A press agent is a professional publicist who acts on behalf of his or her client on all matters involving public relations. Press agents are typically employed by public personalities and organizations such as performers and businesses. A press agent will provide information to the media such as upcoming public events, interview opportunities, and promotional dates, and will work with the media in getting in touch with an appropriate client or resource. Press agents are occasionally required to act as "spin doctors" - to put into the best light their clients' public actions. While press agents have traditionally worked with newpapers and television, they must also be conversant with newer media forms such as blogs and podcasts. Public relations is the art and science of building relationships between an organization and its key publics. ... The performing arts include theater, motion pictures, drama, comedy, music, dance, opera, magic and the marching arts, such as brass bands, etc. ... In public relations, spin is a usually pejorative term signifying a heavily biased portrayal in ones own favor of an event or situation that is designed to bring about the most positive result possible. ... A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log or weblog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles, most often in reverse chronological order. ... The term podcasting is a portmanteau of the words iPod and broadcasting. ...
Better business ever being the positive aim, it remains for the pressagent, after he has selected his employer, has determined the class of persons to be reached, and has found his sales pointwhich is to say, the message he wishes to conveyto consider character of the advertising and " copy " to be used.
And although the pressagent, eager to show results for the security of his position, generally is wary of bothering with cumulative " stunts " which take time to mature, he is trifling with his most valuable potential business by ignoring pertinent mediums that have inter-state and national circulations.
To that end, most resident pressagents rewrite their metropolitan matter for distribution to certain out-of-town editors, in the form of a weekly letter; but it is up to the editors to make the matter available for local consumption.
PRESSagent, as a term, always seems to connote a theatrical connection, although there are pressagents of federal and civil governments, of electoral candidates, of insurrections, of trade unions, of educational institutions, of industries of all kinds, of even the press itself, not to enumerate hundreds of other activities wherein advertising is considered profitable.
The theatrical pressagent stands patent probably because the rest of his craft are cloaked by the non-committal description, advertising managers.
Acting as intermediary between a theatrical manager and the press, securing printed publicity and suppressing information that may exploit disadvantages or may be employed to better effect later, constitute but one of the officer's manifold lines of endeavor.
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