2

THEORIES OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

DEVELOPMENT

Does public relations history matter? After all, public relations is a dynamic field that
has embraced the technological changes in communication, and is at the forefront of
the big communication issues of the twenty-first century, including social media, big
data, and psychographic research. Looking retrospectively at public relations and its
historicity and historiography, it seems like one of the less glamorous (and interest-
ing) aspects of PR. However, as Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest, “What’s past is
prologue.”1 Nowhere is that truer than in public relations.
The history of public relations has a direct impact on the field’s view of itself.
Public relations’ concern for ethics, debates over definitions of PR practice, the
concern over the professionalization of the field, and the profession’s focus on
managerial functions are all rooted in public relations history. The perception that
public relations has of itself, and its concern over its role and value in organiza-
tions and within the larger communication field can trace its origins to historical
concerns the field has had for decades. Even the history of public relations and
the way these histories were written had an impact on the field. They set up the
issues PR had to deal with, they defined what public relations practice is, and
they set out to create a narrative about public relations that defined the field’s
relationship with organizations, management, the press, and the public.2
To examine the importance that history has on public relations, this chapter
explores the various narratives of public relations history and definitions of the
field. While this chapter does seek to present an overview of the historiography
of PR, it does have an agenda. That is, public relations history has largely been
incorrectly presented as an evolutionary progression in which key figures made an
indelible impact of the field. While public relations certainly has changed over
time, and historical figures have had an impact on the field, the true narrative of
public relations history is not one of great men and women changing the practice
16 Theories of Public Relations Development

of PR to reach its most ethical, professional, and impactful apex. Rather, public
relations history is messy. It is filled with figures, good and bad, who sought to
use public relations practice to achieve certain ends.3 Moreover, public relations
history is organic in that it has emerged over time from various sectors working in
tandem (sometimes unaware of each other’s existence). Public relations is a field
of professionals and non-professionals alike. Especially in the era prior to the
twentieth century, public relations was a form of communication that existed in
various organizations and was practiced by various people, many of whose names
are lost to history and cannot be included in the great man and woman narrative
of the field.

Older Narratives of Public Relations History

Public relations history has largely been written from an American perspective,
and early work largely centers on the individual lives of practitioners.4 Because of
this, certain figures have been pushed to the forefront of the field’s history. These
figures act like founding fathers of the field, and their lives serve as a type of
timeline for the field’s development. Key moments in their careers seem to par-
allel transfiguring moments of the profession’s development. These early histories
have some inaccuracies, primarily that they represent a holistic historical account
of the field of public relations. Much of influence is left out: women, minorities,
social movements, non-professionalized public relations practice, non-Western
public relations, non-U.S. public relations, other fields’ contributions to public
relations, public relations prior to the late nineteenth century, and even unethical
public relations.5 In short, a lot is left out of these older histories.6 Perhaps this is
because of convenience, and perhaps these early writers were unaware of the
other events. What we do know is that the exclusion of other PR histories pro-
vides a mechanism for a unified, evolutionary narrative of the field. Because
public relations history is frequently in dialogue with these older narratives, it is
important to understand it.
The older narrative of public relations history begins with the mid to late
nineteenth-century press agentry epitomized by P.T. Barnum.7 In fact, Barnum is
one of the so-called founders of public relations in that he understood the use of
the press and publicity for his circuses.8 Barnum’s use of press agentry is char-
acterized as a dishonest attempt to garner media attention by staging special events
that attracted paying clients to his circus events. This included sensational acts
such as General Tom Thumb, a dwarf who performed with the circus, and Joice
Heth, the supposed 161-year-old nanny to George Washington.9 Press agentry
was not limited to Barnum, but was thought to be the type of pure publicity used
by the entertainment industry to attract audiences. The hallmark of press agentry
was its inherent dishonesty and use of stunts to attract public attention. Part of its
effectiveness was linked to the rise of newspapers and the yellow journalism of
the late nineteenth century, and the celebrity of men like Barnum.10
 Theories of Public Relations Development 17

At the end of the nineteenth century, the U.S. corporate PR came into being.11
Its line and column structure that gave rise to so-called middle management allowed
for the formation of modern corporate power. Railroads made for faster delivery of
goods, and the telegraph allowed for corporate expansion and subsidiary businesses.
In this environment the corporate sector began using its own form of public relations
practice. This corporate growth led to a greater interaction of corporations with the
public. In the late nineteenth century, corporate titans such as Cornelius Vanderbilt
held to the mantra “the public be damned,” but by the early twentieth century there
was a recognition that the public was a factor that had to be considered in any busi-
ness model.12 Because of that, corporations began to use PR men as corporate
communicators. The best known among these was Ivy Lee, who worked for Stan-
dard Oil and John D. Rockefeller.13 Lee is credited with improving the image of
Rockefeller by creating his trademark gesture of giving dimes to children, and navi-
gating Standard Oil’s crisis during the Ludlow Massacre in 1914 when children were
killed in a Colorado labor strike.14 Lee’s role in public relations development is lar-
gely viewed as positive, especially because he is credited with proposing the field’s
Declaration of Principles, that is viewed as the first set of ethical guidelines for the
public relations profession.15
World War I was viewed as the harbinger of change in the public relations profes-
sion. During the War, the Woodrow Wilson administration became keenly aware of
the importance of communication in shaping attitudes and beliefs in society. To
combat potential propaganda from the Central Powers, such as Germany, the Wilson
administration created the Committee of Public Information (CPI) one month after
the United States entered the war.16 The Committee of Public Information, com-
monly referred to as the Creel Committee because it was chaired by newspaperman
George Creel, was tasked with producing communication favorable to the war effort,
including war posters, information supporting the draft, rationing information, victory
gardens, and bond drives. The CPI also controlled information by managing the
content of news stories, and producing pro-U.S. news content.17
Although the CPI employed thousands of people, many of whom where
civilians, one person stands out as a major influence on public relations develop-
ment—Edward Bernays.18 A nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays was a former
entertainment press agent in New York prior to World War I. He joined the
CPI in 1917, working on Latin American issues, primarily concentrating on
business. He went to the Paris Peace Conference after the War ended, and later
gained fame as the creator of the idea of “counsel on public relations.”19 Bernays
is credited with inventing the concept of a public relations practitioner who
handled communication between organizations and their publics. Bernays is
credited with his understanding of psychology and consumer attitudes driving his
public relations success. He wrote several books on the subject, beginning in
1923 with Crystallizing Public Opinion and Propaganda in 1928.20 These books,
along with copious other writings of Bernays throughout his long life (he lived to
be 103 years old!) had an impact on public relations practice, and advocated the
18 Theories of Public Relations Development

idea that public relations would benefit from using psychographic and social sci-
ence information to create communication strategies. Bernays’s work is often
credited with introducing major changes in the field of public relations, such as
his 1929 New York Easter Parade that broke the taboo for women smoking, his
work with the United Fruit Company advocating the eating of bananas in
American diets, his promotion to make bacon a staple of American breakfasts, and
promotional work for women’s hair nets, among many other things.21 Later
Bernays would be associated with advocating for the licensing of public relations
practitioners, and differentiating between publicity, something Bernays practiced
pre-World War I, and public relations practice.22
A contemporary of Edward Bernays was Arthur Page, who is credited with
creating corporate public relations counsel.23 Unlike Bernays who sought to gain
public notoriety as a public relations counsel, Page focused his professional skills
on being a PR practitioner with AT&T from 1927 to 1947.24 In those twenty
years Page refined the role of corporate public relations, especially focusing on
managing public opinion regarding AT&T’s monopolistic business model. Page is
often associated with the ethical practice of public relations. Named in his honor
are the Arthur Page Society and the Arthur Page Center for Integrity in Public
Communication, both of which focus on ethical communication in corporate
communication. The Page Society, renamed simply Page in 2018, publishes “The
Page Principles,” which are based on the work of Arthur Page.25 These seven-
point principles advocate for the ethical practice of public relations and best
practices for corporate public relations counsel.
This received narrative of public relations history is largely based on the writings of
Edward Bernays who wrote prolifically about the development of public relations
practice. In his 1952 book, Public Relations, and later in his 1965 autobiography,
Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays, Bernays
wrote about the development of public relations practice, largely focusing on how
his work had influenced the modern concept of PR practice and public relations
counsel.26 Another early source that influenced the saliency of this historical narrative
was Scott Cutlip and Allen Center’s Effective Public Relations, a textbook that had
widespread adoption and impact on the field.27 This book provided a narrative very
similar, starting with press agentry and going through the 1950s’ use of public rela-
tions counsel.28 Pre-press agentry public relations was minimized, and was depicted as
a precursor to modern public relations. Pamphleteers, such as Thomas Paine, and
presidential advisors, such as Amos Kendall in the Andrew Jackson administration,
were included in the narrative, but only as people who had an awareness of influ-
encing public perceptions.29 These early histories of public relations followed a tra-
jectory of the lives of great men: Barnum, Lee, Creel, Bernays, and Page, and linked
the linear development of public relations history to the timeline of their contribu-
tions. Perhaps most controversially, the narrative of public relations history focused
on corporate influence with only a passing, and negative, acknowledgment of the
entertainment field’s contributions.
 Theories of Public Relations Development 19

Identity formation has much to do with the historical past. The received
history of public relations seems to impact the public relations psyche to some
degree. Beginning the field with Barnum opens the narrative of public relations as
an unethical, unprofessional practice devoid of ethics. From this ethical abyss the
field grew, with the aid of corporate PR men, to eventually have a more
professional, solidified PR practice. It is perhaps this narrative that has created a
culture within public relations that focuses heavily on ethical practice and pro-
fessionalism. Public relations scholarship and industry organizations, such as the
Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), dedicate a vast amount of attention
to the ethical practice of public relations. Press agentry as a term is largely thought
of as negative, and something to be avoided in practice.30 Even publicity, a term
that has both positive and negative connotations, in some sectors of PR scholar-
ship, is viewed as unethical and inherently deceptive.31

Four Models and Public Relations History

This older received history of public relations has an impact theoretically on the field of
public relations. Nowhere is that more evident than in the four models of public rela-
tions created by James Grunig and Todd Hunt.32 First published in their 1984 text-
book, Managing Public Relations, the four models of public relations categorizes public
relations into four typologies using historical evidence (Figure 2.1). The typologies not
only use historical support, but each typology is organized using chronological historical
events and people as exemplars, which makes the four models serve as a historical per-
iodization of public relations development. The model is represented as such.
Each of these typologies of practice not only progresses chronologically starting
with press agentry and moving toward modern two-way symmetrical public
relations, but each typology represents a practice of public relations that is more
sophisticated, ethical, and professional than the previous one.33

Historical Eras Associated with the Four Models of Public Relations

Press Agentry Public Information

1850Ð1900 1900 Ð1920s

Two Way Asymmetric Two Way Symmetric

1920sÐ1950s 1960sÐpresent

FIGURE 2.1 Four models of public relations based on Grunig and Hunt (1984). Note
these PR models are not limited only to these dates and can appear in
modern PR practice
20 Theories of Public Relations Development

Press agentry is the first typology of PR practice.34 It is characterized as pure

publicity in which the communicator has no accountability for the accuracy of his
or her communications. Equated with the work of P.T. Barnum, press agentry is
depicted as a crude ancestor of modern public relations, and its work focuses
exclusively on the needs of the speaker’s organization. It seeks to achieve atten-
tion at all costs, and as such it attracts public mistrust. According to the four
models, this type of PR practice may still be in use, but it is largely associated
with late nineteenth-century U.S. public relations.
The information model public relations is the type of PR practiced by Ivy Lee. It
is slightly more ethical and professional than press agentry. Its purpose is to inform
public of an organization’s work. It is a strictly one-way communication in which
public needs and attitudes are not considered. However, what distinguishes the
information model from press agentry is its honesty. Unlike press agentry, the
information model public relations is not about pure publicity at all costs. It does
consider accuracy in its information, but it does not engage in a dialog with publics.
Because of that, public needs or beliefs are not considered or even sought.35
Two-way asymmetric communication is the type of public relations practiced
after World War I. It is largely associated with Edward Bernays, and it is more
sophisticated than its predecessor, the information model.36 Unlike the informa-
tion model and press agentry, it does consider public attitudes, and engages in
some communication with them. One of the hallmarks of two-way asymmetrical
public relations is its use of psychographic information about publics. Bernays’s
use of Freudian psychology is an example of two-way asymmetric communica-
tion because he looked at public needs and perceptions, e.g., women smoking is
linked to increased women’s autonomy and liberation. However, the reason that
this category is viewed as asymmetric is that the organization/practitioner does
not engage with the public in a cyclical communication. Rather engagement is
limited and focused almost exclusively on organizational needs.37
Two-way symmetrical communication is the last typology of PR practice, and is
presented as the most ethical and responsible form of PR practice.38 It advocates
for a total engagement between publics and public relations professionals, and it
seeks to increase public trust between the organization and the public through
continual engagement. Part of the reason two-way symmetric communication is
presented so positively is that it moves the field away from the unethical roots of
press agentry. In fact, advocacy in two-way symmetric communication is really not
present. Rather the continual dialog between an organization and the public
represents a conversation in which an entity becomes both the sender and the
receiver.39 It represents the highest form of ethics and professionalism. It also pre-
sents a form of PR practice that is supposed to assist organizations to navigate dif-
ficult publics and resolve issues that may arise in a mutually beneficial way. It goes
beyond just a typology or historical period. It is, according to Grunig and Hunt,
the best way that public relations can be practiced and is a form of PR that is both
aspirational and necessary for all effective PR practitioners.40
 Theories of Public Relations Development 21

The four models of public relations have had a major impact on the field of
scholarly public relations work beyond history. They serve as the cornerstone of
the Excellence Theory of public relations, which provides a practical theoretical
guide to how best to practice public relations.41 Rooted in that theory is the role
of two-way symmetrical public relations, and over time the theory has been used
to examine organizations and public relations practice to see if Excellence Theory
is being practiced. In public relations scholarship, this theory is widely known and
widely written about, and its appearance in public relations textbooks and other
writings has made it extensively studied and critiqued in the field of PR.42
The four models of public relations, however, have had a historical impact
beyond Excellence Theory. Even though the typology of the four models was
developed to categorize PR practice, not history per se, the model provides a
compartmentalization of PR development. Its linear timeline and historical
underpinnings have made it accepted as a historical theory of public relation’s
development. Its power also lies in its familiarity with other narratives of PR
practice. Going back to the 1958 second edition of Effective Public Relations and
Bernays’s own accounts of PR history, the four models of public relations seem
to reiterate the same story of PR.43 Additionally, the narrative of the four models
provides historians with a neat periodization of development that naturally pre-
sents eras and seminal figures in the field to historians.
However, the problem with the four models of public relations is that it is not
an accurate historical representation of the history of PR. The history highlighted
in the four models of PR development focuses almost exclusively on corporate
and entertainment PR and provides only a small portion of PR history.44 These
historical examples ignore non-corporate public relations contributions, minimize
or exclude contributions of women and minorities, and place public relations
development as an American invention that is exported to the rest of the world.
All of these issues serve as the basis for the critiques of public relations historio-
graphy, which has challenged the older assumptions of public relations history,
and call for a new and more inclusive history of the field.

Current Critiques of Public Relations History

Public relations history began to be a topic of scholarly activity in the 1970s with
Richard Tedlow’s work on public relations history.45 Expanding upon the lit-
erature of business historian Alfred Chandler, Tedlow looked at press agentry in
relation to corporate communication and looked at the relationship between
early public relations work and the press agentry of the late nineteenth century.46
In the 1980s, Marvin Olasky began to challenge some of the narratives of cor-
porate public relations development. Namely, he argued that corporate public
relations was not an improvement on public relations, nor did it provide the type
of legitimacy public relations sought as a field.47 Using a libertarian viewpoint,
Olasky argued that corporations used public relations frequently to enact
22 Theories of Public Relations Development

restrictive regulations that only large companies could comply with, which pro-
moted a public-private partnership that fostered the growth of government
power.48 His critique extended to Bernays, whom Olasky viewed as supporting a
statist public-private partnership with business while promoting a globalist view of
world politics in the post-World War I and II eras.49
In the 1990s, there were more studies that sought to examine specific aspects
of public relations history.50 Perhaps the best-known are the two works of Scott
Cutlip, the original co-author of Effective Public Relations.51 Cutlip, an early public
relations educator, wrote two histories of public relations. The first, The Unseen
Power, published in 1994, was a large work on early public relations firms in the
twentieth century.52 It focused primarily on the development of public relations
work in large cities, and provided some of the first work on an early U.S. public
relations firm, The Publicity Bureau, started in Boston in 1900. The second
work, published in 1995, was Public Relations History: From the 17th to the 20th
Century: The Antecedents.53 As the title suggests, Cutlip’s work focused on early
public relations practice going back to American colonial days with specific focus
on nineteenth-century public relations work. In some respects, Cutlip’s work is a
type of historic preservation of histories that he knew personally and as a scholar
of PR. Because of that, both books lack citations throughout, causing the
accounts to lack a historical sourcing that most histories provide. Despite this
methodological issue, Cutlip’s history of American public relations development
provided a historical account of American public relations development that was
outside of the four models and Bernays’s historical paradigm.
23During the late 1990s, there was increased interest in the development of
public relations that cast a critical eye over the historicity of earlier PR narratives.
The basis of PR history until that time had largely focused on corporate PR, par-
tially because it was a well-researched area and because corporate identity of public
relations rooted it in a professionalized field that garnered more respect. However,
historians began pointing out that U.S. corporate development had many historical
blemishes, like any other area of history. Speculation, stock manipulation, and
boom and bust businesses were the hallmark of late nineteenth-century corpora-
tions, and, as such, corporate PR first developed in an environment that was any-
thing but the calm, highly professionalized narrative that many writers of PR
history wanted it to be.54 Additionally, scholarship began to recognize and openly
criticize the impact of Bernays’s narratives on history. In addition, historians took
to task the inherent periodization of the four models of public relations history,
and dismantled the historical justification for using them as a basis for public
relations development.55 Much like modern-day public relations practice, there
were those who practiced professional and unprofessional public relations, and the
level of sophistication of practice largely depended on the expertise of the prac-
titioner, not the time in which they practiced.
Another major development of public relations since the 1990s was increased
attention to PR practice outside of the United States.56 These scholars criticized the
 Theories of Public Relations Development 23

prevailing view that public relations was an American export that took root in other
countries. Instead they argued for a public relations history that recognized the cul-
tural and social factors that led to public relations in different nations. Research in this
area has primarily focused on western Europe, which has histories that emphasize the
political roots of PR over the corporate. Additionally, other work has been done in
Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America. Those public relations efforts have
various historical accounts that are unique to those regions and present historical
narratives that include issues of colonialism, Westernization, independence move-
ments, gender issues, political upheaval, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and other
non-U.S. factors that have shaped the creation of public relations.57
Theoretically, the view of non-U.S. public relations history has been important as
well. Scholars from research traditions not hindered by the four models and a Ber-
naysian narrative have looked at public relations development in a new way. There is
a greater methodological and theoretical rigor that has been part of the historical
accounts of public relations. Specifically, there is a call to understand that historical
writing is a reflexive process that includes personal and cultural lenses that impact the
meaning of histories.58 Historiography, the history of history, has become popular
and necessary for public relations scholarship to understand the current landscape of
public relations history and areas that need further inquiry and reassessment.59 One
theory that has gained particular salience in European public relations is the stratifi-
cation model of public relations.60 Borrowing the theory from other research done
in social history, this model of public relations argues that PR develops over time,
building upon its past practices much the same way a layer of rock would show dif-
ferent eras of development. Unlike the four models or the Whig histories of Bernays,
the stratification model does not make value judgments on past practice. Rather,
those past practices are just influencers on today’s reality. The theory’s main advo-
cate, Günter Bentele, shows this stratification model using the public relations field
in Germany, which was heavily influenced by German unification in the nineteenth
century, the rise and fall of National Socialism, the Cold War, and corporations.61
Part of these new histories of public relations is to debunk the older inaccurate
narratives posited by Bernays and reinforced by the four models. However,
another reason for these new histories is to examine and document previously
unknown contributors to public relations. Often these figures represent areas of
public relations that did not work in the corporate public relations sector, but
made contributions to public relations practice that affected all aspects of PR
practice. These figures sometimes are women, racial minorities, and members of
sectors of practice that traditionally are outside the businesses, PR firms, and large
non-profits that many PR practitioners are associated with. Part of this recogni-
tion of overlooked PR practitioners includes a diversity of PR work in the his-
torical narrative of the field. For instance, social movements are regularly examined as
part of public relations, especially because they use techniques of engagement with
publics and communication expertise. Older public relations histories, such as Ber-
nays’s, do not include social movements as part of public relations at all, and within the
24 Theories of Public Relations Development

four models of public relations it would be difficult to categorize these movements

within the time-frame established for each type of PR.62 Similarly, many sectors that
practice public relations do so organically, and do not employ a self-identified public
relations practitioner. For example, religious movements in the United States during
the Second Great Awakening used public relations techniques and media engagement
to spread their messages. However, these communicators were frequently church
members or religious leaders who would likely have described their communication as
proselytizing, and not some iteration of public relations.
In their 2010 meta-analysis of histories of public relations, Margot Lamme and
Karen Russell determined that much of public relations history was largely unwrit-
ten.63 In the nearly 10 years since that publication, the current status of public rela-
tions history is as a field actively seeking to fill in many missing pieces of its history.
At this point, public relations history is moving on from the older narratives of the
four models and Bernays. Historiographic work suggests that these older approaches
to PR history have been debunked by historians to the point where current history
does not use them. However, the field does not have a new monolithic theoretical
or historiographic approach, nor does it seem to want one. Rather, current public
relations histories seek to examine public relations, its figures, practices, and events in
a way that acknowledges the diversity of communication practices and the sector.

Conclusion
Despite this inclusion of public relations histories, and the work that has discredited
and debunked inaccurate historical narratives, much of PR history is yet unknown.
Part of the reason for this is that the academic movement to critically assess public
relations history is relatively recent (within the past 30 years), and much of the
important scholarship in PR history has focused on critical assessments of historicity,
historiography, and micro history. The current debates in PR history revolve around
periodization, the role of theory within historical research, and way the field should
be more inclusive of PR events and figures in the larger historical framework of PR.
The current historical discussion in public relations also explores how public relations
history should be evaluated in terms of narrative, theory, practice, and definition.
Historians largely agree, however, that the current debates in public relations
history are a good thing. They do not seek to find a unified theory of develop-
ment to replace the Bernaysian and four-model approach. Additionally, there is a
movement in public relations history to examine all aspects of PR, including
public relations that may be unprofessional and unflattering to the field. Historical
figures, while still important, also have taken a more measured place in drafting
the narrative of PR development, and timeframes for public relations history take
a more expansive view, looking at a variety of industries, people, and practices
rather than the achievements of a few corporate, American, male practitioners.
It is important to note that these older histories of public relations served a
purpose. That is why they have had so much impact in the field. It was not only
 Theories of Public Relations Development 25

that they highlighted the contributions and impact of those who wrote the his-
tory, but they served a function in creating a PR identity. Public relations as a
practice has sought legitimacy for decades. Because of that corporate history, the
history of PR in large organizations took precedence over histories of smaller
organizations and less well-known practitioners. Corporate history also lends itself
to a one-dimensional history. The history of corporate growth is a history that
largely involves white, male, American, industrialized, and moneyed figures and
interests. It is an important part of PR history. However, focusing exclusively on
corporate PR as public relations’ sole history is exclusionary, and, as a result,
historically limited.
What current historians are doing is going beyond this well-trodden area in an
attempt to find the complete picture of public relations’ past. However, this too
represents challenges. Because the older narratives were so ingrained in the identity
of public relations, historians may find themselves working on research to debunk
older PR myths, but then unknowingly falling back in the familiar narrative of
Bernays and the four models in order to make their arguments. Inherent assump-
tions about the field itself sometimes serve as a bulwark against asking the necessary
research questions to uncover seminal figures and events. Our human need to have
an arch to every story, and a clear-cut starting point may motivate historians to
create new periodizations of the field, only to find that those periodizations are as
arbitrary as the history that underpins older histories.

Discussion Questions
 Is it necessary to have a starting point for the history of public relations? Is it
even possible?
 Historicity is the notion that historical accuracy of histories varies. How has
historicity affected the narrative of public relations? As public relations history
becomes more inclusive, do you think a new definition of public relations will
be found?
 How are the historical debates within public relations history reflective of
contemporary issues in the field? Is there a historical narrative that is more
salient to current practitioners?
 What role, if any, should theory play within public relations history? How
would an accurate and inclusive history of public relations be used to
examine and critique contemporary theories of the field?
 How should historians handle the role of Bernays and Barnum in public rela-
tions history? To date, they have been major figures, but current history has
brought new figures and events to historical consciousness of public relations. Is
there a place for the old figures? What about the old historical narrative?
26 Theories of Public Relations Development

Notes
1 Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1.
2 Edward Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L.
Bernays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965); Scott Cutlip and Allen Center, Effective
Public Relations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1958); Scott Cutlip, The Unseen
Power: Public Relations: A History (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994);
Scott Cutlip, Public Relations History from the 17th to the 20th Century: The Antecedents
(Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995).
3 Tom Watson, “Let’s Get Dangerous—A Review of Current Scholarship in Public
Relation History,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 874–877.
4 Bernays, Biography of an Idea; Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations; Cutlip, The
Unseen Power, Cutlip, Public Relations History.
5 Margot Lamme and Karen Russell, “Removing the Spin: Toward a New Theory of
Public Relations History,” Communication Monographs (2010): 281–357. This monograph
is a survey of public relations history research and a state of the field as it was in 2010.
6 Debashish Munshi, Priya Kirian, and Jordi Xifra, “An (other) ‘Story’ in History:
Challenging Colonialist Public Relations in Novels of Resistance,” Public Relations
Review 43 (2017): 366–374; Pamela Creedon, “Public Relations History Misses ‘Her
Story,’” Journalism Educator 44 (1989): 26–30.
7 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations, 23; Irving Wallace, The Fabulous Showman:
The Life and Times of P.T. Barnum (New York: Knopf, 1959).
8 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations, 23.
9 Cutlip, Public Relations History, 172.
10 Bernays, Public Relations, 38. Yellow journalism was the practice of using sensational
material in journalism to increase readership. The term began in the late nineteenth
century to refer to tabloid-style content.
11 Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Ima-
gery in American Business (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1998), 7–47.
12 New York Times, “Vanderbilt in the West,” October 9, 1887, p. 1.
13 Scott Cutlip, Fund Raising in the United States: Its Role in America’s Philanthropy (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965), 35.
14 Ray Hiebert, Courtier to the Crowd: Ivy Lee and the Development of Public Relations in
America (1966, reprinted New York: PR Museum Press, 2017), 142.
15 Sherman Morse, “An Awakening in Wall Street: How the Trusts after Years of
Silence, Now Speak through Authorized and Acknowledged Press Agents,” American
Magazine 62 (1906): 457–463, 460.
16 Alan Axelrod, Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 113–134.
17 Bruce Pinkleton, “The Campaign of the Committee on Public Information: Its Con-
tributions to the History and Evolution of Public Relations,” Journal of Public Relations
Research 6 (1994): 229–240, 231–238.
18 Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 155–161.
19 Ibid., 288.
20 Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923, reprinted New York: Liveright
Publishing Corporation, 1961); Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928, reprinted New
York: Ig Publishing, 2005).
21 Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 774–775, Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion, 18–19.
22 Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 288.
23 Karen Russell, “Arthur Page and the Professionalization of Public Relations,” in
Pathways to Public Relations: Histories of Practice and Profession, ed. Burton St. John,
Margot Lamme, and Jacquie L’Etang (London: Routledge, 2014).
24 Ibid., 306.
 Theories of Public Relations Development 27

25 Ibid., 307.
26 Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 287–295; Edward Bernays, Public Relations (Norman,
OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952), 11–155.
27 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations.
28 Ibid., 30–45.
29 Ibid., 20–23.
30 Karen Russell and Cayce Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press
Agent,” Public Relations Review 45 (2019): 246–257.
31 KevinStokerandBradRawlins,“The‘Light’ofPublicityintheProgressiveEra:FromSearchlight
to Flashlight,” Journalism History 30 (2005): 177–188; Karen Russell and Carl Bishop, “Under-
standingIvyLee’sDeclarationofPrinciples:U.S.NewspaperandMagazineCoverageofPublicity
andPressAgentry,1865–1904,”PublicRelationsReview35(2009):91–101.
32 James Grunig and Todd Hunt, Managing Public Relations (New York: Holt, Rinehart,
and Winston, 1984), 13.
33 Ibid., 21–22.
34 Ibid., 22.
35 Ibid., 30–37.
36 Ibid., 35–41.
37 Ibid., 41.
38 Ibid., 41–43.
39 Ibid., 43.
40 Ibid.
41 James Grunig and Larissa Grunig, “Toward a Theory of the Public Relations Behavior of
Organizations: Review of a Program of Research,” Public Relations Review 15 (1989): 27–66;
Larissa Grunig and James Grunig, “Public Relations in the United States: A Generation of
Maturation,” in The Global Public Relations Handbook: Theory Research and Practice, 2nd ed., ed.
K. Sriamesh and D. Verčič (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2009); James
Grunig, “Furnishing the Edifice: Ongoing Research on Public Relations as Strategic Man-
agement,” Journal of Public Relations Research 18 (2006): 151–176.
42 Lynne Sallot, Lisa Lyon, Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, and Karyn Jones, “From Aardvark to
Zebra: A New Millennium Analysis of Theory Development in Public Relations
Academic Journals,” Journal of Public Relations Research 15 (2003): 27–90.
43 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations, 16–56; Bernays, Public Relations, 17–125.
44 Grunig and Hunt, Managing Public Relations, 21–43.
45 Richard Tedlow, Keeping the Corporate Image: Public Relations and Business, 1900–1950
(Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1979), 25–57.
46 Ibid.
47 Marvin Olasky, “Public Relations vs. Private Enterprise: An Enlightening History
Which Raises Some Basic Questions,” Public Relations Quarterly (Winter 1985): 6–13;
Marvin Olasky, Corporate Public Relations: A New Historical Perspective (Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987).
48 Marvin Olasky, “A Reappraisal of 19th-Century Public Relations,” Public Relations
Review 11 (1985) 3–12.
49 Marvin Olasky, “Retrospective: Bernays’ Doctrine of Public Opinion,” Public Relations
Review 10 (1984): 3–12.
50 Ron Pearson, “Perspectives on Public Relations History,” Public Relations Review (Fall 1990):
27–88; Karen Miller, “National and Local Public Relations Campaigns During the 1946
Steel Strike,” Public Relations Review 21 (1995): 305–323; Karen Miller, “‘Air Power Is Peace
Power’: The Aircraft Industry’s Campaign for Public and Political Support, 1943–1949,” The
Business History Review 70 (1996): 297–327; Elizabeth Burt, “The Ideology, Rhetoric, and
Organizational Structure of a Countermovement Publication: The Remonstrance, 1890–
1920,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 75 (1998): 69–83; Ronald Fullerton, “Art
of Public Relations: U.S. Dept. Stores, 1876–1923,” Public Relations Review 16 (1990): 68–79;
28 Theories of Public Relations Development

Scott Cutlip, “Fund Raising in the United States,” Society (March/April 1990): 59–62; John
Ferré, “Protestant Press Relations in the United States, 1900–1930,” Church History 62
(1993): 514–527; Jacquie L’Etang, and Magda Pieczka. Critical Perspectives in Public Relations
(London: International Thomson Business Press, 1996); Susan Henry, “‘There Is Nothing in
This Profession…That a Woman Cannot Do’: Doris E. Fleischman and the Beginnings of
Public Relations,” American Journalism (Spring 1999): 85–111; Rodger Streitmatter, “Theo-
dore Roosevelt: Public Relations Pioneer. How TR Controlled Press Coverage,” American
Journalism (Spring 1990): 96–113; Elizabeth Burt, “Dissent and Control in a Woman Suffrage
Periodical: 30 Years of the Wisconsin Citizen,” American Journalism (Spring 1999): 39–43;
Susan Henry, “Dissonant Notes of a Retiring Feminist: Doris E. Fleischman’s Later Years,”
Journal of Public Relations Research 10 (1998): 1–33; Linda Hon, “‘To Redeem the Soul of
America’: Public Relations and the Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Public Relations
Research 9 (1997): 163–212; Karen Miller, “Woman, Man, Lady, Horse: Jane Stewart, Public
Relations Executive,” Public Relations Review 23 (1997): 249–269; Bruce Pinkleton, “The
Campaign of the Committee on Public Information: Its Contributions to the History and
Evolution of Public Relations,” Journal of Public Relations Research 6 (1994): 229–240.
51 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations.
52 Cutlip, The Unseen Power.
53 Cutlip, Public Relations History.
54 Richard John, “Robber Barons Redux: Antimonopoly Reconsidered,” Enterprise and
Society 13 (2012): 1–38, 32–38.
55 Cayce Myers, “Reconsidering the Corporate Narrative in U.S. PR History: A Cri-
tique of Alfred Chandler’s Influence on PR Historiography,” Public Relations Review 40
(2014): 676–683; Karen Miller, “U.S. Public Relations History: Knowledge and
Limitations,” Communication Yearbook 23 (2000): 381–420.
56 Kate Fitch and Jacquie L’Etang. “Other Voices? The State of Public Relations History
and Historiography: Questions, Challenges and Limitations of ‘National’ Histories and
Historiographies,” Public Relations Inquiry 6 (2017): 115–136; Natalia Salcedo, “Map-
ping Public Relations in Europe: Writing National Histories Against the U.S. Para-
digm,” Comunicación y Sociedad 25 (2012): 331–374; Tom Watson, “Time Marches
On, and So Does the History of Public Relations,” Journal of Public Relations Research
27 (2015): 193–195.
57 Tom Watson, ed., Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations:
Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Tom Watson, ed., Latin American
and Caribbean Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Tom Watson, ed., Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on
the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014);
Tom Watson, ed., Eastern European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations:
Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Tom Watson, ed., Asian Perspectives
on the Development of Public Relations (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Tom
Watson, ed., North American Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other
Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
58 Jacquie L’Etang, “Public Relations and Historical Sociology: Historiography as
Reflexive Critique,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 654–660; Jacquie L’Etang,
“Writing PR History: Issues, Methods and Politics,” Journal of Communication Manage-
ment 12 (2008): 319–335.
59 David McKie and Jordi Xifra, “Resourcing the Next Stages in PR History Research:
The Case for Historiography,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 669–675.
60 Günter Bentele, “Germany,” in Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public
Relations: Other Voices , ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 45.
61 Ibid., 46–47.
62 Bernays, Public Relations, 11–125.
63 Lamme and Russell, “Removing the Spin,” 356.