PR agencies are benefiting out of this recession, but much of this success will be short lived.  In my recent blog entry the death of the newspaper is nigh, I argue that the newspaper is in terminal decline, a fact that most journalists and newspaper owners I talk to don’t deny.

At the moment, many newspapers are not replacing or recruiting journalists because of their ever declining copy sales and reduced ad revenues.  As a result, a short-lived opportunity has popped up for PR companies to help the newspaper editors fill their pages – copy is often skewed to promote a product or service and real investigative journalism is being replaced by less interesting corporate content.  This action will only accelerate the decline of the paper in the long term, but in the short term, it allows PR agencies to cash in at the same time as keeping their customers happy.

But what happens when the newspapers start to go under?  What happens when companies, charities and political parties come to the realisation that their customers are no longer taking opinion from newspapers but online?  How many PR agencies and marketing departments are prepared? I believe it is only a matter of time before the PR bubble bursts.  The only PR agencies that will grow are those which understand how to socialise online.