I already know the answer to that question, nevertheless here we are. This inaugural posting is intended to explain how we might be different and offer those who scour the net for gossip, almost-news and opinion, some compelling banter.

Our slogan – “The Press Release is Dead” – is not merely metaphor but reality. The world of communications has changed so much (as we so tritely often hear) in ways that we have only begun to understand.

Putting it into extremes: prior to the Internet we watched Tom Brokaw for the news; post-Internet we get our news from YouTube, Podcasts, RSS, Drudge Report and on and on. The traditional news business is going extinct, slowly, but steadily, before everyone’s eyes. Last month the newspaper industry experienced the worst drop in advertising

Surely, the economic downturn is partly to blame, but so too is the fact that more and more communicators – politicians, corporations, non-profits – are looking for ways to reach an audience – their audience – faster and cheaper. And they’re doing it.

The press release was (and sometimes is) a useful tool in an era when information was dispensed to the masses, coddled and crafted by a middleman (journalist) and then reprocessed for public consumption. Those days are over, aren’t they? I recall last spring a series of announcements by Starbuck’s that more than suggested that someone inside of the coffee house got it. Faced with a crisis in Ethiopia over using regional names to brand their coffee (without royalty payments), Starbuck’s had a classic “How should we respond?” dilemma on its hands. They hit YouTube with a series of responses, drawing in tens of thousands of visitors and generating a front page Wall Street Journal piece about their embrace of new media.

Public relations remains stubbornly mired in the evening newscast era, two square meals a day of news – the crisp morning newspaper and the dour nightly newsman. Let’s observe which slips further faster.