Seth Godin defies public relations logic "Make it easy to get hurt"

While professional organizations and blogs argue that public relations is a means to control the message, Seth Godin's blog today takes us back to the very tenant public relations was founded on, Here's one way businesses can profit from a social media presence: Make it easy to get hurt.

Public relations started out as a two way conversation between an organization and its various publics. Unschooled practitioners, and those not coming up through the news media ranks, have again bastardized the practice; much like they misnomered my way of measuring messages and now call it ROI.

Public Relations: The Profession and the Practice, by Otis Baskin and Craig Aronoff, defines public relations, Public relations practitioners communicate with all relevant internal and external publics in the efforts to create consistency between organizational goals and societal expectations.

I was taught that means it's a two way street and communications is listening to your publics and inform management how to mesh with those expectations. An example is health care reform before Congress. Seems no one is listening to the public on this one.