Why PR needs liberal arts majors

Long story short, it was not the typical path toward a job in PR—or any job, really.

However, as a result, what I’ve learned is that the public relations industry badly needs more liberal arts majors and humanities students to join its ranks—but not necessarily for the reasons you may think.

I could rest on the writer’s argument—that PR needs better writers, and humanities, not marketing, departments are where those skills get sharpened.

That’s true. But I’m not going to go there, because there’s a better reason why we need humanities students: discipline.

Humanities students’ discipline can help PR efforts

There’s a word that I like to use to describe PR: painstaking.

In college, subject areas like history and English are very academic; therefore, the curriculum is rigorous. The research is exhausting and the critical analysis is deep. Then you wake up, and do it all over again. If you don’t, you fail.

I bet that sounds familiar.

Properly researching journalists’ beats in order to curate a sound media list requires days of painstaking research. There are no shortcuts. Unfortunately, upon the abrupt realization of this fact, many newly minted marketing and communications graduates default to taking the easy way out.