Bruce Lowry of Novell told The Economist that he can imagine blogs “completely replacing press releases within 10 years.” It’s a bold thought; does it hold water?

No doubt, the Web has tranformed public relations and changed the nature of the press release. Releases now have to be written with the assumption that everyone will read them. So a company’s messages must be consistent — which, frankly, hasn’t always been the case in the past.

For example, before the late 90s, I can point to many examples where CEOs spoke to their Wall Street investors (through news releases as well as conference calls) in a very different way than they spoke to employees and customers. A layoff, for example, is often a positive for a company’s stock price, while it’s obviously anything but positive for employees. And investors love to hear that a company’s products are earning higher margins than those of the competition; but a customer might see or hear the same message and think, “I’m getting ripped off!”

The Internet era has had the effect of forcing companies to integrate their messages more tightly, so they’re saying the same thing to everybody. This is a good thing. But is the next step to move away from press releases altogether and on to blogs?

I can’t imagine it anytime soon. I think more and more companies will add blogs as a new channel of communication. Some early corporate-affiliated blogs, like those of Robert Scoble (Microsoft) and Jonathan Schwartz (Sun), are excellent; they have the frankness and intimacy that a good blog requires. But I’m afraid many corporations will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into this new arena. Most large corporations are accustomed to top-down leadership and tight control of messages, and blogging runs counter to this.

Time will tell. Whatever happens, I look forward to being part of it.