However, I think what really needs to be assessed- not just by journalists, but by all of us in the communications industry- is what exactly the social media landscape means for our role and our image. Journalists no longer find the scoops, PRs no longer control the conversation, Marketing people no longer enjoy hegemony over public information. These are no longer problems to be considered: they are facts, known to public and media alike.

As a consequence, how do the communications industries present themselves and their function? If the newsmakers are, often, not seen as sleuths and explorers, then what are they?

Over the next decade or so, we will most likely see a shift in the role of the respected journalist from content generation to a mixture of content generation and a healthy dose of content auditing.  Instead of getting the scoops, they’ll be checking their validity. Instead of generating the content, they’ll be sifting through it, distilling it, re-presenting it. Instead of giving voice to the zeitgeist, they’ll be working out how that voice sounds.

The role of the media professional in the future is, therefore, practically bureaucratic, certainly organisational and analytic.

This will affect the PR and communications industry too. While historically the function of the PR has been to dream up the stories and then spin and feed them to journalists, who in turn feed them to the public, this hierarchy could soon be totally obsolete. However, the PRs do have one advantage over the journos: since our stories often come straight from the people making them, we can be first with the scoop.

Our function is therefore set to become, perhaps already has become, twofold. On the one hand we become infiltrators; experts in the social environment who know where to place stories to gain maximum traction in the constant conversation. On the other, we become supervisors to the analytic and summary process of new journalism, ensuring that the stories we create fit with those being collated and confirmed by opinion monitoring auditors in the media.

The public are becoming increasingly more aware of the huge role social media plays in newsgathering and broadcasting. Major international networks like CNN are among the most followed information providers on twitter, and the BBC’s follower profile has increased enormously (almost exponentially) over the past year.

There’s a danger here that they’ll come to associate the PR world with the old journalism- cast it as part of the defunct hierarchy. Agencies need to work hard to make sure that potential clients understand that, in a media landscape dominated by assessment and analysis, PRs are the ones with the know-how to act on and add to that analysis in the most targeted manner.

Like a Chinese meal, it is all you can taste and think about, but when it’s finished it’s forgotten and all you want is the next fix of foodstuff. There’s news, there’s excitement, there’s hyperbole scattered all over the place like MSG – and then it’s gone.

Of course, we are at the point that everyone is most interested in – the freak parade. Never mind the machinations behind the scenes or the commercial value of the brand; this is what the people most care about; the narrative, the crazies.

Given that it’s all about BGT right now, will we ever know the truth of what caused Cheryl Cole’s American X Factor exit and non-admittance to the UK judging panel? I doubt it, as the people have spoken and what they want is the tears, the heartache, the visceral stories, whether good or bad. What use is a nation’s sweetheart without some pain? We’ve used up the divorce tears – here’s the next weepie Cole adventure.

We know that Fox had a part to play, and Cowell, and many other factors, from agents to stylists – but it barely matters so long as the newspapers and Twitter benefit.

Brian Solis says that Social Media is creating its own ego systems. To survive, brands, businesses and celebrities should ride the shift in public perception and develop market strategies to work these ego systems. They need to recognise the shifts for what they are, however – the public has taken built in obsolescence at the heart of celebrity and business and celebrates it wholeheartedly – the nation no longer cares for yesterday’s cast offs. It only cares for the now.

We are living in one giant QVC-style shopping channel trading in celebrity; not a format that creates longevity. There’s no need when the consumer gladly moves on as soon as the sleb stops living in the now and starts thinking about the future.

Consumers are setting up information networks and are happy to be governed by social media connections. They expect the information to come to them in the instant – hardly anyone seeks out information elsewhere any more. They want it all NOW!

Yet, since no one is focusing on the past, no one is contextualising what’s happening now either, so let’s try to. Only people with platforms triumph – hence we see Cheryl Cole becoming cannon fodder to the march of the platform she’s been ousted from. High profile she may be, but she’s still just cannon fodder. It’s the people who’ve been spat out of the system who can offer most context on what is happening within the machine, but the machine has programmed us to expect a retrospective in ten years time asking “where are they now?”, at which we’ll grunt with slight recognition at the participants of all the old formats who never made it and then move on. There is no room for context in that model.

Fans and followers are firing up the process so it runs ever faster. Image is as disposable as a burger container. There is no point to super injunctions; the law is a blunt stick – and anyway, it’ll all be forgotten tomorrow.

Only a few are managing to succeed; Jedward are a prime example. But then they make no references to the past and they don’t care about the future – they may have represented Ireland at Eurovision, they may have met Obama but they have skins like rhinos and they don’t care. Their career is now and we have got to the point where the audience don’t trust people who talk about a future.

Maybe you just have to be stupid to succeed. Or, as I heard Simon Cowell tell a Britney impersonator: “Never mind the negativity. Ride it!” Salient lessons for Cheryl Cole and anyone else wanting to enter the social media whirl and the giddy world of celebrity in the 21st century.

In the last few days, Keith has been pictured in many broadsheet newspapers as journalists debate and chew over Schilling’s tactics and, of course, fees. It’s in their nature to feed on these events, but make no mistake, he’s a formidable operator.

The Ryan Giggs debacle has generated a vast swathe of comment and opinion. Common sense suggests that the exposure of Giggs’s extra-marital fling with a toxic, fame-hungry reality babe influenced by the fools gold of kiss and tell was really only a weekend PR tornado. I agree; if Giggs had faced up to the situation, which was very much of his making, the conclusion might have been very different. However, we are talking about a very big IF. Few can infiltrate the inner workings of a complex ego belonging to a public figure in distress, and therefore few have the experience to give the best counsel.

The Giggs meltdown has turned what could have been a quickly forgotten incident into an international incident of ugly oil spill proportions.

The real issue here is who is the FIRST person a celebrity or brand turns to when in trouble: a well-seasoned PR or legal muscle? Whisper this truth: BOTH are needed. Just as with BP/Hayward, the chaos was made worse by defensive US attorneys. The litany of PR meltdowns only happened because someone who had only bothered to scan read PR for Dummies was calling the shots.

Despite the exaggerated sums of gold sitting in celebrities’ Swiss bank accounts, few are prepared to stick their hands in their pocket. A handful may invest in long term relationships with wise, grey haired PR folk, but that’s about it.

I’m being contentious here – a few can be trusted, but some (who shall remain nameless) are unprofessional gossips; a crime which is considerably worse than some of the petty celebrity misdemeanours.

The bad offer their service for free – even monkeys get paid peanuts by the proverbial organ grinder. The sages that wrangled reputation in Hollywood’s golden age knew how to deal with the egos of both their charges and the media with which they interacted. When the system broke down, few would pay the freelance flaks and saw the US media savage reputations.

Simon Cowell is happy to cough up cash to keep Max Clifford in clover and the wolf from the door. Matthew Freud privately boasts about the cash he is paid. Alan Edwards and Gary Farrow can fence with the best. The upper end of celebrity invests to build relationships but the Giggs affair proves that the sparking Twittersphere can ignite flammable reputations.

Digital technology has created an environment where only those with sensible negotiation skills and calm heads can thrive. There is a time for the writ – but it can easily turn into the doomsday button and not the tactical pre-emptive strike the incautious imagine it to be. The old and the new can be happy bedfellows, but only if wisdom is allowed full reign.

I have always believed there has been a calculus of public vs. private interest, but this week has proved that the law is broken. The wider world is not interested in the deliberations of a dusty-wigged UK high court judge. The legal framework must try and understand the new age of free, libertarian speech especially when they are considering a celebrity’s position on his or her commercial value. There appears to be a very obvious point: the law is useless! It’s broken and unenforceable.

For the record, I do believe in a privacy law, but only if the conduct and careful appliance of fame is not undone by unacceptable behaviour. Legal muscle has its place but it cannot solely or independently save a career and reputation meltdown – the hapless attempts to halt the inexorable momentum of social media will now thrust the guilty more quickly into to the sewer of purposeful disparagement.

A few years ago I viewed, with some trepidation, the onset of this kind of web content, the sort that would unleash a revolution of new possibilities. I spent time preaching to agents and celebrities about the new dangers of the age. My protestations fell on deaf ears.

Few public figures learnt anything from the wretched and very public legal sagas surrounding John Terry and Wayne Rooney a year ago. Not even a downturn in their earning potential from sponsors and brands seemed to make a mark. As yet another hapless celebrity attempts to use the force of the law to turn the internet tide and save a tattered reputation, it is time to face some hard facts.

The celebrity industry is gigantic, Paris Hilton no less is by Forbes estimated Paris Hilton value around $30 and $50 million two years ago. We learnt last year Wayne Rooney earns £760000 a year from his image rights. These are big figures and this is why public figures will invest in expensive legal council to protect their privacy. Especially if the story doesn’t fit the projected brand truth

We are living in an age of experimental democracy. I have stood and watched, with some trepidation, journalism and technology battering against the walls of the law. Recent cases have arguably set a bad and confusing precedent. Famous and public cases have created destabilisation via the online world. The PR profession is grappling with the change.

Arguably, the social media world is destroying truth. PR folk recognize it’s an absolute fact that once you’re in the public eye everything changes.

The revolution in celebrity has changed the rules of engagement and the role of the celebrity has changed. This is the modern age, the age of the super-injunction, the age when celebrities want to keep their dirty laundry in bomb- and journalist-proof cages so that not even the slightest whiff of scandal can escape. Celebrity is now more than just playing in a team or starring on the screen. The public investment in the brand and therefore brand truth is more important than a spun image. The days of suppressing the facts are over.

If the brand behaves in a certain way then that’s its brand truth. The new social media age will out the truth, will focus on the authentic profile. If that isn’t the way certain public figures want it to be, they may find they have to change: they should realise that openly threatening will be unlikely to encourage investment from sponsors.

Legal firms specializing in this arena at the moment try to apply chloroform to the faces of troublesome editors. There isn’t enough anaesthetic, or the means to apply it, to smother the web. As for spraying threatening letters in a bid to suppress the facts, this is hat so old it’s fossilised when thousands of tweeters are registering support or outrage and have the ability to pass on the information. You can’t sue or stop them all.

Those celebs who engage in a sensible lifestyle and recognize that fame is a curse invest wisely in agents of communication. They weigh up their options professionally and seek to communicate their brand ethos. Of course they deserve to be protected from the lies and the defamers. How? Well, there’s the rub. We have entered an age of democratic experimentation, so it is time to come to terms with this truth of the situation facing then and therefore their own truth.

It’s no surprise that many of the major A list Hollywood names prefer the council of a wise old grey haired PR wrangler, a cautionary breed schooled in the laws of human error. A great flack is part shrink, part wise council, part foot soldier; someone not afraid of the blood or the battle. A listers will defer to someone who has a trust of the medium they work in.

The digital swirl has changed the game, so the provision for translucency and an ability to find a way to manage an enormous global community that has an interest in his clients brand is vital. There must be a place for sensible conversations with the media, both on- and offline, that might undo their clients.

Few UK public figures invest in long-term media management. Instead they prefer to pay eye-watering fees to a class of lawyer who is not graced with the skills of media negotiation. We are in an age where trust is thin the ground. Brute force commands a premium.

Good PR folk are trying to address the challenges that face them in a world where social networks are revolutionizing the planet. Modern media relations are about reaching out, not flexing legal muscle. Celebrities and public figures must invest in help that knows how to engage a whole new generation of consumers, whose values are being reshaped almost daily by their new social dialogue. Of course it’s not as easy as that, as the furore over someone posting information on Twitter about people who have allegedly taken out super-injunctions proves.

Crises come and crises go: the trick for a good flack is to develop a pleasant outward demeanour for their client. If the client can live up to it they’ll do well, but in these Twitter-fuelled days a caddish serial offender who tries to hide will be found out. Twitter makes a PR’s job harder, not easier.

The days of things being suppressed for decades are over, thanks to Twitter. We’re not living in old Hollywood any more. It is for everyone to change his or her ways of thinking; time for attitude, heart and a sense of proportion instead of craven process.

It’s a hot topic, particularly as the story has broken at a time when many companies are becoming less and less tolerant of any sexual misconduct by their senior executives. A string of high-profile companies have shed their bosses in recent years over such issues. It’s a new and convenient way to ‘get rid’.

Strauss Kahn is being held in New York, facing allegations of sexual assault. Should we be anxious about the current feeding frenzy? Whether the IMF chief is innocent or guilty, his arrest has raised questions about whether he will ever be able to have a fair trial.

Gossip around the incident is filtering out all over Twitter. A top executive and a chambermaid in a New York hotel is a classic and unfortunate story promising captivating twists and turns. Strauss-Khan’s lawyer declared the French economist will plead not guilty, but the sensational incident and the intense clamour around it has wrecked his hopes of running for president of France next year, or of continuing to lead the IMF – he resigned last night.

After three days of intense global media scrutiny, the story focused yesterday  morning on Strauss-Kahn being placed on suicide watch. I am told suicide watch is a routine rather than a response to an inmate’s state of mind. By implication, we are lead to believe by the news cycle that the accused is about to take his own life. His guilt is being decided for us by stealth.

I do feel sorry for the woman drawn into this narrative web. The poor chambermaid ‘feels alone in the world‘ whilst countless tweeters suggest it’s a honey trap. Whatever the case, it’s a great story, a new chapter in the global political soap opera.

It’s the velocity of the information surge surrounding the arrest that I find jaw dropping. It’s another sharp dig in the ribs for us PR folk and underlines the fact that organisations are ill equipped to cope with this new paradigm capable of ruining anyone across the board.

If the bones of the story are titillating, the story-hungry news mill cares less about the facts. Many news organisations are circling this accusation and arrest like vultures, all hungry to be the first to get new insight in order to take the lead.

Let’s all agree the volatility and speed of a negative narrative can kill. The Strauss-Khan affair strengthens my plea for bigger budgets and wise PR figures manhandling the complex 24/7 digital black hole that can suck reputation into an vortex from which it is impossible to escape.

Events like this, and particularly the subsequent narrative played out over Twitter, don’t just destroy reputation but ambition as well. Isn’t that important enough to invest in proper PR council to be there on hand to help rescue a drowning brand, deluged by a tsunami of opinion?

Of course, it’s just not as easy as that, as the furore over someone posting information on Twitter about people who have allegedly taken out super-injunctions proves. My instinct suggests that the poster is simply a nobody seeking a rather risky path to fame; but this does not alter the fact that technology changes at an exponentially faster rate than humanity’s baser instincts, as this outbreak of injunction-exposure, and the reaction to it, shows all too clearly.

Even the royal family, who have learned the hard way about bad publicity, cannot prevent occasional slips of image – as witness the recent bra-and-skirt dancing pics of Pippa Middleton, Princess Kate’s sister. Mind you, if all that can be found is such tame photos, the royal PR machine must be pretty happy.

It’s not been so easy for other cagey public figures lately, of course. The trick for a good publicist whose client finds themselves in difficult circumstances is to stand by their client and, once the trouble’s passed, give them truthful, honest advice and create them a forgiving profile. I remember, years ago, a client ringing me up in a panic that the Sunday People was about to run an expose on him. I had to ask “Is it true”. “Of course it is,” he replied. “Now can you make it go away?”

These days, I would work with him to try and make sure it never happened in the first place.

Crises come and crices go: the trick is to develop a pleasant outward demeanour for the client. If they can live up to it they’ll do well, but in these Twitter-fuelled days a caddish serial offender who tries to hide will be found out. Twitter make a PR’s job harder, not easier.

The human imagination is a powerful space and the need to weave a story is inherent to it. We have entered an age of democratic experimentation, so it is time to come to terms with this truth. The social space has, and the legal profession is powerless and ineffective against it.

The days of things being suppressed for decades are over, thanks to Twitter. We’re not living in old Hollywood any more. Time for everyone to change their ways of thinking…

My old cohorts launched a new offering via PR Week last week, which naturally pasted me onto the front page. Lordy, what a headline. Last week I had nothing to say; I guess when I do, I will. Some wag on Twitter correctly observed that I’m quick to offer opinion as a rent-a-quote on public affairs yet remain tight-lipped on my own. The media landscape can be a funny old vista, if viewed from the outside rather than from within. It’s fascinating to listen to opinion about an idea I’ve provoked; sometimes it’s funny, sometimes cruel, sometimes wide of the mark – but always absorbing.

Front page headlines usually stimulate hype, and hype picks up speed, bumping into half truths on the journey to oblivion. The headline, I’d imagine, was hard for folk to get their heads around; some even thought it outlandish. One word, “disillusioned”, was a powerful meme, I guess. Somehow it thrust the story into the Twitter-sphere, pressing down hard on the opinion accelerator pedal without an effective brake. Dear reader, that’s the power of a headline; it delivers an inescapable implication, fragments news, filters out and frames an as yet unformed narrative.

Over the past two decades, from the advent of the email offering instant sharing, to social media giving the revolution real scale and true people power, the PR business has changed completely. Consumers are co-opting brand conversations and mashing and redistributing the ad men’s and PR peeps’ messages far and wide. This provoked a reflection on my personal future.

I am a curious, inquisitive and impatient soul who has an insatiable appetite for knowledge about the space I work in. Luckily I’ve had the foresight, experience and passion to stay ahead. My position has been commercially challenged in the last 2 years. I’ve found the consumer space difficult to work out. The truth is that so many people have felt the same challenges as well. Perhaps my boredom and a non-conformist personality would always find it difficult to overcome the frustrations.

This impatience and impulsiveness led me to try and consider building a media agnostic venture, integrated and yet different and centred on my experience and counsel. But I found it impossible to sell difference either to potential clients and even to my own colleagues. All who worked with my infectious enthusiasm to embrace the uncertainty of the future felt it was quite a thing to ratchet a set of gears. It’s easier, commercially, to plough a furrow than to change farming practice. There is nothing wrong with ploughing a field, but it’s not for me.

So, expecting change to happen around me or to sit back and wait for folk to catch up was rather stupid. Radical stuff is a bit scary, especially if you don’t know if it will work. For the record, I don’t, but the smaller model is easier to steer than a Moxy MT51 articulated dump truck. I guess I just don’t feel comfortable with a corporate structure. I’ve always believed that the renown people achieve through helping each other and collaborating more is the most important kind.

There is a potency that’s achieved by snatching all you can when you can, but I prefer constructing something of real substance and seeing what happens, alongside people who want to share an interesting, and at times unconventional, journey. This stickiness attracts people of tremendous vision as well as building a space for an interesting work ethic.

So, the future? Ay there’s the rub… How to shape an idea for the future, corporately, is going to be my personal challenge. When I have sealed the deals I’m working on now, and got the like-minded thinkers on board, then I’ll be ready to provide sound bites and lashings of commentary.

It’s a grossly unfair practice, dismissing a show on its technical preview and amping up the pressure on the team behind it who have millions invested, almost a bloodsport. But that’s the way the media’s moved – into a place where they have to keep creating stories to keep ahead of the Internet.

It bothers me that Broadway haven’t realised that they could get fans of Spider-Man in to blog and tweet about the show first, though. Let’s not forget that the heroic arachnid is one of the most popular brands on the planet – surely the team behind the musical could harness the huge fan base (and possibly even create more fans in the process) by inviting them in to given their perspective online, thus diluting the poison pens of some of the more rabid critics.

The publicists for the Spider-Man musical must be troubled by the reception the previews have had, and by balancing the needs of the media against the needs of the show. Currently, the media seems to be winning, as the flurry of articles claiming that the show is doomed suggests.

Critics are a vital part of the Broadway process, of course, but it seems counter-intuitive to let them in to the previews that are put on to see what could go wrong in front of a live audience. The publicity team behind the Spider-Man musical would surely be better off inviting devotees of the comics character in to offer their opinion online via Twitter instead – they would be far more likely to get constructive opinions that don’t quail when the need to sell newspapers kicks in.

It makes sense, surely, to get it as right as possible before the critics and their agendas get the chance to wade in. If the show stinks after that, on their own heads be it, of course.

It’s a perfect way to highlight the dangers of do it yourself PR; like some hapless DIY electrician, the celebrity who tries to engage in their own publicity is likely to burn the house down if they are not really careful.

If even an articulate, interesting, engaging and thoroughly metropolitan man such as Stephen Fry, a man who knows how to shimmy around a crowd and impress or charm the best of us, can get into hot water and be unable to fix it via Twitter, there is surely something to be said for good PR after all.

A good publicist would surely have deflected the furore away from Fry’s personal Twitter feed (in the short term at least) and prevented him from taking it too personally – and since Fry is again suggesting that he will withdraw from the social networking site, there can be no doubt he is taking it very personally.

This is as good a lesson as any that you are right in the firing line if you engage in the great social network revolution – it is an excellent leveller at the moment when hubris reaches it’s peak. Many may have forgotten that Fry is at heart a wit and comedian under the blanket of ‘national treasure’ that has enveloped him, even Fry himself.

A publicist would have tried to guide him towards crafting a witty, comedic and, most importantly, carefully thought through response to the broadsheet ire rather than to the huffy Tweets with which he seems to have signed off Twitter with – for now, at least…

West has been letting rip on Twitter with unrelenting detail about himself. He has picked a fight with a journalist from the LA Times music blog who had the temerity to accidentally miss out a word from the title of his album but the incident that generated the most ire was his use of a robot to pump out 300 tweets in a few minutes containing lyrics and some nasty invective.

With a lot of people complaining about his bombardment and suggesting that it was “time to give that ego some beautyrest”, it’s clear that Kanye has been digging his own grave in public.

You only have to go to his Twitter site to see the lurid details. As Grace Dent put it in a tweet yesterday morning: “kanye is actually a complete twitter bellend. they should suspend his account for spamming about himself.” He has proved that a sleb can disengage a fan base in mere moments.

Other celebrities take note – the world really is watching. Take your publicist’s advice and quell the urge to pick fights with the world. And please find something to talk about other than yourself.