Organizations need qualified people in public relations positions

The work has often suffered much by putting persons forward to do that which they were not capable of doing.

—Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White

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Suppose you need life-saving surgery and you’re rushed to a hospital. But instead of the hospital hiring one of the many qualified surgeons in the world, you are now in the operating room with someone holding a scalpel who is not a doctor, has never been to medical school or even taken a college biology class. “Don’t worry,” you’re told. “We’re giving him on-the-job training.”

Ridiculous, huh?

Unfortunately that’s the way some organizations approach corporate communication in much of the world.

People who can’t write news copy well enough for even a small-market daily are put into jobs where they have no idea what to do. Granted, journalism and PR aren’t brain surgery, but it still takes time to learn how to do them well.

Not hiring qualified professionals may not kill patients, but that organization loses opportunities to put its message and mission into the news media (which one organization's co-founders, James and Ellen White, called for) and connect membership with each other worldwide. Continuing to behave this way means that the organization ignores members and loses the battle for public attention.

Fortunately there is a solution. In each of an organization’s world divisions, there are members who work in the news media and in public relations.

Hire these people.

They won’t need much on-the-job training and they’ll know what to do – create effective messages and images.

Bringing on qualified people will improve sagging subscription rates of magazines, land more copy on PR newswires and inspire members to replicate ministries they have seen in well-written news and feature stories.

At the Society of Adventist Communicators meeting in 2010, Hollywood producer and theologian Phil Cooke was asked what the church needed to do with its communication. He essentially said to stop the “safe” hiring and instead hiring the professionals – the artists, the writers, etc.  They’ll know what to do.

At General Conference Session in 2010, Paul Kim (the excellent producer of the president’s film) contacted me saying: “Ansel, who is this Edwin Garcia guy??!! Every one of his stories was STAND-OUT.”

Thanks Paul. Indeed, Edwin is a veteran journalist, having written for the Chicago Tribune, the Portland Oregonian, and 17 years for the San Jose Mercury News. I used to read his front-page features when I was in grad school (and probably the only student who still got a paper delivered to his front door each day). I still can’t believe he agreed to give up vacation time to come volunteer at Session. We also had Arin Gencer, of the Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun fame, who wrote great features for us. I even had a friend from long ago contact me and say she enjoyed the photography from Session.

See, good content stands out.

Ruben Gelhorn, public relations director at River Platte University in Argentina, once told me that the church should produce communication graduates that understand communication and public relations theory. Technology and delivery systems can be learned later. “Running a television camera isn’t communication,” he said.

This is similar to what former Disney CEO Michael Eisner told The Wall Street Journal Magazine in a 2010 interview. Eisner said, “The creation of content has never been more important.” He went on to say, “A lot of people can learn to write computer code and understand the inner workings of the technological revolution we’re going through, but if you’re going to be in content, I would rather you understand what makes a good narrative. To find people who can make you laugh or cry or smile or get upset or learn something about yourself. Those people are rare. They are rarer, frankly, than the others.”

With an organization’s many delivery systems – publications in print, online, TV and radio – I wish as much thought was put into the content and hiring people who create that content.

Still, in many parts of the world the challenge is getting people to understand the basics of the industry. It’s also a challenge to help executives learn that corporate communication isn’t something you can just put an unqualified person into and expect good results. One person in a communication department somewhere in the world once made it clear that they didn’t know it wasn’t OK to take a story from the local daily paper and pass it off as their own. Slap your forehead, right? And last week, my buddy Stals Kinborg received an email from the Communication director in his region. That person was essentially absolving himself from having to do anything, saying that all local communication departments should send their content directly to headquarters. How sad. People in that need to be connected and inspired with their own news service, too.

I asked Stals to email him back saying: “It’s not other people’s job to do your job.” We’ll see what the response is.

This is a song I’ve been singing for almost five years. Having more people hear it will help if it makes a change. I’ve had people offer all kinds of great suggestions of how to get around it, but those all fail. It simply comes down to whether an organization’s executives want to commit to doing communication well or not. Jamaican PR guru Nigel Coke said, “Communication either needs to be loved or it needs to be dropped.”

Hiring qualified people who are both passionate and talented in public relations would fill the void left silent by organizations not communicating. If executives commit to it, they’re less likely to keep losing opportunities and the trust of their members.