This has, without doubt, been an extraordinary, tumultuous year, a year in which the cliché of the water cooler moment has been reinvented time and time again by a clamouring horde of news stories, each more consuming and captivating than the last.

In the same way a river builds up to a roaring rush of water from numerous tributaries, so the news agenda has fed itself throughout the year; each story feeds from a different spring but accumulates and becomes an narrative waterfall of Niagran magnitude. And we are all well and truly captivated by this narrative slew of information.

The year has been deafening, powered by a ravenous media and aggregated by social engagement. From World Cup failings to Royal wedding hype, freed hot Chile men to the cunning stunts of ex-Prime Ministers with books to sell, coalition politics to the relentless iPatter of tiny feet that marks the latest Apple revolution, 2010 is surely a year few will forget. Bearing in mind how rapidly things have changed, turned about and in some cases simply stood perceived views on their heads.

Here, then, are some of the key events of the year, filtered through the cautious eye of PR. It is frightening to think what lies ahead for 2011, but if the changes can be more radical yet less of a headlong plunge next year, we could be in for exciting times. See you this time next year to find out! And please be careful in the snow…

The Blogs of the Year (in no particular order)

1) A Royal Announcement
2) Student Protests
3) Wayne Rooney and the Tale of the Greedy Footballer
4) The Chilean Miners
5) Papal PR
6) The Charitable Blair
7) The Fading of Hollywood’s Stars
8) News as Soap Opera
9) The BP PR Disaster
10) The Ghost of Advertising Future
11) Coalition Politics
12) iPR
13) Tiger Comes Out of the Woods
14) PR Spam

As PR mechanisms for reaching journalists get smarter, so many PRs themselves risk becoming that much more dim. In the new techological landscape, journalists are no less prone to the pressures of the speed of technological change. As they succumb to these pressures, as time is stripped away, they put up the barricades and deny that they have any need of or use for PR.

There seems to be, all too often, little understanding on either side. The uneasy pact slips into ruin. No one is going forward with the craft of PR and anyone guilty of sending out easy spam information at the expense of building a relationship with journalists is simply assisting them in their unhealthy bid for isolation.

As Madeleine Bunting said in the Guardian a couple of days ago: “We should be watching carefully for how a new generation of media technology might erode… the nursery of our skills to speak, listen and build relationships.”. She was talking about families, but the same could easily apply to the previously intimate relationship between hack and flak.

The more information is disseminated at the expense of building a useful relationship face to face, the more sterile the relationship becomes. PR spam isn’t the new chlamydia – intimacy unprotected by a layer of technology can only lead to new growth. Some of the loudest complaints are from scribblers with a weather eye on their own notoriety; a remarkable number of them are in the technology sector, so are perhaps more prone to PRs using kits to spew and spray.

As ever, it’s about how one uses the tech – with a bit of intelligence and a willigness to listen on both sides, technology can make the world of media and communication a much more fertile place.