The portrayal of public relations in the era of Ivy Lee through the lens of the New York Times

• The Times offered readers a fairly accurate and even-handed, even benign, portrait of the kinds of work done by public relations people.
• The definition of public relations evolved over the time of the study.
• The Times reported public relations tasks that sound similar to those identified today.
• Although it was not until after World War I, the Times developed a grudging respect for the work of “public relations counsel.”

Public relations has and, it appears, always has had an image problem. From public relations’ protohistory, through the rise of the publicist and press agent, the history of the relationship between journalists and public relations practitioners remained rocky. Using the New York Times as a lens, this study seeks to examine, through a qualitative framing analysis (N = 106), how public relations was perceived and discussed by one of its most important audiences, the journalist, during the early years of the twentieth century. The study found that while the tasks and media used in the practice of public relations as framed by the Times may be accurate, the cultural context of the early 20th century called the very “doing” of public relations into question.