.

A L S O__T O D A Y 21st Log New York Times falls for old Net gag - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K In the market for a notebook computer? Exchange information and advice on brands and features in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y The father of Mario and Zelda By Moira Muldoon Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto creates the world's most popular video games (12/02/98) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Block those pundits: AOL-Netscape isn't like an NBC of the Web -- and can't be (12/01/98) "We Were Burning" Reviewed by Andrew Leonard A new book tells us to forget about Japan Inc. -- Japanese entrepreneurs led the high-tech consumer electronic revolution (11/30/98) The 21st Challenge No. 16: Misdirected love notes By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau Answer the mystery e-mail -- win a prize (11/25/98) The Net never forgets By J.D. Lasica Everything you've ever posted online could come back to haunt you someday (11/25/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURES ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M SALE! Salon's versatile, ultra-tough bag. Now on sale at just $39 for members and $49 for non-members.

SPIN SISTERS | PAGE 1, 2, 3 - - - - - - - - - - "Public relations has always been an afterthought: 'We screwed up as a company, get those PR people out there to make the journalists go away, manipulate the press, make it all OK.' PR people have always been on the outskirts of the company, being pooper scoopers. You don't get a lot of respect in that kind of a field," Cunningham says. "Now we're becoming part of the inner circle of the company. We're now bringing a perspective and a database of knowledge about markets into the decision-making room. You just can't get away with shit anymore as a company. If you want an image as a company -- you want positive brand and momentum -- you better understand what you're doing, because within two minutes on the Internet you are going to get found out." The Internet, apparently, has changed all the rules of public relations: Not only is competition being accelerated by technology that changes faster than the speed of light, but the media is growing and consumers are becoming more vocal. Business success is increasingly due to what PR agents call "mindshare" -- getting the right kind of attention in the vast morass of competitive products and accelerating news headlines. As a result, the role of public relations in the technology field is expanding. Today's public relations professionals say they no longer merely peddle their company's image to journalists (though that is still part of their jobs), but advise on positioning, work with market analysts, help organize conferences, instruct their clients on how to align their images and their practices and suggest business strategy. The most influential PR companies are trying to build a family roster or "keiretsu" of prestige clientele, similar to that of venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Pam Alexander, for example, is a major force within industry conferences and publications -- among her numerous clients are TechNet, TED, Qwest, Hewlett Packard, Ziff Davis and the Red Herring -- and the parties Alexander Ogilvie throws at Comdex and E3 are lavishly studded with both shrimp and industry bigwigs. "It was never my goal to be a PR person," explains Pam Alexander. "I thought of myself as a market researcher and educator, which I think is the best kind of technology specialist. You're always reading about what's happening in the industry and thinking about what the implications are, and then you teach that to your clients." The changing image and function of public relations may be partly due to its increasingly academic roots, as well as the influx of former journalists to the position. Countless public relations professionals have backgrounds in journalism and, in fact, the growth of public relations as a career seems to be at the expense of journalism. At the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, for example, the number of applicants to the Integrated Marketing Communications program has risen 15 percent in recent years, while the number of students applying to the traditional journalism program has dropped an equivalent amount. Only 20 percent of all recipients of journalism and mass communications bachelors degrees in 1997, according to a survey by Lee Becker of the University of Georgia, found work in some reporting, writing or editing capacity; nearly 21 percent took jobs in public relations. The forces responsible for these trends are easy to locate. Public relations jobs currently pay significantly more than, say, a newspaper job (an entry level position in PR can offer starting salaries in the low $30,000 range) and the growing industry is snatching up students as fast as they graduate. But public relations also entices young careerists with its management potential and the opportunity to learn business skills -- plus it's a flexible career that can be used as an entryway to any industry, from entertainment to high-tech. "I think a lot of people look at high tech and say, 'How can I get in that? The Net, the Net -- how do I get involved in it?'" says Tara Suan, who since her graduation from UC-Berkeley in 1994 has worked as a high-tech publicist at Niehaus Ryan Wong and currently is marketing communications manager at Topica. She is, she believes, typical of many young people in her field -- her journalistic aspirations were undermined by the reality of the paychecks, and she was enticed to public relations as a way to get into the exploding technology industry. "Truth be told, I would not have gone into PR if it weren't for high-tech PR, and I wouldn't have stayed had I not liked the Net so much. It was the promise of being able to do something really new." Alexander, along with many other of the women in public relations, insists that the predominance of women in the industry has nothing to do with gender issues. People choose the career out of intellectual curiosity, rather than because it's friendly to women, and the sheer number of females is an accident of education rather than ghettoization. But at the same time, it's hard to deny that public relations is where women are -- as Birney puts it, "It's almost expected -- it seems women are always in HR and PR. " Taking that one step further, Brandt worries that the dominance of women in the industry may actually harm the prestige of public relations. "There have traditionally been industries throughout history where women have taken over and they become a ghetto -- the pay goes down, the respect for the industry goes down, and it's stigmatized," he explains. "Will that happen in public relations? To some extent I think it might." But that's still conjecture, and today it's difficult to determine whether PR truly is a ghetto. If the only women in the technology industry getting recognition are the public relations executives, is that a measure of where women are encouraged to be, or where the world is encouraged to look for women? A few plaudits from the media, after all, do not necessarily represent industry groupthink. And there are, as Alexander points out, more women emerging in Silicon Valley as venture capitalists, journalists, financial officers, even chief technology officers. It's an evolutionary process, Alexander explains: "If you look at our educational system up until now, [the predominance of women in PR] is a reflection of how people were directed in their studies. I think if I or a lot of other women had gone to school 20 years later, we'd maybe have been encouraged in math and science more than we were." As an upstart industry that prides itself in offbeat approaches, after all, Silicon Valley ought to be less grounded in gender stereotypes and glass ceilings than other industries. Maybe public relations is merely the first portion of that industry to witness some gender equity. In an information economy, where communication is increasingly vital, perhaps that's not such a bad place to start. SALON | Dec. 3, 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - E-mail Janelle Brown. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.