New Media courses are part of PR degree courses

In a straight rebutal of the PR Week story Derek Hodge makes these points:

Under the headline PR Colleges ill-prepared for new-media explosion the current issue of the UK trade magazine PR Week (22 September, 2006) reports what looks like a shockingly sloppy piece of “research by tech agency Lewis PR” and tells us that “Just seven out of the 27 CIPR approved higher-education PR and comms courses in the UK offer modules dedicated to new media”.

There’s a list of “Colleges offering new-media modules” at the top of the article which fails to mention the University of Stirling where we have a Public Relations and Technology option for students taking our full-time MSc Public Relations course and also the University of Central Lancashire where I used to teach a module on Strategic Communication Technology to students on their MSc in Strategic Communications. That’s two courses I know of that are missing from the list and I wonder if there’s any others that they’ve omitted.

No lecturer teaching on our PR courses here at Stirling was consulted during this “research” and information regarding this module has been on our website since March.

The PR Week article states “Just seven of the 27 CIPR-approved higher-education PR and Comms courses in the UK offer modules dedicated to new media”, while the CIPR website lists over forty such courses and provides full contact details for most course leaders.

Oh dear.

I did rather admire the brass neck of Patrick Barrow, Director General of the PRCA, who seems to think that a major reason why those of us teaching public relations in the university sector should add modules covering new media to our courses is to reduce the cost of doing business for his members.

Is this poor journalism or great blogging?
Well, which do you think is the authentic voice?