Where do we sit: marketing or media?

Our public relations courses are delivered in a business faculty, and taught within a business (or rather managerial) context. (I make the distinction between business and management as a reminder that public relations is practised in the public and not-for-profit sectors as well as the private sector.) We’re also in a School of Marketing and PR, though I’d argue that there are domains of public relations practice (in David’s phrase) that have nothing to do with marketing.

This emphasis leaves us open to criticism (as at an Open Day last Friday) that we don’t teach enough media. (This was an interesteting challenge for me to address, knowing that some colleagues think I place too much emphasis on media relations in my teaching. In reality, we do cover the media landscape and also media relations and new media – though we don’t teach journalism here.)

Richard Edelman wrote about the location and context of public relations in universities a week ago, and the debate has since been picked up on the Forward blog.