The launching of battleships with ceremony; the laying of corner stones; the presentation of memorials; demonstration meetings, parties and banquets are all events created with a view to their carrying capacity in the various mediums that reach the public.
The departments of a modern newspaper will show the great variety of possible approaches on any subject from the standpoint of the press. When this is correlated to the possible approaches on any subject from the standpoint of human psychology, we see the diversification of methods to which the public relations counsel can have recourse to construct events.
In the metropolitan press, for instance, there are the news departments, the editorial departments, the letter-to-the-editor department, the women’s department, the society department, the current events department, the sport department, the real estate department, the business department, the financial department, the shipping department, the investment department, the educational department, the photographic department and the other special feature writers and sections, different in different journals.
In a valuable study on the “Newspaper Reading Habits of Business Executives and Professional Men in New York” compiled by Professor George Burton Hotchkiss, Head of the Department of Advertising and Marketing, and Richard B. Franken, Lecturer in Advertising at New York University, there are several tables setting forth the features of morning and evening newspapers preferred as a whole by the group to whom the questionnaires were sent, and by various smaller groups within the main group.
The counsel on public relations not only knows what news value is, but knowing it, he is in a position to make news happen. He is a creator of events.