Chapter 2 Notes

Public Relations may be  an relatively new job field, but the roots of public relations date back thousands of years.  In order to attract people to come to the New World, private companies promoted a beautiful new country that people would desire to be a part of.   In the 1800’s press agents began to emerge.  P.T. Barnum was the pioneer of public relations and introduced techniques that are still used today.  Once people became settled in America settling the West was next on the list.  Promotions by land developers and railroads played a huge role in the eventual settlement of the west.  When corporations, in the 1900’s, began to be criticized about certain polices and actions that the public deemed wrong these corporations used public relations to respond to public allegations of wrong  doing.  Public Relations was altered from 1900 to 1950 by people like henry Ford, Ivy Lee, George Creel, Edward B. Bernays, and Arthur page.  There became a shift from press agentry to a journalistic  concept in distributing accurate information to the public at large.  1950 to the present showed the establishment of public relations.