Newspaper Editors' Perceptions of Public Relations: How Business, News, and Sports Editors Differ

Central to practicing public relations and the process of creating the media's news agenda is a productive working relationship between journalists and public relations professionals. A deterrent to that relationship, according to research spanning 15 years, is journalists' negative views of public relations. As both professions mature, however, we wonder whether this relationship is changing. Have editors' views grown more positive or more negative? Do editors of different departments view public relations similarly? These questions were among those investigated here. We used a mail survey of 166 business, news, and sports editors at daily newspapers throughout California. Findings confirmed journalists' persistent negative perceptions of practitioners and of public relations-supplied materials. On a more encouraging note, signs surfaced that the media—public relations relationship may be improving. In addition, results pinpointed some significant differences among editors. For instance, sports editors hold the most favorable impressions of public relations and business editors the lrast favorable; editors who completed a college course in public relations view the profession significantly more positively than those who had not. We analyze our findings as they are influenced by and influence extant public relations and journalism theories, such as agenda building and Grunig's (Grunig & Hunt, 1984) situational theory of publics.