Any doubt as to the veracity and longevity of citizen journalism was all but erased with the recent announcement that the Associated Press is teaming up with NowPublic.com, the world’s largest indy media collective.

Despite mainstream media’s (MSM) fall from grace in the digital world, the AP continues to be pretty formidable as a global news gathering network with 4,000 employees based in 240 bureaus across 97 countries. Impressive until you consider NowPublic and its *60,000* contributors spanning 140 countries.

NowPublic is one of many social media networks spawned in part by the proliferation of digital gadgets like camera and video phones to gather news and the advent of affordable broadband for easy and instantaneous global distribution of news.

Remember the first images of the South Asia tsunami, the London Underground bombings or even Saddam Hussein’s execution? It wasn’t CNN or AP who broke those stories, it was everyday people.

To its credit the AP has decided to embrace the undeniable clout of citizen media and in the process might stand a chance to survive the “MSM meltdown.” In some respects, all the AP is doing is casting a much wider net for the quasi-journalist stringers that have been the backbone of the network since its early days.

What remains to be seen with this and other MSM-citizen media experiments is whether the old guard media pros will raise the game of amateur journalists in everything from general aptitude to objectivity and ethics. Or will the untrained stringers bastardize the purity of journalism and the unbiased role of the watchdog press as the line between editorial and opinion is increasingly blurred.

Either way, it’s critical that communication professionals sit up and take notice. Those hacks that you thought were just blogosphere background noise are gaining credibility –- read by millions and now endorsed by the forefathers of traditional media, in fact incorporated into the very system of MSM.

In the digital world of reference-based communication, these folks are shaping opinion that drives consumer purchase decisions, brand loyalty or derision and the general daily buzz of what’s hot/not.

If your media relations plans don’t include citizen journalists, time to get into revision mode. If your execs are clueless on the impact of citizen media, time to get them up to speed on 21st century communications. To ignore this group is to bury one's proverbial head in the digital sand.

Recently, The Wall Street Journal published an article about social tagging sites and pointed to the rise of a new stakeholder group: those online influencers who browse the Web and earmark (or tag in social media lingo) articles, photos and sites they deem worthwhile. The Wizards of Buzz, as coined by journalists Warren and Jurgensen, are mostly volunteers who take it upon themselves to be bastions of quality and newsworthy content. Visitors on Reddit, Digg, Newsvine and Del.icio.us rate content submitted to the sites and more often than not, the wizards’ submissions rise to the top as the most popular. They have a knack for knowing what will appeal to the masses. They are the new tastemakers.

Social tagging is rapidly becoming popular and bloggers are responding by either preparing tags for their entries and allow their readers to tag content they like with one click. Seeing the growing trend, a PR professional’s immediate reaction may be to think of ways to inform the wizards about a news story online. But we must remember that overt marketing is not the way to deal with social media. The new media pitch is not the lesson here. Here is where social tagging is leading us:

- Social tagging works hand in hand with search technologies. It makes content available and visible. As social tagging services evolve, they will become stronger contenders to algorithm-driven search engines that accept sponsored content. To get content to rise through the Web ranks, communications professionals will need to become search specialists who understand the connection between paid search, strong editorial content and social tagging/voting.

-Marketers will need to focus on their audience’s lifestyle characteristics and social views, rather than demographics. Popular stories on social tagging sites are those that appeal to interests (e.g., science-fiction, technology, politics), not to women 18-34.

- PR pros will need to be smarter about online crisis communications. With the availability of services such as social tagging, news travel faster and further. A story or blog entry uncovered by a wizard can become significantly more visible in a matter of hours. Online alerts and buzz monitoring systems will also need to take social tagging sites’ pulse.

If you've picked up a newspaper, flipped on the TV or visited your favorite news Web site in recent days, it's been hard to miss coverage about jetBlue's missteps following a massive ice storm last week. The airline canceled more than 1,000 flights, stranding passengers all over the country while its chief competitors continued to fly.

Just this morning, jetBlue CEO David Neeleman appeared on NBC's "Today" -- part of a media blitz over the past week -- outlining steps he and the company are taking to ensure such a massive service interruption doesn't happen again. But he didn't stop with traditional media.

In a move showing jetBlue's understanding of the changing media landscape, Neeleman also took his message directly to the masses via the world's largest video sharing site, YouTube. The founder of the airline appears sans necktie in a 3-minute segment in which he discusses changes made inside jetBlue (including a new customer bill of rights) and the company's commitment to win back customer trust. It comes off as candid and authentic -- just what the airline needs in its communication now.

As the channels where information is consumed continue to evolve, so too must PR practitioners and our ability to get the message out quickly and effectively across all myriad of media. It's a skill jetBlue appears to have learned ... and is using to help rebuild trust.

No... I'm not referring to personal beliefs. I'm talking about the need for communicators to become more media agnostic.

This week, Forrester Research released the results of a new survey in which the research group asked agencies and their clients how well they'd rate solutions marketing firms currently bring to the table.

The results leave some room for improvement. Only about one in five clients would recommend their lead agency's services to others. And three out of four said they had no good way to measure return on investment of the marketing activities executed by agency partners.

While the survey focused primarily on one category of marketing services firms, the implications apply to public relations, too.

First, we need to continue innovating and offer more creative solutions to our client partners across information sources. Not just traditional media initiatives. Not only social media strategies. Not just experiential initiatives like mobile marketing programs. But a smart, appropriate mix of media channels and tactics that resonate with our clients' key constituents.

In short, we need to become more media agnostic.

Second, we need to keep demonstrating value -- tied to business objectives -- for everything that we do. Firms which can quantify the impact of their work over time will always come out on top, and will remain trusted partners for clients who rely on them for strategic support and execution.

The necessary changes inside marketing services firms aren't coming as quickly as some would hope, but PR as a whole has fared slightly better than some other marketing disciplines. Many of us in the public relations world were, for example, early embracers of social media and its opportunities for stimulating dialogue and shaping opinions of influencers. Firms with a heritage of working primarily in paid media have had a harder time adapting to the shifting media landscape and slower to offer a wider variety of solutions. (There are, of course, exceptions to this.)

But there's still room for improvement within the public relations field. At GolinHarris, we've spent a lot of time examining changes in the way individuals consume information and have altered the structure of our teams to help adapt. For example, the GH Dialogue integrated media practice combines traditional media relations, digital and social media, and experiential marketing into a single cohesive, media agnostic group. We've broken down the traditional agency silos typically based on media channels, and are working collaboratively every day to ensure our account staffers can successfully navigate a complex media environment.

These changes aren't coming easily for the industry, as they require major cultural shifts in established organizations. And they won't happen overnight -- but we're making headway.

Most clients still come to PR firms first for media relations support, but that's changing quickly. More and more demand integrated media strategies that combine the best of mainstream, digital and experiential information sources. The latest Forrester survey results should serve as a wake up call to anyone who believes it's business as usual.

If clients don't get innovative solutions beyond mainstream media from their advertising or PR firms, they'll go elsewhere, taking traditional media work with them, too. And we'll have nobody to blame but ourselves.

I, for one, think public relations is up for the challenge and can take the lead role becoming our clients' most trusted integrated marketing counselors.

Social networking sites that garner substantial niche communities offer marketers and business development teams new opportunities to micro-target. These CGM platforms are increasingly beckoning at companies and non-profits to advertise on certain pages on their sites or appear as sponsors of special sections. In 2006, marketers were expecting to spend up to 300 million dollars on social networking ads.

Considering the marketing investment in these areas, we may be at a good point to stop and ask about additional ways to engage online networkers.

First, we need to remember why people come to these areas. It’s for peer-to-peer interaction. JupiterResearch/Ipsos-Insight Survey (July 2006) shows visitors are primarily looking to communicate with existing and new friends. As simple as it may sound, the research confirms that interactive marketers' messages need to blend in with visitors' activities. They need to give consumers opportunities to post, interact with one another and display their own personalities. It's not just the click-throughs but also the length and quality of stay that matters.

Social networking sites represent an opportunity for online PR to crack the code of consumer-generated media. PR is about building relations and that’s what social networkers are looking to do. We have seen brand profiles on MySpace and contests on YouTube. In the next year, we should expect even smarter engagement tactics and technology solutions that host, encourage and enhance peer-to-peer communications. We need to create online events, invite consumers to participate and let them own the space. We can guide users to micro sites, buy key words and deploy search engine optimization tactics but personalization tools such as voice-overs, icons and custom animations will be just as critical.

Bottomline, these tactics will need to culminate in meaningful, ongoing dialogues between brands and customers. Communications on social networking sites are less about disruptive experiences, more about extended conversations. It's not just Web 2.0, it's stakeholder management 2.0. It's about empowering and enabling people.