The History of the Press Release

The Origin of the Press Release and Its Importance to Public Relations

Have you ever heard the story of how a young man named Ivy Lee responded to a tragedy that took the lives of more than 50 people and used it to create what would become a mainstay of any public relations effort? Don’t worry if you haven’t. The truth is that most public relations practitioners haven’t either. (Read more…)

Giving Up on Wal-Mart

Dumbstruck. That’s how I felt after reading Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the April 2nd edition of The New Yorker entitled “Selling Wal-Mart.”

“The Edelman team assigned to Wal-Mart, I learned, is divided into three groups: ‘promote,’ ‘response,’ and ‘pressure.’ The Jobs and Opportunity Zones notion came from the promotions team. The response-team members – veterans of political campaigns – are supposed to quickly counter criticism in the press or on the Web. The pressure group works on opposition research, focussing on the unions and the press,” Goldberg wrote. (Read more…)