If you work in the PR field, you likely saw this New York Times article by Stuart Elliot about the new official definition of public relations. According to Stuart’s article, the push to redefine public relations started last November due to a perceived need to update our practice in the age of social media and “spin doctors” – his words, not mine. This initiative sparked significant interest from PR professionals, organizations, critics, and the public. Gerard Corbett, who was the 2012 chairman and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America, led the effort that produced three final definitions for a vote this past February. Below are those three definitions, with the second one being chosen as the winner:

  • “Public relations is the management function of researching, communicating and collaborating with publics to build mutually beneficial relationships.”
  • “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”
  • “Public relations is the strategic process of engagement between organizations and publics to achieve mutual understanding and realize goals.”

Most PR practitioners would agree that all three are solid definitions of our field and what we do every day. Particularly, I’m glad to see that ‘strategic’ made it into two definitions, and ‘relationships’ into two as well. Still, I need to beg the question – what has changed? To be fair, I only graduated from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University less than two years ago, so maybe the difference is unclear to me because I learned it so recently. For the veteran PR pros out there – is this not what you learned was the definition? Has it changed all that much?

That being said, has the rise of digital and social media actually created the need to redefine our industry? Our role remains the same: we are the communications professionals that develop and maintain relationships with our clients and their publics. It’s true, how we communicate with those publics has changed. It’s not all about picking up the phone anymore – though we don’t forget the importance of that tactic as well. Often, these relationships are built through social media and engaging in new ways – over Skype, through a Tweet, group discussions on LinkedIn, etc. Our role has not changed and therefore, the definitions above are not as evolved as this attention makes it seem.

That’s not a bad thing; it’s because the time-tested best practices of public relations will always remain  effective – the medium to how we implement those best practices and build relationships may change with new media, but not the practices themselves. That’s my PR thought for the day.

What do you think – has the rise of social media created the need to redefine our practice? And if so, did the chosen definition fulfill that need? Drop a line in the comments and let me know.

A version of this post originally appeared on prSPEAK, a blog from PAN Communications.