I wrote the book on media relations for Congress. How does it hold up?

A generation ago, in 2004, I wrote a book that was novel at the time, “Media Relations Handbook for Agencies, Associations, Nonprofits and Congress.” While some texts offered guidance to PR professionals in the private sector, this was the first to speak directly to the public sector.

It basically was a collection of concepts, guidance and practices that had evolved in the past hundred years since the idea of “engineering consent” was developed by two pioneers in the industry: Ivy Lee (inventor of the press release and photo opportunity) and Edward Bernays (who, incidentally, was Sigmund Freud’s nephew).

Yet in the last few decades, the field of public communications has been transformed, and the rules that applied in the 20th century are just not functional in the 21st. As an illustra