Monthly Archives: December 2012

Students of PR should take heed of Samuel Insull, chief of staff to Thomas Edison, as an early supporter of public relations.

Edelman and the Rise of Public Relations has been a year in the making, with Franz Wisner conducting hundreds of interviews and sorting through my father’s school years and war-time memorabilia. The result is the first real history of public relations as a business and a lovely tale of a family committed to the success of the enterprise.

I went with SAP co- chief executive, Bill McDermott, to the Frederick Douglass Center, a Children’s Aid Society (CAS) facility built in the 1950s which offers after-school programs and community services to the underprivileged in the neighborhood.

I have just read the new book, Rethinking Reputation, by John Doorley and Fraser Seitel, former chief communications officers at Merck and Chase Bank, respectively. The central theme of the book is that reputation depends on good behavior and honest communications.