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The PR industry is incredibly thin-skinned.

Think about it. Tom Foremski disses on the "delete-on-receipt" press release, and PR pros (myself included, of course!) start buzzing and re-thinking everything.

Tom is a guy worthy of our respect, no doubt, but still, he's just one journalist among thousands. Nine-hundred ninety-nine "customers," one "noisy malcontent," and lo' the Social Media News Release is born! Granted, those 999 customers --- a.k.a., the media --- may have been just as disgruntled about the State of the Press Release, but the majority were quietly resigned to the status quo. And bloggers? Most were happy to point to press releases that popped up in Yahoo! Finance. There was no clarion call from the bloggerati to make corporate news & multimedia assets more readily accessible to laypeople.

More recently, Stowe Boyd carps on the PR industry; specifically our coming demise at the hands of Social Media trends. Again, in Mr. Boyd we are dealing with an estimable character, but really, he's just one "2.0 pundit" from among hundreds. Yet, with what seems to be little understanding of either the strategic depth or the broad tactical suite that falls within PR's purview, he blithely lobs a firebomb from the back-bench and voila, he's invited to speak at a prestigious PR conference.

("Somebody doesn't like us? But, PR people are so nice! Maybe they know something about us that we don't know?? Let's go ask!")

I sound cranky, right? You think I'm bemoaning the PR industry's thin skin? You expect I'll now defend our craft like a paladin squaring off against dragons?

Wrong. Every day I wake up and thank God for "noisy malcontents."

Ye Olde-Style Press Releases do suck. They're mostly bloviating blasts of blah & blather.

And the PR industry does face enormous new challenges in the Social Media era.

If we didn't have such thin skins, I'd be much more worried about our long-term future. Hubris comes before the fall.

Here's the thing: change takes time. And the Big Changes heralded by Social Media will take far longer than the evangelists think. (For a great discussion on this particular point, visit Robert French's recent post, and be sure to read the superb Comments, as well.)

Meanwhile, given the relative youth of this movement, the PR industry is doing a GREAT job of embracing, researching, mistake-making, etc. We're not in deep denial, not one bit; on the contrary we're in the thick of it: sweaty, drunk, flailing, thinking. There are over 600 PR bloggers worldwide, as I write this. Compare that disproportionately large number to any other industry and I think you'll find it to be pretty impressive.

So, yeah --- keep the criticism coming. Please! It makes us stronger, faster, smarter. It's called survival of the fittest, and we're getting into fighting trim.

Tags: social+media, social+media+press+release, public+relations, tom+foremski, stowe+boyd, robert+french, shel+holtz, jesse+ciccone, pr+2.0