A recent article from The Economist claims that the current recession has increased the need for companies to utilize more PR, enhancing the status of PR in the marketing mix. As we reported last month, PR budgets are growing, while advertising budgets are being cut.  

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is proposing a new ten-year plan intended to make the Internet the country's dominant communications network. The plan demands an intense build-up of high-speed Internet services to all sectors of the country, including rural and economically-challenged households. The FCC may propose in the plan a goal of 100 Mbps speeds to be in place at 100 million American homes in 10 years. The current average is less than 4 Mbps. 

A recent paper published by Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman from the University of Pennsylvania attempts to define why some items become more viral than others. To reach their conclusions, the authors analyzed over 7,500 New York Times articles published over six months and how they were shared.      

According to a recent report from Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project, Americans are accessing news in real time over multiple devices. Over a quarter of us (26 percent) are now getting our news via phone, according to the survey.