2) Have you run into any problems with "disinformation," from workers within companies, PR professionals, or other journalists/bloggers on communication platforms like LinkedIn, FB or Twitter. Does a relationship with a PR professional you trust (whether they use RSS, a "social media release," or plain old email to reach you) have any increased value in your mind because of the rising level of noise online?

Ryan Block: It's rare that PR professional would attempt to deliberately mislead our publication. I'm not going to say it's never happened before, but most are good people, and I'm sure the reason it doesn't happen more often is fear of what would happen if they got caught (and rightly so). Any journalist worth their weight in salt has zero patience for a misleading PR flack. My biggest problem isn't with disinformation, it's with rep not having the correct information to know when to get in touch and what to get in touch about. It's really about adding value and accessibility to our end. In that regard nothing has changed despite the plethora of other ways new media has made an impact. Relationships are still valuable, and we see a lot of value in them.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: PR people regularly try to put lipstick on a pig in the form of tiny news packaged as a world-changing revelation, or old news as new news. People I trust not to do this will get me to look at their releases more closely. Additionally, for working with myself and Read/WriteWeb, PR persons can create an OPML file of all their clients' RSS feeds (maybe news search feeds for their clients' names too), provide a readable summary of any formal press release, give access to any closed beta with enough time to actually test it before the news, then facilitate fast access to someone who can answer questions when they come up.

Tom Foremski: It’s true that conversation overload is a social malady for our time. Information overload was Internet 1.0. Conversation overload is Internet 2.0. However, journalists have wanted to be first to the news since the Gutenberg press was invented. In that sense, professionals like Marshall and Ryan, are quite traditional, and they are going to get their work done through cultivating and dealing with contacts.

3) Traditional media was slow to adopt, but many are now using built in blogging tools, and social components like user ranking. Has this changed the way you write, or approach the writing process in a way that PR professionals should be aware of?

Ryan Block: No, if anything it's helped legitimize the trail we've been blazing. We have had to do very little adaptation spurned on by "old media" outlets, since they're often behind the curve and we're often out in front. Most of our editorial changes are driven by what's going on in our vertical and niche. What I've seen in the explosion of new publications and tech media in the past few years is that PR people seem to think they can get by being complacent and uninformed, sending email blasts to endless streams of editors and bloggers and everyone else in the hope that something will stick to the wall and they'll get a story or two out of it. That's not how it works. Too much garbage in the media has driven millions to the eminently DIY domain of blogging, and you need to hone your game if you want to pitch your mobile app to the dude who does nothing but review WAP sites.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: I appreciate it when a company has a blog of its own so that I can see any announcement in the context of other recent activities, and make my own judgment about whether some small news that made their blog is big enough news for me.

Tom Foremski: We can all do the basics of making sure content is available on news sites, and discoverable through tagging, but once you’ve done those basic things there is really not much else you can do at that point. There are things you can do to try and prime the pump, but there is nothing you can do to ensure what a PR person would call “viral” success. It really depends on the timing, and so many other uncontrollable factors. Sometimes news can hit, but it will not catch online traction right away because something else is holding peoples interests. It is something that the web is enabling, but there is no way to plan for it, or counsel for it.

4) IntenseDebate is an example of a blog comment syndication/aggregation service that allows users to track and get notifications around updates to comments online. How active are you at commenting on other blogs, and do you think if your PR connections could easily read them in one place, it would be valuable aggregate information to read through in addition to your blogs?

Ryan Block: Not very, I have enough to handle with 10m+ readers, I don't "get out" very much to other sites, except than to read them. I'd imagine that kind of thing would be useful information for PR people, but let's not put the wagon before the horse. Most of these reps need to read their publications and writers' editorial before they pull out the magnifying glass to see what they're leaving comments about elsewhere on the internet.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: That doesn't sound like a bad idea, but there's no technology that makes that really easy to do yet. Honestly, if you want to get to know what's in my head about the industry, friending me on Twitter is the best way to do it.

Tom Foremski: Again, I’m not all that active beyond creating my content. I don’t see the point in making everything transparent though. Nobody would have time to follow all the threads that go into making my job transparent. At the end of the day, you write a story and validate it by stating who your sources are.