In August, it will be one year since I finished up grad school. Nine months out, and I’m ready to get back in a classroom.

Not full-time, but at least doing one class a semester. I love the academic world and the pursuit of knowledge. Were finances not a problem, I’d be quite content pursuing as many degrees as Buster Bluth.

The only problem is that the more education you have, the harder it is to find the appropriate program. Chattanooga is a wonderful, wonderful city, but lacking in communication PhD programs. Ideally, I’d like to stay in Chattanooga forever. At the very least, I plan on staying here five to seven more years. That eliminates moving anywhere for school since Maryland, UNC and UGA are my top picks. That also postpones the completion of my education for a long time. The longer you’re out, the harder it is to go back. Lastly, I’d be starting a post-graduate program in my thirties. (That’s painful to write!)

UTC provides two alternatives. If anyone knows anything about these two programs, please comment or email.

A certificate in nonprofit management.
After three consecutive jobs at very different nonprofits, I’m starting to see a trend. Getting a certificate wouldn’t take that long and UTC is pretty cheap. One class is equal to the cost of a single credit hour at American. I did 30 hours in 11 months including comprehensive exams, a thesis and working 30 hours a week. An 18 hour program covering topics that I deal with on a day-to-day basis doesn’t sound that bad.

Learning and Leadership Ed.D.
I’ve never considered earning an Ed.D. before, but there aren’t that many post-graduate options around here. This program looks intriguing. On paper it looks like it could mesh with a communications background. From what I’ve read, there’s some organizational theory in the program. Next to communications, I love organizational theory and took about 15 hours as an undergrad in the field. My goal in getting a doctorate is to teach. While I would love to devote three or four years of my life to systematically debunking the Excellence Theory*, eradicating the Grunig name from public relations and researching how the web is altering the way we communicate, that may not be in the cards. (A few people understand and appreciate those thoughts).

Any guidance from my wise readers?

*While Excellence Theory may be dead at the graduate level, Grunig wrote most of the undergraduate textbooks. It still runs rampant in many undergrad programs. I truly believe that further research on how the web is changing communications will prove something closer to Relationship Management as a general theory of public relations. (That was the most complex thinking that I’ve written in nine months. My brain hurts now.)

The new job is a mix of everything within the communications and development world. As much as I love being the web diva, sometimes it’s nice to write a simple press release or plan an event. (Yes, I’m aware of the SMR. It’s cool, but Chattanooga just isn’t there yet.) It uses another part of my brain that hasn’t been exercised much in the past two years.

Today, we had an event. Since I started last Monday, I haven’t been involved in the planning of said event. Yesterday, I came in the office worried that absolutely no press work had been done. I quickly created a media advisory and tried to find out if anyone had been contacted. Turns out, a couple of people had distributed a press release a few weeks ago and pitched. I followed up with a few calls and hoped for the best. It’s Chattanooga, so I don’t have to worry about some governor having a sex scandal. (DC job was launching a campaign in New York when the Spitzer scandal broke. I was literally about to send an alert when the news hit Drudge). Not that the Scenic City doesn’t have its share of scandals, but the local media always needs community stories.

All three TV stations, the Free Press and Chattanoogan showed up. Professor Hayes would be proud.

Progress Nashville thinks that public policy campaigns should be regulated like lobbyists.

This train of thought has been around a long time. The Public Relations Society of America has a decades-old debate over the licensing of marketing and public relations professionals, similar to the way a doctor or attorney must be listed with a state government. There are pros and cons. I would love to see the words “public relations” or “marketing” only used by those of us who went to school and learned how to properly conduct strategic communications. I hate the concept of “PR girls” who hand out beer at bars. However, there’s a pesky thing called the First Amendment that gets in the way. Can you really limit who sends a press release or calls a member of the media?

What’s to stop John Citizen from seeing a need in the community and launching a campaign that affects public policy. It’s called grassroots, and you can’t curb the freedom of speech. Anything that limits campaigning for policy change would severely limit the First Amendment. At what point do you start regulating? When groups officially organize? Hire professionals? When someone takes an ad out in the paper, creates a web site or distributes an e-alert? Where does public policy marketing officially begin? There’s no clear line that can be developed the way that a lobbyist meets with an elected official.

While I earn my living working on public policy campaigns, I understand how deceptive they can be when large DC-based groups invade a state or community. It’s annoying to see major ad buys in the local paper or TV that wouldn’t be there if you member of congress wasn’t a crucial vote, or a company has an interest in state-level policies. (think Comcast vs. EPB).

I understand Progress Nashville’s frustration.

Lobbying has been around a long time, as has targeted marketing. What’s dangerous is that those who represent are being subjected to marketing efforts about which we are unaware back in the districts and don’t have the opportunity to refute. These are also efforts that may take place weeks or months before legislation is introduced.

I argue that it’s up to the citizen to stay better informed. While it’s a slow process, politics are growing more transparent. This is why state and local blogs are so important. If you’re concerned about who’s influencing your member, start a blog and read the news. CQ, the Hill, Politico, WaPo and all the DC press are online. Set up google alerts to see what groups are targeting your member. Rather than push for limitations on free speech, exercise your right as a voting citizen to hold your congressional member accountable.

We can’t expect those who represent us to live in a vacuum, but perhaps we should require those who run public issue campaigns in the Washington area to follow the same rules as lobbyists who work the halls of Congress and register and report their activities.

Those of us in DC (and beyond), still report a lot of those “marketing” activities. The FEC requires disclosure of grassroots lobbying expenditures, of which Progress Nashville refers. The Supreme Court recently ruled on Wisconsin Right to Life vs. FEC, which covered policy and activism groups working on federal elections.

If someone really wanted to make an impact, a great project would be tracking activities of PACs/action funds throughout the country. That would expose the glut of policy lobbying that goes on this country. Progress Nashville is right. The average citizen has absolutely no idea what special interest groups are influencing their senator or congressman, not only from both sides of the isle, but international interests as well. However, regulation will only produce more obscure laws and vague 527-like groups. If you want to know who influences your elected officials, track the action funds.

Anyone else familiar with policy campaigns have another suggestion?

H/T Volunteer Voters

It’s October! Aside from being GFTS’s birthday month and Halloween, October is also Breast Cancer Awareness month. I’m not complaining. Too many women in my family have faced breast or ovarian cancer. It’s good to see headlines like this, especially after I lost my grandfather in January to colon cancer.

Classes could be taught about the branding of October and the color pink with breast cancer. It makes sense for Avon, Yoplait, Lean Cuisine and KitchenAide to think pink. The last time I was in Target, I noticed that HP had special computer paper with a pink wrapper for the month. Now you can print for a cure, but destroy a rain forest in the process.

Over the weekend, I caught Lifetime’s campaign, “Be My Bra” and my jaw dropped.

Are they serious? Was this campaign created by men?

I can actually see the brainstorming session behind this campaign:

Women get breast cancer.

Women wear bras.

Bras provide support to women’s breasts.

Women seek support from their friends.

Let’s refer to women’s friends as “bras!”

Make it pink, launch in the month of October and you have a successful campaign.

Mya even recorded a song entitled, “My Bra.”

According to this story, “bra” is slang for a friend. Did I miss something? Does anyone actually refer to their girlfriends as their “bras?”

I can’t decide if I dislike referring to my close girlfriends as lingerie items or the sheer corniness of the campaign. Can’t we all just wear pink and sing Melissa Etheridge’s “I Run for Life?”

Cancer is a serious threat that has personally touched my life way too many times to mention here. I hate campaigns that trivialize the disease. Doesn’t this pink wash breast cancer? Will seeing a “Be My Bra” ad encourage women to get annual mammograms, or merely drive the ratings of Lifetime for the month of October with a catchy song and cute graphics?

Gavin Newsom Case Study: Facebook for PR, branding and Press Releases A case study with examples of everything Facebook alluded to yesterday.

Rohit Bargava: The Future of PR Means Dumping the Inferiority Complex
Sigh. If we want to get this massive chip off the shoulders of the profession, why don’t we start in the classroom. It doesn’t help when the next generation enters the workforce cynical and paranoid.

Google acquires Jaiku. Is November 5 the Facebook/Google showdown? All the tech giants weigh in, including Brian Solis on how lifestreams are relevant to communication.

Junior Takes a Bride
This is a few days old, but I can’t help it. I’m not a fan of Harold Ford, Jr. but marrying anyone who works for Carolina Herrera adds a much-needed layer of class to the rather trashy Ford family. Will they live in Memphis? Can someone like her survive in Tennessee? Will she supply couture for Ford family appearances in court? Just imagine a gubernatorial campaign with a real fashionista in the Volunteer State! Can’t you see her wearing a classic Carolina evening gown to the Grand Ole Opry? Oh, the blogging would be so much fun!

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

If you read one blog today, click on Brian Solis. He nails it with his post on the sociology of social media.

Technology enables us to communicate, but the tools change constantly. People don’t change. People are relationship-based and communicate through networks in their lives. 

For the first time, the web allows us to mimic the way that people communicate in the real world. However, we spend more time studying the tools rather than the methods behind the tools.

From an academic perspective, most studies focus on the effect of a particular medium on people, especially with television. We aren’t focusing on how people communicate, but how they internalize the message that the medium forces on them through broadcast methods.

We’re always wondering what the next big thing is. What happens when the Facebook phenomenon ends? Will Twitter hit the mainstream? Is e-mail dead? If we understand the conversation and are participating, the tools are secondary. If true two-way communication exists, the right technology tools will be there. It’s all about that conversation:

Today, conversations are markets and markets are conversations. And the forums for these conversation cultivate an tight, unswerving and mostly unforgiving community and culture. Participation requires observation in order to understand the the sociological landscape and the dynamics that define each community. They are after all, populated by people, not audiences.

Read it.

For those of us who are masochistic enough to pursue a PhD knowing that it will actually decrease our earning potential, here’s the National Communication Association’s 2004 PhD program rankings.

Yep, I’ve decided to pursue a doctorate. I want three letters after my name instead of two. Plus my GRE scores are only good for two or three more years.

Actually, I’m just mesmerized by studying how we communicate and how the Internet continues to change the way that we communicate. As technology evolves, the need for research continues to grow. Professionals and academics need to work closer together to get information out. In other words, we need someone besides Pew researching this stuff.

Apparently, in PhD programs they pay you to research. They don’t pay you much, but you get to write jargon-filled tomes of important research that generally states the blaring obvious. You then get fellowships to travel all over the world and present your blood, sweat and tears to academics at various conferences, who may or may not reject your work for publication!

Who wouldn’t want that life? Plus, you get to teach! A classroom of malleable young minds for me to sway to conservatism!

Then there’s the concept of tenure. As much as I enjoy broadcasting my opinions to the known blogosphere, tenure is my best hope for a lifetime of employment.

After some preliminary research, here are my top choices:

1. Annenburg School for Communication at University of  Pennsylvania–the best political communication program in the country. Downside–only about 30 people are accepted each year, and it’s a five year program. Plus, I’d have to move to Philadelphia.

2. University of Maryland-College Park. Pros–ranked pretty high and located in the DC metro area. Downside–Grunig’s legacy. Can I handle 3 years of the Excellence Theory?

3. Manship School at LSU: Pros–it’s a respected program on culture and communication. Also have added benefit of entire family having attended LSU, and my life literally started there while McGuyver Dad was in vet school. Baton Rouge is a pleasant city, and I wouldn’t mind living there. Cons: Baton Rouge is actually farther away from Tennessee than the District. Baton Rouge also has issues since Katrina.

4. University of Tennessee: Pros-I know the program and the faculty. Knoxville is cheap, and I have roots there. Three more years of Volunteer Football! Cons: Been there. Done That. Got the sorority t-shirt.

5. UGA or Bama: Both good programs. Solid research institutions. Cons: It’s UGA or Bama. Ughh. Neither Athens nor Tuscaloosa seem very appealing.