Reading: Understanding 21st Centruy PR

Reading before week 4: Ch.1 Understanding Twenty-first Century Public Relations by Joy Chia
and Ch. 2 Trends and Developments by Joy Chia

If in the first lecture I (finally) got to know what Public Relations is, and how it is different from journalism, from the reading I now have in-depth understanding about PR and many things around it.
For example, fun to find out how in PR, there's public (a group of people) and there's stakeholder (public that has an influence to your company).

I find the opening story of the chapter about Tracy Jones, the president of Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA), interesting. Making me think, perhaps it's a good idea to start your carreer as a journalist, when you young, with all the rush and adrenaline. Then as you get older, you move on to a more settled but as challenging carrer in Public Relations.

I should've known that PR's neatherthal is from Greece (p.6) --as many others' are. After all, Greece is the birthplace of many sophists.
At first, t seems to me that PR sounds like marketing: it publicize something, but with the purpose of seeling it. But I realize now that PR is about maintaining reputation (both the reputation of someone, or an organization) and relationship (between PR company and client company, client-public, PR-public, PR-media, client-media).
I cannot completely agree, though, if it's said that PR is "to make a difference to society" (p. 7). Well, at least, I can't see the direct connection.

Just like journalism, PR also prone to govt interverene (p. 7) so maybe it's a good idea if a PR practitioner is under a certain solid organization for Public Relations, like PRIA in Australia.

There are 4 effective ways to do PR: Research, Evaluation, Planning, Communication (RACE) (p.8).

Reading about theories of PR, it occurs to me that PR is not an exclusive practice. I mean, not like medical or engineering practitioners who have these fancy terms that ordinary human can't understand. And you can't go anywhere else when you study medical, or law, for example. You have to stay around the science.
On the other side, PR is all about logic and creativity. When you study Public Relations, you study about basic things in relating and communicating with other people.

-Global Alliance
-International Public Relations Association.