his an effort to Tough Calls shift blame. I was not a fly on the wall at meetings of AT&T's senior management; I had a seat at the table. I was a full participant in the decisions made between 1997 and 2002. For better or worse, I had my say, and if some of those decisions have proven less than brilliant, I can neither make excuses nor escape my share of blame. Nor do I blame those who reported our misadventures for causing them, or even for aggravating them. With very few exceptions, the editors and reporters who covered AT&T in this period were honest and fair and gave us every opportunity to tell our story. A friend in the media reminded me that it's just as wrong to stereotype journalists as to stereotype businesspeople. You will find all kinds of reporters in these pages. If I seem to dwell on the few who were duplicitous or careless, it's because I learned more from them-just as I did from my own mistakes. Of course, I also realize that, while many journal- ists may agree with my observations about their profession, they will fight to the death my right to make them. After a career in public relations, my views will forever be suspect. Public Relations While I've tried to reexamine my corporate life with a clear eye and a nose for sour grapes, this is hardly the Confessions of Saint Augustine. It is a modest attempt to dispel a popular notion regarding public relations. If economics is the "dismal science," the practice of public relations in the 1990s came to be regarded as a kind of merry art, designed to incite sober people to spasms of irrational exuberance. Spin doctors became the high priests of the practice. Wordsmithing, glad-handing, and mud slinging became their sacraments. AT&T's recent history demonstrates that public relations is not a tactic best left to specialists. It is a function of general management that a company's most senior leaders must embrace. Public relations, writ large, will be found not in a company's news releases or publicity stunts, but in its day-to-day operations and long-