As the body blows of closed publications, retrenched staff and shrinking editorial space batter journalism, the profession is facing another looming threat: being bypassed.
Long the channel through which PR agencies told their clients’ stories, beleaguered media organizations are seeing PR agencies reaching directly to the consumers, often through social media channels like YouTube and Twitter.
The consequences are obviously profound for media organizations but also for consumers who are now subjected to brand information sans the filtering and ethical consideration typically employed by professional journalists.
Communicating directly with the consumer is also very different from communicating via the media and the new practice brings PR agencies into more direct competition with ad agencies that typically owned the direct to consumer communication channel in the marketing services world.
Interesting times and a wake-up call to anyone who believes the marketing services industry is going to emerge from the recession unchanged.
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