“When ecologists go into the field to research natural ecosystems, they seek out the old-growth forests, the places where nature has had the longest amount of time to evolve and diversify and interconnect. They don’t study the Brazilian rain forest by looking at a field that was clear cut two years ago.”

Following this logic, deciding on the future of business journalism (and corporate communications) demands that we examine the old-growth forests of technology news.

“The Web doesn’t have some kind intrinsic aptitude for covering technology better than other fields. It just has an intrinsic tendency to cover technology first, because the first people that used the web were far more interested in technology than they were in, say, school board meetings or the NFL.”

For such a long time we in corporate communications have been able to sneer at the geeks. Leave them to their talk of dark fibre, Macs versus PCs and troubles with Charles Arthur and Mike Butcher. Their world is not the real world. But now comes the realisation that where they lead we must follow.

But the problem with following is the pace of evolution. How technology news is delivered (and the channels tech PRs need to consider) changes at roughly the same pace as the technology on which it reports develops. Too fast maybe for anyone but the technology industry to keep up with? Just as business news gets to grips with being online and business minds turn to blogging, so we are told that blog is dead (to be replaced by “a real-time social media personal portal”).

Give up on trying to keep pace or accept you’ll never be an elite runner and settle for a place someway further back? I suggest neither. Becoming more aware of technology’s usefulness is probably no longer negotiable. Real-time social media personal portals, when they become a reality, need to be as prominent in our thinking as they will be for tech PRs.

The challenge however will be explaining to often technology-illiterate clients (famously, Sir Stuart Rose can’t use the internet) why this stuff matters. This will no doubt force us to differentiate what really is useful or necessary from what happens to be the latest (untested) new thing.

So I’m going to think of tech PRs as the public relations industry’s point man. Let them walk a few steps ahead, make the wrong turn and take the first hostile hit. Where they lead, we will follow, just a little bit smarter.