Many businesses and marketers have had the dreaded "R" word strike fear in their hearts. In a recession, businesses start looking to cut costs wherever possible; marketing and advertising budgets are often dramatically reduced. But is that a proven best practice? 

Because of the Internet, getting through to the press is no longer a problem for public relations people at companies and agencies.

Unfortunately, way too many PR people are sending journalists unsolicited and unrelenting "PR spam". These are commercial messages in the form of news releases and untargeted broadcast pitches based on the hope that some poor sucker on deadline will respond.

Trylon SMR President Lloyd Trufelman addresses the grim, little-discussed reality of murdered journalists and the PR industry on ODwyerPR.com, a well known industry website.

The gossip and news blog Gawker.com, which focuses heavily on the media industry, recently posted about Edelman Worldwide with its story, called "Sometimes You Just Have to Stand Up There and Lie." It cited a tipster who works as "a high level advertising and marketing executive" who said that as part of their "media training," Edelman commonly tells executives that lying is fine.