Would you have PRs in your pub quiz team?

Another slagging off of PR people in the new issue of the excellent Standpoint magazine, this time from an unnamed 'mole inside the publishing industry'.

Tales are told of an author whose publicist hadn't even herad of the profumo affair, and the article later goes on to state "it's so difficult to find a ... PR person at their desks, especially in the afternoon."

What?! Meetings aside, my experience is that PRs are as likely to be at their desks in the afternoon as lawyers, accountants and yes, authors.

In all fairness, junior editors also get a good slating in the same article. I think there's a fair point in there, though, about the lack of general knowledge amongst people coming into the PR industry.

Although there are shining exceptions, I've often been quite disappointed by the near horizons that some of them set for themselves. It might sound fogey-ish to say it, but I sometimes get the impression that today's new graduates don't read much by way of books, for example. And as for those exceptions, it comes to something when all it takes to stand out in the PR recruitment marketplace is good general knowledge and a vague spirit of intellectual inquiry.