The public relations industry has championed the use of measurement and evaluation as integral to the practice of the profession for decades. While "lip service" is often paid to the value of measurement, too many corporate communications departments and their public relations agencies have managed to resist implementing these programs. The reasons cited for not measuring range from lack of interest to lack of staff resources to lack of funds. As this paper explores, however, the actual reasons behind the lack of active measurement and evaluation programs has little to do with the reasons stated for not measuring public relations activities.

The premise of the authors is that the media content analysis methods commonly in use fail to address the fundamental information needs of public relations professionals. Currently public relations professionals rely on eight basic methods of content analysis. This paper reviews each of these methods and points out the fundamental flaws in each of these approaches.

Michaelson and Griffin suggest that rather than rely on these traditional methods, the better approach in conducting content analysis is to determine the presence of four key factors in articles that are to be content analyzed: correct information, incorrect information, misleading information and omitted information. The authors present two case histories conducted for MetLife that demonstrate how the analysis is conducted and how MetLife used this analysis to manage its media relations efforts on two key lines of business. The paper draws conclusions on the most effective way to implement this research approach as well as its limitations.