Foreword
by Glen Cameron, Ph.D.
Maxine Gregory Chair in Journalism Research
Missouri School of Journalism
Finally, thanks to this book, Tom Hagley will
be a permanent part of my classroom. I first became acquainted
with Tom when I was teaching at the University of Georgia and have been
scheming ever since to get him into my classroom whenever
possible. He was director of public and investor relations for
Alumax, a Fortune 200 company located in Atlanta when he became a
favored guest lecturer and internship mentor in the Grady College of
Journalism and Mass Communication. Tom provided structure and
guidance while also offering the students tremendous experience and
opportunity to grow -- the same ingredients that make his new text a
must for our classrooms.
When Tom retired from his distinguished career as an executive in
corporate and agency public relations, with a stint running his own
public relations firm thrown in for good measure, I was teaching at the
Missouri School of Journalism. I tried to recruit Tom, knowing
that he had spent three decades striving to make the profession better
in every way. Tom is committed to embracing innovation as a basis
for tempering the metal and sharpening the edge of the
profession. Although we competed unsuccessfully with the lures of
the Northwest, I now feel that we have finally captured Tom, by way of
his wonderful textbook. It’s not the same thing as having this
experienced, compassionate, creative professional in our classroom, but
it is the next best thing.
His book is a great piece of work. I say that with respect to its
contents, but even more so with respect to the author. Writing Winning
Proposals comes from a person I always believed was destined to take
the “real world” to the classroom. I saw that when Tom spoke to my
classes at The University of Georgia and the Missouri School of
Journalism. He has a passion for teaching, coaching and
counseling. He listens, recognizes, shares, encourages, tolerates and
even admits his own mistakes to those he mentors. His internship
assignments made students stretch far beyond what they thought they
ever could do with so little experience.
It is no surprise that in this book he insists on writing by the rules
to develop winning proposals. He comes to academe knowing precisely
what executive managers want from public relations practitioners. In
this book he shows students, as well as seasoned professionals, how to
develop winning plans and challenges them to apply the rules in
providing solutions to a number of challenging and diverse cases
requiring public relations action. To add excitement to the challenge
he presents each case in a different way, such as a hostile parents
versus high school principal role play, a city contract, a
transcription of a private staff meeting, client notes by a
practitioner and more.
Tom packed up 30 years of successful experience, notably including
executive positions with Alcoa and Alumax and as a vice president of
Hill & Knowlton, Inc., and made a place for himself on the campus
of one of the nation’s major research universities. In just three years
of full-time teaching at the University of Oregon he is producing this
text with a major publisher. His book takes a giant step up to pop the
fat
balloons of ambiguity in the public relations profession by showing how
to propose services for which clients will readily pay and in which
employers will readily invest.
I can see by his painstaking use of examples how this challenge was
undertaken in classroom instruction. I can also appreciate how
painstaking it will be for some seasoned practitioners to break from
timeworn proposal writing with hit and miss successes to exercise the
discipline necessary to write by the rules to produce winning proposals
on a consistent basis. Yet I highly recommend the book to professionals
who obviously will find it worth their time. Tom Hagley is reaching out
with this book to campuses around the country to new generations of
writers who will learn to practice the
profession with a new paradigm of precision that judges of the
profession’s prestigious competitions will applaud and that clients and
employers will welcome with respect.
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