There has been a great deal of talk about Steve Rubel's 'Blogs are the New Press Release' post. Check out the comments, quite a few well-known names chiming in, but no response from Steve yet. Tom Murphy, Trevor Cook and Shel Holtz all further the discussion on their respective blogs.

For the record I never make statements like "the press release is dead" or "this is the future of PR" when talking about blogs.

I am constantly interacting with PR and marketing folks via the seminars and presentations I provide and I always try to make sure I am informing/reporting (with a small dose of evangelizing) but not hyping blogs. As Trevor said:

I mean who can front up to a CEO or a corporate communications manager and say things like 'the press release is dead' or 'forget wire services and use RSS'. You would just be dismissed as a ranter.

Shel's closing line is:

But this has always been true: When you're selling hammers, every problem looks like a nail.

In that sense I sell hammers, but I am smart enough to know that every problem is not a nail. If you continue to operate that way you will quickly lose your credibility. The majority of times when a potential client calls me to talk about setting up a blog (they've heard the hype somewhere) I end up telling them it's not the right solution. Their perception and expectations are not in line with reality.

It's always an interesting situation when you tell a client, 'no I won't sell you this'. In some cases the client just finds a consultant that will say 'yes' and a poorly planned project is launched. You can usually see this coming when you review their current/past pr and marketing efforts and see many short-lived and ill-conceived attempts. (You've been through how many PR firms in the last year?)

Does Steve really believe his own hype? If so, Jeremy has an interesting idea:

...Steve Rubel saying the press release is dead. CooperKatz must love having clients read that, as now they can come back and say that they do not want to pay for press releases anymore, and if they can get refunds.