Sorry, this is another cleaning-out-the-closet post, like the previous Bacon’s-Vocus entry. Some time ago I ran across this thoughtful essay on the PR business by Paul Graham. My favorite line:

One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren’t about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.

As for the relationship between PR people and bloggers, Graham says:

PR people fear bloggers for the same reason readers like them. And that means there may be a struggle ahead. As this new kind of writing draws readers away from traditional media, we should be prepared for whatever PR mutates into to compensate. When I think how hard PR firms work to score press hits in the traditional media, I can’t imagine they’ll work any less hard to feed stories to bloggers, if they can figure out how.

In the few months since Graham wrote this story, PR firms haven’t successfully “mutated” yet … but they’re working on it.