This week’s layoffs at BusinessWeek sent shockwaves through the PR and editorial communities. Just days before Thanksgiving, approximately 130 BusinessWeek journalists were let go. Many of them, our friends and colleagues, had been at the publication for 20 to 30 years. The news capped off a horrendous year for the media.

Those of us in tech first noticed the Internet’s displacement of traditional media during the last economic downturn. The downturn was the impetus for blogs. Talented journalists like Om Malik founded GigaOm, pioneering the new medium and figuring out business models along the way.

It’s likely that this new wave of unemployed journalists will also innovate with new infotainment products and services. There’s a palpable vacuum and there will be a need for media sources to be verified, news to be curated, and real-time tweets to be put into broader context. It’s been a sad time for media, but evolution will surely come.

PR is about to undergo a radical transformation due to the changing media landscape. Numerous other marketing functions have already been forever altered by the Internet and it’s plausible to believe that PR will soon feel similar effects. Every company is developing its discrete media channels, voice, content, and networks by uploading YouTube videos, creating Wikipedia pages, and publicizing its viewpoints via Twitter pages. Services are emerging to track influencers around each topic.

I’m looking forward to the end of 2009. I suspect 2010 will be equally as interesting.

Nowhere is PR’s expanded role more apparent than with the print media, and specifically, trade publications. As a number of trade publications source more content from vendors, new marketing opportunities open up.

My colleague Leyl Master Black helps clients develop white papers, edit them into two or three bylines, convert the bylines into multiple blog posts, and then tweet snippets from each blog. The content is updated so it’s timely and valuable for each vertical community, syndicating it in new ways. Here’s an example of a general best practices article that has been customized for chiropractors.

I predict advertorial opportunities will continue to become more mainstream in the US this year. In Europe, revenue-share advertorial opportunities seem to be fairly accepted. Yet I suspect that as traditional media outlets tweak their business models, new advertorial formats will become more commonplace in the US, too. Just as we’ve incorporated blogging and tweeting into daily practices, this will become another channel PR will need to master.

Though the full effects of the past decade have yet to reveal themselves, it’s an exciting time to be in PR. Changes are occurring rapidly and the scope of responsibilities is ever-expanding. Those practitioners honing business counsel at the socioeconomic and industry levels, coupled with practical editorial, video, and SEM skills will continue finding themselves in great demand long into the next decade.

Once upon a time, not long ago, a thriving ecosystem existed between corporations and the media. CMOs employed an arsenal of marketers – Web, product, research, marcomms, and corporate communications departments each had distinctive roles and responsibilities. Their external agencies promoted corporate clients through the other side of the value chain – to writers, editors, senior editors, art departments, copy editors, and ultimately consumers, partners, shareholders.

Can anyone remember the last time they worked with a copy editor? Over the past decade, many of these functions have become obsolete or, at best, scarce. Layoffs and efficiencies have forced both sides of the value chain to improvise and do without. Squarely in the middle, agencies have largely adapted and filled the vacuum.

In evolutionary theory, it’s generally believed that the most flexible entity usually survives. Yes, PR is encroached upon by digital and hybrid agencies, but we’ve seen PR’s role expand, and in the most dramatic instances, span between the CMO and editor-in-chief.

Agencies representing professional service companies and startups likely feel the effects most profoundly. In many of these instances, PR agencies are the marketing department – advising the C-suite on marketing strategy, writing the Web and iPhone app copy, sending business plans to the venture capitalists, and implementing search engine marketing. For mid- and large-cap clients, we’re plugging requirements that have remained open for months. As a result, PR is devising multifaceted partner marketing programs, overseeing community management, and even providing customer service via social media.