PR may be Booming. It's also Changing.

As the media landscape continues its evolution, the PR business seems to be the beneficiary. According to this Bloomberg article, there are now 6.4 public relations specialists for every news reporter. But I guess that’s not surprising, in a way. As media organizations disappear, one by one, from the newsstand, the displaced journalists are finding careers in PR and morphing before our very eyes (some making the transition to the dark side more easily than others).

But while the PR industry is growing, it is also transforming. What used to be called PR - facilitating the publication of positive stories for your client, written by someone else and published in “traditional” media, is now a small subset of the job. PR is no longer a matter of simply (although it was never simple) securing positive stories in newspapers, TV and radio. The balance requires a combination of skills that most of us are learning on the fly. So, in a way, erstwhile journalists are just as able to play as any of us. Yes, a story in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the FT or Bloomberg is still important, but most of the time, exposure on multiple platforms is essential to really get your message out. In addition to the basics, leveraging tools from Instagram to Reddit, from Twitter to Medium, in crisscrossing alignment, is required in order to achieve the ubiquity needed to make an impact.

With that in mind, crafting long-form content (or, as some used to call it, writing articles) has become the holy grail of PR. This is where all of those reformed journalists, whose stock in trade has always been thus, have a leg up in the game. Their ability to write and essentially self-publish stories on behalf of clients gives them enormous power, since, ironically, "getting ink" is no longer at the mercy of reporters.

As the "user generated" model overtakes the Fifth Estate, this flow of content in form of articles, white papers, blog posts and more, is essential. And long-form copy is actually just one side of a two headed beast. The other being super-short content bursts that say just enough to pique interest or promote those longer pieces.

While most PR people mourn the dramatic changes in old media, the influx of former journalists and others will serve to elevate our profession in new and unexpected ways .