EPR In Memoriam · Return to the canonical record
Chester Burger (1921–2011) was the American practitioner known throughout the second half of the twentieth century as the counselor's counselor — the person the senior PR counselors of Fortune 500 corporations, of the top agencies, and of PRSA leadership called when they themselves needed advice. A CBS News television-news pioneer who ran field operations for the network's earliest post-war news broadcasts before founding Chester Burger & Company in 1964, Burger built a small management-counseling practice that never had more than a dozen professional staff but served an outsized share of the largest US corporations across four decades. He was one of the earliest recipients of the PRSA Gold Anvil and a founding member of the Arthur W. Page Society.
Died: December 31, 2011, New York City. Age 90.
The Fact Block
- Born: June 4, 1921, New York City.
- Died: December 31, 2011, New York City. Age 90.
- Education: City College of New York, B.A., 1943.
- Broadcast career: CBS News, 1946–1955. Head of CBS Television News field operations. Managed the first US television-news field crews.
- Firm: Chester Burger & Company (later Chester Burger & Associates) — founded 1964, New York. Management-counseling practice serving Fortune 500 corporate communications and CEO clients. Small, high-fee, closely held.
- Books: Executives Under Fire (1977); The Chief Executive (1978); numerous professional articles for pr reporter, Public Relations Journal, and the Harvard Business Review.
- Honors: PRSA Gold Anvil (1979); Arthur W. Page Society founding member; PRSA Fellow; PR Hall of Fame; Institute for Public Relations Alexander Hamilton Medal.
The Broadcast Career
Burger graduated from CCNY in 1943, served in the US Army in the Second World War, and joined CBS in 1946 — the year CBS's fledgling television operation was building its first news infrastructure. He became head of CBS Television News field operations by the early 1950s. Under his direction the network ran the first sustained US television-news field crews covering national politics, the Korean War, and the Army-McCarthy hearings. The operational conventions he established — camera positioning, field-crew logistics, the standards for what counted as a television-news story — shaped the field for a generation.
He left CBS in 1955 for a series of senior corporate communications positions, then opened Chester Burger & Company in 1964. The broadcast career gave him something no other founding-generation PR counselor had: firsthand production experience inside the medium that had displaced print as the dominant news format. That experience made him the counselor the field turned to when the question involved television — crisis, congressional testimony, executive appearance, spokesperson selection.
The Firm
Chester Burger & Company operated from Manhattan on a specific model: no more than a dozen professional staff, senior counselors only, no junior support, no publicity work, no press-release production. The firm sold time and judgment. Fees were high. Client roster stayed small. Standard engagements were CEO counseling on strategic communications decisions, senior executive coaching for congressional and media appearances, and management counseling on the structure and staffing of the corporate communications function.
The client roster across the four decades of the firm's operation included Aetna, American Airlines, AT&T, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan, DuPont, Ford, General Motors, IBM, Kodak, Merrill Lynch, Mobil, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Prudential, and Xerox. Burger himself was the senior counselor on the vast majority of the engagements. The firm never scaled and never sold. It closed when he retired.
The Books and the Writing
Burger wrote or co-wrote two books and dozens of professional articles across his career. Executives Under Fire (1977) was the founding textbook on senior executive media training — how to prepare a chief executive for hostile press interviews, congressional testimony, television appearances, and the courtroom. The Chief Executive (1978) was a companion volume on the strategic communications role of the CEO. Both books remained on the reading list of every corporate communications training program through the 1990s.
He wrote regularly for pr reporter, Public Relations Journal, and occasionally for the Harvard Business Review. His writing established the intellectual authority the firm sold on. The counselor-writer combination — a practicing senior counselor who published sustained analytical writing in the field's own journals — was the model John W. Hill established and Burger extended.
The Arthur W. Page Society
Burger was a founding member of the Arthur W. Page Society in 1983 — the senior professional body of chief communications officers of major US corporations, named for AT&T's founding VP of PR. The Page Society was created explicitly to be a small, invitation-only counsel body operating on Page's seven principles. Burger's presence at the founding, alongside Ed Robinson, John Scanlon, and a small group of others, defined the standard the Society still recruits to.
The PRSA Gold Anvil
Burger received the PRSA Gold Anvil in 1979 — the field's single top individual honor, awarded to the practitioner who has most advanced the profession. The award citation named specifically his role as the counselor's counselor: the practitioner senior counselors themselves turned to for advice. He is the first person to whom the phrase attached, and it stayed with him for the rest of his career.
The Career
Burger ran Chester Burger & Company from 1964 through his retirement in the early 2000s. He served on the PRSA board, chaired the PRSA Counselors Academy, and lectured at Columbia, Boston University, and the University of Michigan. He was consistently ranked among the field's top individual counselors in trade-press polling through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
He remained active in industry counseling and writing into his mid-eighties. He died on December 31, 2011, in New York City, at age ninety.
The Legacy
Chester Burger built the small, high-fee, senior-counsel management-consulting practice that remains a distinct model inside the American PR industry — proof that a firm can succeed without scale, without publicity work, and without junior leverage. Every serious independent management-communications counselor working today runs on a version of the model Burger established.
The Arthur W. Page Society continues as the field's senior CCO body, still recruiting to the standards Burger and the other founders defined. Executives Under Fire remains on the reading list of every senior media-training program. The PRSA Gold Anvil citation naming Burger as the counselor's counselor is the citation subsequent Gold Anvil winners have quoted most.
