The topic of the PRSA Colorado April lunch program was the changing media landscape. All the panelists agreed that the media landscape sure is changing fast. They just didn't have a clue about the long-term impact of this trend on the public relations business, journalism, or just the general level of intelligent conversation in this country. Join the club.

As newspapers continue to shrink, "citizen journalists" continue grabbing more of the news business. The problem is that by definition, they are not professional journalists. They report on things they have an interest in and an opinion about, but not with a journalist's eye, ethics or editor. Their readers tend to be people with the same interests and opinions, so the news they provide tends to be biased, not objective. Their articles often generate feedback from other people with strong opinions one way or another.

The question for PR people is, will this trend make our jobs easier or more challenging? On the positive side, we can now become the reporters. We can write the story, take the photos, provide the graphics, and place it in online community-based publications that are replacing dying newspapers in many cities. We can make our clients sound great and we never have to worry about our pitches being sent back to us faster than a Gary Sheffield homer off a 95 mile an hour fast ball.

On the negative side, being the reporter, the photographer, the editor and the producer means doing the jobs of four people. And like advertising, we can say whatever we want about a client, whether it is credible or factual or not. We can post it on Web sites and Facebook, we can convince people to follow our clients on Twitter, and we can even become "citizen journalists" ourselves whenever we want.

This may be the future but it doesn't sound like journalism to me, and it doesn't really sound like PR. It sounds like publicity. It sounds like promotion. It sounds like P.T. Barnum.

If the public relations profession is serious about using the evolving new media landscape to benefit our clients and our communities by communicating honestly, transparently and respectfully, we need to be careful to apply the same sort of ethical guidelines and rules that are fundamental to our profession. We need be our own editors. We need to do what we can to shape the landscape toward a path we can walk down with pride, not trepidation.