Get Real: PR Isn't Going Anywhere

Raging debate over at and around Silicon Valley Watcher, a blog run by former Financial Times writer Tom Foremski. Tom contends that PR is a dying industry, headed down the same rat hole as the dead-tree media business.

A sampling from Tom:

I've long warned the PR industry that it is on borrowed time. The media industry is undergoing traumatic changes yet PR is thriving. Media and PR industry fortunes have always followed each other in lock step.

PR today reminds me of the Roadrunner cartoons. The times when Wily E. Coyote is chasing the Road Runner and notices he is running on thin air, at which point he plummets thousands of feet to a distant canyon floor. That's how I envisage the PR industry today--about to plummet from a great height.

To summarize, Tom seems to think that because old media models are crumbling and evolving, and because business can be done on the Internet without paying PR people, that PR is dying. He later amended this to say that in-house PR people are still useful, but PR agencies are breathing their last breath.

I don't know where to start picking this one apart.

First, I have to say I detect a strong whiff of I-hate-stupid-PR-people-itis, in which the afflicted wishes the entire sorry industry would just go away and stop bothering them. I had this condition when I was a journalist and I know it's real. I understand where it's coming from: the actions of clueless and poorly trained PR people who don't know how to do effective media relations. It would be nice if the industry could get a giant dose of professionalism and training, but that's not likely to happen any time soon (but if anyone reading this wants to make a start in that direction, click the link above titled "21st Century Spokesperson Training." Seriously.)

Second, the media isn't drying up and blowing away. It's just changing. And of course, duh, PR is trying to change along with it. And of course, some will be more successful than others, and some old-line PR agencies and practitioners will fade away while strong new competitors take their place.

Tom and his correspondents also go on to argue about whether PR agencies "get" social media and its overwhelming importance. Here's a news flash: social media still represents a microscopic part of the communications landscape. As I've said again and again, I've yet to meet a PR person who would rather have a hit on a blog post than a story in the New York Times. And that goes double for clients and companies. There's still TONS of work out there doing media relations with professional journalists. When J-schools stop cranking out journalists, and the last printing press falls silent and the last cable news show flickers off, THEN maybe we can start talking about the end of PR. Maybe. I'd actually bet that by then, PR will have made a successful transition to working with whoever the key influencers are.

As the social media types like to say, PR is platform-neutral.