There’s little debate that PR and the overall economy are in rocky waters, but a recent post by Steven Silvers was particularly sobering and tapped into an ongoing meme about whether new/social media is killing or sustaining PR.

Silvers, who writes the Scatterbox PR blog and is a principal at GBSM in Denver, sounded a warning bell for young PR pros and students among tectonic shifts in the field.
“If you're a generalist PR staffer, hone your writing skills and become expert in something relevant. Fast. If you're a PR student, consider changing your major. Seriously.”

Silvers says that while all recessions hurt marketing industries this one will be particularly brutal and the market for PR pros will never be the same because of changes that include a flood of journalists entering the PR field, smaller newsrooms to target, and technology that allows tasks once handled by several staffers to be managed by a single employee.

“When the smoke finally clears, there will be considerably fewer jobs for communications specialists and marketing publicists. And there will be many more qualified people out there who are desperate to have them,” he writes.

But where Silvers sees new media and technology as potentially reducing payrolls, others see the opposite.

David Reich, who heads his own boutique New York firm, sees some relief through new media for the young, doe-eyed PR hopefuls in PR:
“Young people conversant with social media will be in demand, as agencies and in-house departments grapple with how to utilize the new media. And while traditional media outlets, especially those in print, continue to shrink or disappear, many more new outlets are opening, in droves, in the form of blogs, e-zines and other digital formats.”

In a somewhat related vein, Bob Conrad, the communications officer for the Nevada Department of Conservation of Natural Resources, makes a compelling case that PR should be moved from journalism schools to business schools.