You’ll often find some of the most ardent blogging evangelizers from within the advertising, marketing and public relations fields. To these professionals, blogs are an effective break-through-the-clutter method of getting the message out, often with at least the appearance of anti-establishment credibility.

But do their industries as a whole embrace blogging? The Public Relations Society of America, for one, praises blogs to the skies. But when it comes time to walk the talk, they don’t devote a single program item during their upcoming annual convention to what they describe as “the most important international communications event of the year”.

B.L. Ochman is of the opinion that this omission is the result of a fossilized attitude at the PRSA. In the PR field, there’s no greater sin than being behind the curve. That the association isn’t willing to cede some convention time to this new field is a strong indication that the industry establishment is currently missing the boat.

The flip side of the argument is that, given how one of the perceived virtues of blogging is it’s unstructured nature, the PRSA might not want to spoil the fun by making it an “santioned” PR tactic. In fact, PR people like Jeremy Pepper think blogging is better left untouched at such events, lest it become quickly overexposed.

I tend to side with the latter argument. Blogs are still new enough that there’s nothing to be gained by “legitimizing” them through widespread use. If every PR house started pushing them, they’d lose their cache, in no small part due to over-handling. I also question why PR professionals would need tutorials, or even pointers, from their association. If they need to be clued in through that channel, they probably shouldn’t mess with it.