Cutlip, Scott M.

As the senior author of a leading textbook, Effective Public Relations, Cutlip is regarded by many as the father of public relations education in the United States during the second half of the 20th century. He also remains the field's most eminent historian.

Cutlip introduced the study of public relations at the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism in 1946 and continued as a Wisconsin faculty member until 1975, when he became a professor at the University of Georgia, Athens. He served as dean of the Henry W. Grady School (now College) of Journalism and Mass Communication at Georgia from 1976 to 1983 and was a university professor until his retirement in 1985.

A proud native of West Virginia, Cutlip received a bachelor's degree from Syracuse University and a Ph.M. degree in journalism and political science from Wisconsin in 1941. He worked as reporter, weekly newspaper editor, and press secretary to a gubernatorial candidate in West Virginia prior to attending Syracuse, where he worked for three years as an assistant in Syracuse's Bureau of Public Information.

Upon graduation from Wisconsin, Cutlip served as public relations director for the State Road [Page 244]Commission of West Virginia. Then, during World War II, he served as a public information officer and a counterintelligence officer for the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of major.

In 1952, Cutlip and coauthor Allen H. Center, an official of Parker Pen Company and later Motorola, published the first edition of Effective Public Relations, which was updated with new editions in 1958, 1964, 1971, 1978, 1985, 1994, and 1999. The book was widely adopted as a college textbook and translated into Italian, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese editions. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) adopted the book as the basic text for its accreditation examination. Cutlip and Center entrusted the book's legacy to Glen M. Broom, who joined them as coauthor beginning with the sixth edition in 1985.

Cutlip and Center's cornerstone concept was the four-step public relations process as a model for organizing public relations programs. The first edition emphasized the importance of fact finding, planning, and communication. The fourth step, evaluation, was not added until the second edition in 1958. The model has been usurped by strategic communication approaches that follow more general business planning models, but continues to be the criteria for judging in PRSA's Silver Anvil Award and many regional competitions recognizing outstanding public relations programs.

Cutlip's other major early contribution was compilation of the first comprehensive bibliography of public relations, produced in 1957 and updated in 1965. Former student Robert L. Bishop produced a third edition in 1974. Annual bibliographies in the Cutlip tradition began to be published soon thereafter in Public Relations Review.

Cutlip is familiar to many philanthropic and fundraising professionals as the author of the most comprehensive early history of American fundraising. He also edited a volume on public opinion for public administrators. In 1975, he cochaired with J. Carroll Bateman the first commission on undergraduate public relations education.

Cutlip's passion for public relations history was evident in many of his early scholarly journal articles. He also played a pivotal role in securing the personal papers of many early public relations pioneers, such as John W. Hill and Earl Newsom, which are now preserved and accessible to scholars at the Mass Communication History Center of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in Madison.

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