PR meets the WWW / Constantin Basturea’s weblog

The Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal has published recently a list of what MWW’s president Michael Kempner presents as the five “ultimate books on public relation” (later edit: it was supposed to be “5 favorite books on spin”, not on PR, but the distinction was probably lost on the Journal’s editors :). Hm — it’s not exactly what I had in mind when I read the article’s title…

So how do I add my favorite PR books to Mr. Kempner’s “ultimate” list (you know, just in case The Journal is not that interested in my opinion)? Even more important: how do you add your favorites? :)

There’s a simple solution: we’ll “digg” them. Here’s how:

• Go to prbooks.crispynews.com
• Click on Suggest a book, and add a link to the Amazon page of your favorite book, write down its title and author, and submit it. (If you really care about the book you can include a link to its cover image, too.)
• Do the same thing for your other favorite PR books — but please don’t submit more than 3 or 4 books; let’s leave some space for other people, too.
• Add a comment or a review, explaining what makes the book so special (we’ll find a way to recognize the best reviews).
• Vote on the books submitted by other people (no, there’s no way to prevent you from voting on books that you didn’t read, but I’m counting on your honesty) and comment on or review their entries (to agree or disagree in a civil manner).
• If you take Please take a minute to register with the website, so that your suggestions and votes will receive 10 points (otherwise they’ll get just 3). Plus, your (user) name will get displayed on the entries that you submit.
• The books with most votes will be showed on the homepage. There’s also a page for new entries, and an RSS feed that will keep you updated on the books added recently.

Right now there are only a couple of books posted on the website — Michael Kempner’s list, Phil Gomes’s favorites, and mine. Let’s see your favorites :)

* Fine prints : Sure, there’s no such thing as “the best PR book”, and voting will not help us finding it anyway. But we can see what are the most popular/recommended PR books by the people who care enough to submit their favorites and to vote on other’s people favorites. Worth a try, IMO.

PRSA has set up a group blog (RSS feed) that will cover the 2006 National Conference (Salt Lake City, November 12-14). Good call! :)