Are textbooks enough to learn PR practices? (2010)

Undergraduates: Natalie Fioto, B'anca Glenn Sun Young Lee

Faculty Advisor: Craig Carroll
Department: Journalism & Mass Communication

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Public relations practitioners have a variety of means to learn how to pitch to the media. Our research illustrates what public relations practitioners report as their most impactful methods of learning how to pitch. It is important that public relations students are aware that there are multiple avenues of learning how to pitch.

We collected our data from in-depth interviews with 167 public relations practitioners and then performed a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts.

The first question dealt with where practitioners learned their pitching skills, and eight main themes emerged. Overall, practitioners learned pitching skills at work or outside work. At work, trial and error through practice, feedback from peers, mentors, and journalists, and workshop and seminars were the primary sources to obtain pitching skills. Some practitioners emphasized the sources outside their workplace such as their previous work experiences as a journalist, an advertiser, or a marketer or through internships, college education, and ongoing efforts to refine their skill sets through books, news, and any other resources.

The second question asked public relations practitioners to give advice to public relations students. Practitioners commonly recognized the importance of understanding to whom you are pitching, being true to your personality, practicing, researching, and networking with other professionals and journalists.