What kind of PR works in the networked world?

I just read this post by Richard Edelman and decided to blog my thoughts here, instead of posting a very lengthy comment.

Edelman discusses how PR will be forced to find new avenues of discourse in the future if it wants to reach those people who have largely withdrawn from the traditional media’s area of influence. Institutional news sources – television, newspapers, “big news” websites – base their authority on their institutional status. This made sense while the role of speaker and listener (e.g. The New York Times vs. its readers) were markedly distinct from one another and individuals from neither party could directly communicate with one another. The voice of the institution provided a source of stability that individuals could not provide – back when people actually placed a lot of trust in institutions. Not only has this trust been significantly eroded over the last decades (think corporate or government scandals a la Enron) but additionally the digital media has made it possible to communicate much more efficiently with other individuals independent of time and place. The resources and empowerment that previously could only be provided by the organization (again, think the New York Times and its printing presses) are now in the hands of the individual. Additionally, we now trust other individuals much more than we did in previous times, when hierarchy, abstraction and structure were seen as absolutely imperative categories and organizations were the means through which strangers could interact with a certain measure of stability (provided by the institution) and without breaching social norms.

How does this relate to PR and blogging? I believe that the central challenge to PR in an environment characterized by direct and unstructured communication is to figure out where the voice of the individual and the voice of the institution intersect. If the institutional voice is dead, consolidating concepts such as corporate identity have lost their relevance. Institutions would be largely characterized by the individuals they employ, and they would change significantly every time the team changes. But if the institutional voice is not dead, I wonder what exactly it can sound like in an environment like the blogosphere, where we are always talking to other individuals, not to brands or claims. What is too personal for business blogs? Why are fake blogs such a taboo? And does a company actually benefit from a talented blogger, or does an interesting personality eventually drown out the company in the perception of the readers?

Let me know what you think.

Oh, and a Happy New Year to everyone!