What Color Is Your Future?

This article focuses on challenges faced by business communicators. Communicators now wear coats of many colors as they work in various positions along the wide spectrum of the field. The demand for the knowhow of professional communicators has burgeoned as corporations have come to understand and respond to the requirements of the Information Age. But it was nor so long ago that communicators mainly wore shades of corporate blue and gray, in their roles as the self-effacing press contact or the industrial editor. Today, communicators are a colorful lot, with responsibilities in all sectors of business, industry, government and nonprofit organizations. Some perform the tactical duties of writing, producing, programming and distributing information; others are creating and designing high-impact programs to help their organizations reach the hearts and minds of their constituencies. What the next 10 to 20 years will bring for communicators will depend not only on the nature and scope of the challenges ahead, but also on just how the communication profession will respond.