Interesting article in the Economist, where they say that the PR business is booming on the back of the recession and the changing economics of news production.

“PR has also benefited from the changing media landscape. The withering of many traditional media outlets has left fewer journalists from fewer firms covering business. That makes PR doubly important, both for attracting journalists’ attention, and for helping firms bypass old routes altogether and disseminate news by posting press releases on their websites,” the article states.

According to the piece, spending on public relations consultancy will surpass $8billion by 2013 in the US alone. They quote Miles Nadal, chief executive of MDC Partners as saying that investment in digital PR accelerated during the recession “and will go forward in perpetuity” because clients became more focused on measuring the impact of their efforts.

“The internet offers various yardsticks, from traffic to cheerleading websites to numbers of Facebook fans, whereas the number of people who see a conventional advertisement is much harder to gauge.”

Needless to say, I agree entirely