couple of strong strides. Him being an outfielder, I think he can get around pretty good. I'm not sure how sturdy he is on his skates, though.

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In our Evanston IL middle school, the entire world is focused around math skills. Parents climb over themselves to be sure their seventh grader is allowed in to one of the few advanced geometric, advanced algebraic, number noodling classes so they can assured of a Harvard or Penn State admission in their next life.

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Public Relations is the management function which evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an individual or an organization with the public interest, and plans, executes and evaluates a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance.

Harsh but funny words -- and unfortunately, mostly true. There wouldn't be a Bad Pitch Blog or journalists blacklisting PR folks left and right if we were all great writers and communicators.

That said, I don't think we're *all* awful. I blogged this weekend about the importance of continually improving our writing, and about social media - especially blogs and Twitter - as a means for doing just that.

Dear Ron,

Where have you been living and working for these past 25 years? Certainly not in the American PR profession. "Blanket, uninformed statements?"

I challenge any PR Junkie reader to read through the press releases on PR Web or PR Newswire.

If you can do so (with or without a bottle of Jack Daniels) and conclude that Ron is correct, that I have exaggerated in stating that most PR writing is horrid, then I will concede the point.

I await your verdict.

Look, Ron, I will agree that bad writing can rear its ugly head here at Ragan.com, and in the journalism community overall.

But it's nowhere near as consistently bad as in the PR industry. A well-written, attention-grabbing press release is almost nonexistent on the major distribuition sites.

This sounds to me like yet another smug comment from a journalist, deriding an entire profession based upon what is far from the norm.

I've worked as a journalist and columnist, AND a PR person for 25 years now, and trust me, poor writing is not so uncommon among the Fourth Estate, either. Blanket, uninformed statements like this one in this, the age of plagiarism, embedding journalists and Fox News, strike me as far from cerebral, and the height of hypocrisy.

Or, as one TV news reporter told me last night when discussing this subject, "we've got a lot of nerve."

As for me personally, I certainly wouldn't knowingly trust my editing to someone who keeps "old press releases," or who opens a jug of Jack Daniels before making and publishing his assessment.

I have to interject about one school system in particular: San Diego State University. The PR program there is phenomenal (ranked No. 6 in the nation and the only "top ten" school west of the Mississippi River).

All PR students at SDSU are trained in journalism and have to pass a rigorous grammar, spelling and punctuation test in order to even break into the major.

The professors that teach the programs are respected in the PR community and are authors of the textbooks used at SDSU and across the globe. They teach what PR ought to be: research-based, ethical and intelligent.

I have to admit, the "real world" of PR is a lot different than what we learned in school at SDSU. We are not always allowed the luxury to execute formal research or have the final say on which buzzwords should be banned from use; however, well-trained PR communicators ARE out there and it's a product of well-established PR programs such as the one at SDSU.

I've come to the conclusion that -- poor mechanics aside -- corporate writing stinks because people in the business world have gotten so accustomed to their own B.S. that they are incapable of thinking in any meaningful sense of the word. I recently spent an hour on the phone (after multiple hours in meetings) attempting to help an HR executive craft a call for volunteers to "help drive" the department's "culture change initiative." I had two questions:
* What are we asking them to actually do?
* What kind of time commitment are we asking them to make?
After the hour, I still did not have answers to these questions. I got a lot of drivel about "becoming empowered", "taking ownership of the solutioning", etc., etc. Ultimately, I made up the answers to my own questions and they were approved. My point is, language skills and thinking skills are inseparable. The loss of writing is not the loss of some arcane art form - it is the loss of the ability to think. Okay, that might be a bit strong. The loss of writing is the loss of the ability to hold thought still long enough to determine its weight and value. It is the loss of of the ability to share thought and create meaning. It is the loss of what makes us human.

As the parent of a 13-year old daughter, I can tell you why PR people are often such lousy writers. Where do they go to learn a decent writing style?

In our Evanston IL middle school, the entire world is focused around math skills. Parents climb over themselves to be sure their seventh grader is allowed in to one of the few advanced geometric, advanced algebraic, number noodling classes so they can assured of a Harvard or Penn State admission in their next life.

No one wants to focus much on writing in Middle school at least.

My guess is that math is much easier to score. You either come up with the correct answer or you don't. That's probably why we have so many math tutors in our school.

But writing ... yikes. The kids don't practice much because most of the teachers are clueless at identifying good writing from trash themselves.

Hence my original point. If no one is teaching decent writing to kids, how are they going to learn?

I teach an intro to PR course at a local university and I'm always shocked at the lack of writing skills exhibited by many students. They're in for a wake-up call when they get to my class because I teach that writing is one of the most important fundamental skills they will need to succeed in the profession and therefore I take off points for poorly written assignments.

Part of the blame must go to companies that hire PR agencies based purely on relationships between executives and brand-name recognition rather than a demonstration of the skills and expertise the agencies offer.

I'm one of five contractors hired by a Fortune 500 company to write content for internal and external purposes. Funny how the company still retains one of the big PR firms, but not for writing.

Great post, particularly using Jack Daniels to get through the bad writing one finds coming from top-rated firms. I used to need the same self-medication at the beginning of each month when I lived in San Francisco to write the mortgage check.

I spent 10 years writing releases for big companies and firms. The last four years I've been teaching at the University of South Florida, primarily "Writing for Public Relations."

One area to blame is the school system. I basically have to eliminate all a student's bad writing habits, THEN figure out a way to get them on the path toward professional writer status. Certainly this is almost impossible in a mere 15 weeks.

The second area of blame falls on the agencies. They are so top-heavy on client teams that they are perpetually understaffed. This results in little hands-on mentoring and pushing off the pitching/writing to new grads who don't have the experience or skills to do the job adequately.

The templates the firms force their junior people to conform to are horrible, but allow releases to be completed quicker, which saves money. I've had fantastic student writers get jobs at agencies, then have their skills beat right out of them because of time restraints, etc.

If agency leadership wanted to put a stop to this poor writing, they could. But, it's cost effective and, at the end of the day, must prove that they don't care all that much about writing quality. My hope is that I teach my students the best methods I know and then someday when they are execs, they implement that style at their agencies.

Thanks again for focusing on such an important issue!

The buzz word I see from the outside looking in: "Let us OPTOMIZE your press release!" I hired a PR firm once to "fix" my press release for a new project. They took my money, "fixed" the release and released it....word for word what I had sent them. Then, they denied it, saying the had "optimized" it. Umm. Either I wrote a great press release or they couldn't. I no longer buy press release services.

BTW, I do like the blunt way your write your blogs. Thanks.

Pretty good coming from the "lead provider of products and services for corporate communicators."

Almost as bad as pr writers, but not quite, is the business trade media.

I love how you put this:

"None of the kids hired by the agencies and billed out at $150 an hour have the slightest idea what they're writing about. They don't understand the product or the client. They have no background in the industry, and they never learned how to write in college."

So true. PR departments in colleges have de-emphasized writing because the kinds of students that are (have always been) attracted to PR as a major often do so because they hate to write. They want special events, and management responsibilities. So when they get into the field, they are terrible. As for the media, they more often than not have to deal with the youngest in the ranks of large PR firms, so their perception is based on this.

Media relations has always worked better when populated by former reporters and editors.

Very entertaining, very true.

Back in the day when I ran marketing at a high tech start-up, we did our own PR. It was much cheaper and a whole lot better.

I've worked for people who swear by the template. If any ideas were offered, people were told they didn't understand PR and how to approach the media. This is one of those "transitions" (another buzzword) that we are working through.