Marketers and corporate communications professionals continue to gain more control over marketing intelligence and communication optimization. As a result, they are relating the effects on business conditions. As this occurs, information has emerged on the relative abilities of the whole range of agents in the marketing and communications mix -public relations - to drive meaningful business outcomes.

Imagine a world without editors and journalists - a completely user-generated media world in which consumers decide which stories are worthy of publishing. A report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism did just that, and the results were interesting.

While the number of new magazine launches in 2007 is lackluster at best, there is no reason to think that this is the first step down a slippery slope to the death of the magazine industry, according to Dr. Samir Husni, a.k.a. "Mr. Magazine." The Chair of the Journalism Department at the University of Mississippi and "the country's leading magazine expert" predicted two years ago that we would see something like this during 2007 and 2008 with a rebound to normal form in 2009.

The American view of the advertising profession could use repair, according to an Adweek and J. Walter Thompson study titled "Ad Industry Perception Survey." The study is an assessment of the line between the media-created perception of the industry and the real opinions held by American adults. JWT conducted a random online survey of 966 Americans, 18 years and older, with a 50/50 balance of male/female ratio, from September 5 to 12 of 2007.