I write this blog on digital PR, and that’s fine, but the problem is it makes many people think there are two distinct silos: traditional PR and this new digital thing.

But in reality, they are not bifurcated. They are seamless. They are mix and match. One morphs into the other and then back again in a moment’s notice.

Actually without notice. Really, in a nano second. That’s the challenge of it. That’s the fun of it.

What do I mean? Let’s say you land a Wal-Mart executive on CNBC to talk about the company’s successful forays into key global markets. The interview goes great, your client comes across as sage and sincere and the producer tosses out the idea of doing a one hour special on the company’s extraordinary history.

Wonderful. But even as the interview is live on the cable, the wonderful turns partly terrible. A network of anti Wal-Mart bloggers - and there are legions of them who hate anything American, capitalistic and successful - go into a viral frenzy about the company.” Wal-Mart starves children. Wal-Mart destroys unions. Wal-Mart killed Lincoln.”

Even though the traditional media can be biased, it does have an editing process. It does have a fact checking process. And most of its reporters and editors work hard to pass through the screen of impartiality. But the blogosphere is filled with renegades, many of them angry at this, that or the other thing, and free to say, rant, scream about whatever they (we) want, whenever we want to.

So here’s the crazy quilt aspect of all of this. You land a great segment on CNBC and then the bloggers turn it against you. When you and your client go on air you have to be factual; the bloggers don’t have to be anything but alive.

So if you think traditional PR and digital PR have walls between them and if you think you can leave digital PR to the punky kid in the office next door, sorry. The world isn’t neatly packaged like that anymore. Not since the day the walls came down.

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It used to be relatively easy. PR that is. You would look at the product, service or idea you wanted to pitch and identify the few kingmakers who, if they bought the pitch, made you golden. These towering figures in journalism-often writing for The Times, The Journal, Time, and The New Yorker- held millions of readers in their grasp. Under their spell. People believed in them, had faith in them, the way they did in Uncle Walter Cronkite. A story on a new health regimen touted by Jane Brody would cause the product associated with it to fly off the shelf. And when Jack Anderson took aim at anything or anyone, the prey would run for cover or wind up in jail.

Yes, it’s still a coup to land a story in a kingmaker’s column. Plant an idea with Thomas Freidman and it will soar around the world. But these journalistic stars have lost much of their power to the galaxy of relatively unknown “experts” in cyber sphere hosting millions of blogs and websites and podcasts, and tossing widgets, and VLOGs and emails to more people than Bob Novak ever reached in his most popular column.

Today, finding who to target for your story is far more complex because there is an exponent over the media hit list you need to target. And not only are there more forces out there who can breathe life into your story, the cast changes almost daily and the process through which the magic happens is often bewildering. An amateur photographer captures an extraordinary war between lions, water buffalo and an alligator on the African Sahara and the same day half the world sees it! How did this fireball get into the system? Who hurled it into You Tube? And why and how did it spread in a viral fever?

Therein lies the blessing and the curse of the exponent.

Of the fact that as a PR pro you have exponentially more targets for your story who can take it live to hundreds of millions of people within seconds. The curse, if you choose to look at it that way - I advise you don’t - is that you have to find the hidden powerbrokers. The few bloggers and VLOGers and websites and podcasters without brand names but with the street cred in their cyber communities to serve as catalysts, tossing a match on your jet fuel of the idea/story you are planting and igniting the viral blaze. If you are determined to do it the tried and true way, working and reworking the tired old list of once powerful journalists, the exponent is a curse. But if you are willing not only to create a great pitch but to spend more time figuring out who’s behind the curtain, in a tiny home office or a college dorm, can be your spark on the gas jet, you will experience a kind of magic the best of the kingmakers could never provide.

Don’t hide from the storm. Ride it.

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