years now and so I guess it is not surprising that some people in it have had trouble coping with that change.
September 16th, 2007 • 1:58 am