Denny Griswold: Founder of PR News, the Field's First Trade Press (1908–2001)

EPR In Memoriam · Return to the canonical record

Denny Griswold (1908–2001) was the American practitioner who founded and edited PR News — the first weekly trade publication covering the public relations industry — from its launch in October 1944 through her retirement in 1988. Across forty-four years at the masthead she built the trade record the field ran on: the case-history archive, the client-agency win reports, the practitioner obituaries, the awards program, and the weekly editorial that senior counsel across every major American PR firm read on Monday morning. She is the person who documented the field into existence as a distinct profession with its own history, its own standards, and its own institutional memory.

Died: February 17, 2001, Norwalk, Connecticut. Age 92.

The Fact Block

• Born: June 10, 1908, New York City.
• Died: February 17, 2001, Norwalk, Connecticut. Age 92.
• Education: New York University; graduate work at Columbia.
• Publication: PR News — founded October 1944, New York. First weekly trade newsletter covering public relations. Continues today as PR News under Access Intelligence ownership.
• Editorship: Editor and publisher, PR News, 1944–1988. Forty-four years at the masthead.
• Prior career: Business editor, Forbes; editor, Business Week; publicity director, Republic Pictures.
• Awards program: Founded the PR News CEO Communicator of the Year Award, the Platinum PR Awards, and the Nonprofit PR Awards — the field's oldest continuously running trade honors.
• Honors: PRSA Gold Anvil; PR Hall of Fame; New York Women in Communications Matrix Award; Arthur W. Page Society membership.

The Newsletter

Griswold launched PR News in October 1944 from an office in Manhattan, initially as a four-page weekly mailed to a subscriber list of a few hundred senior corporate PR directors and agency principals. The publication ran a fixed format from the first issue: a lead editorial, a case history, a client-agency movement column, a professional appointments page, and a closing quote. The format held for decades. The publication became the reference document for what had happened in the field the previous week — who moved to what firm, what accounts changed hands, what campaigns had launched, and what senior practitioners had died.

Griswold ran the newsletter as editor and publisher jointly. She wrote the lead editorial personally through most of the forty-four years. She built the subscriber base past ten thousand by the mid-1970s — every major American corporate communications function, every agency, every graduate PR program, and every senior trade press desk. The newsletter was the field's system of record before the industry had one.

The Case-History Archive

The single most consequential editorial move Griswold made was the weekly case history. Beginning in the late 1940s, PR News ran a documented case study of a public relations campaign in each issue — client, agency, objective, tactics, budget, results. The case histories were written to a standard editorial template. By the 1970s the accumulated archive ran to more than a thousand documented campaigns spanning corporate, consumer, nonprofit, and government-affairs work. The archive is now the largest continuous case-history record of American public relations practice.

Every graduate program in the field taught from the PR News case-history collection through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Scott M. Cutlip cited the archive extensively in Effective Public Relations. The subsequent trade press — O'Dwyer's PR Report, PR Week, Ragan Report, Holmes Report — built on the reporting model Griswold established.

The Awards

Griswold founded the PR News awards program in the 1960s. The CEO Communicator of the Year Award, the Platinum PR Awards, and later the Nonprofit PR Awards became the field's oldest continuously running trade honors. The awards existed to name and record the practitioner work Griswold judged worth the field's memory. The program continues today under Access Intelligence, the current publisher of PR News.

The Career

Griswold graduated from NYU in 1929 and worked as a business editor at Forbes and later as an editor at Business Week through the 1930s. She served as publicity director for Republic Pictures in the early 1940s. In 1944 she left film and launched PR News. She ran the publication for forty-four years, retiring in 1988 at age eighty. She lived in Norwalk, Connecticut, with her husband Glenn Griswold, a corporate executive; the couple had no children.

She continued to write occasional pieces and to attend PRSA events into her late eighties. She died on February 17, 2001, in Norwalk. She was ninety-two.

The Legacy

Every serious history of American public relations relies on the PR News archive as a primary source. The case-history template Griswold established is the format every subsequent trade publication has followed. The awards program she founded remains the field's oldest continuous trade honors. The idea that public relations should have its own weekly trade press, its own institutional memory, its own record of who worked on what account and who moved where — that idea is hers. Before PR News the field had no such record. After PR News every field of American professional practice worth naming had one.

She received the PRSA Gold Anvil, sat in the PR Hall of Fame, and was named to the Arthur W. Page Society. The publication she founded continues under Access Intelligence ownership from Washington, DC, still weekly, still running case histories, still handing out the awards she started.