Australian media is haemorrhaging. Multitudes of Fairfax’s most conscience-driven and insightful journalists gone. 50 odd journos from The West Australian gone or going. Where will it stop? But where one story ends, another begins. The reduction in skilled journalists and the concomitant reduction in time remaining editorial staff have, places a heavier responsibility than ever before on public relations professionals operating in a manner serving not just the interests of their employer(s), but also of their employer’s stakeholders and, by extension, society as a whole.

In public relations, values and worldviews are as important and relevant as facts. Together, they combine to form ‘truths’. Yet whose truth is correct? How are we to decide on the most appropriate truth and what happens when it butts heads with another’s – different – truth? Negotiation, collaboration and acceptance of each other’s right to difference will help us practice PR at its most effective level.

I once was lost, but now am saved. So it seems, anyway. At a major juncture in my life and one year after starting this blog, I thought it an opportune time to explain how my discovery of the public relations profession pretty much saved my life. Maybe not in a fully literal sense, but close enough to it. Key out takes: do not rest until you fulfil your belief, or intuition, in yourself; you can begin a career later than in your 20s; hard work and talent create a career.