In between screaming at the X factor final this weekend (hangs head in shame), I saw a TV advert for The Sun Newspaper. It takes a lot these days for an advert to grab my attention, but this one was particularly cunning. My personal favourite ‘app’ is the pen-touch interface for the games section.

The basic premise is that a ‘handheld’ printed newspaper is just as good as an online version.  Those clever folks at The Sun use a parody of the iPhone app adverts to make their point. It does beg the question though that if the UK’s best selling daily newspaper is having to persuade the public to pick up a copy instead of heading online, what does that say about the state of the industry? Or are they trying to pre-empt the threat of digital media? A bit like closing the stable door after Mr Ned / Black Beauty / horse of choice has bolted.  It is certainly an interesting tactic.

The great and the good of the PR measurement industry gathered last night for the annual AMEC Awards, and it was a "scorcher" of an evening, as a tabloid-inspired Nick Grant put it. With winners from as far afield as Australia, Germany, Dubai and right here at Metrica towers, our industry seems in rude health. 

Trevor Morris, Visiting Professor of Public Relations at the University of Westminster and chair of AMEC's judging panel, noted the high quality of entries put before the judging panel. His opening remarks served as a great reminder of the attributes that make good PR measurement programmes great, and in turn provide maximum value to the clients we work with:

- Wrap every aspect of your measurement around your client's objectives. And don't stop at PR objectives either- clients need our help to show the contribution PR has made to the wider organisation, as well as keeping its own house in order. The language in which they communicate performance is also key.

- Think about what isn't published, as well as what is. In tricky times our clients spend a lot of time minimising the impact of negative coverage and / or killing the story before it draws breath. Consider negative message tracking (with upside down "maximum of" KPI's) and look for ways to correlate media relations activity with journalist output.

- Focus on the Outcome. Too many organisations stop their measurement at the output stage, when that's only half the story. Our clients conduct newshook research all the time - just one additional question could help them to demonstrate a change in behaviour/ attitude as a result of their PR activity. Find out how data is correlated on your client's organisational performance and aim to feed measurement data into it. 

 The number of companies winning awards last night (I lost count at ten - and I don't mean glasses of wine!) shows that we're getting the message as an industry, and our clients are getting greater insight from our measurement as a result.

One final thought from last night  - Geordie Greig, editor of the London Evening Standard, spoke of the reasons behind the decision to adopt a free distribution model, and insisted that, had the paper not gone free, it would not have been in circulation today. Greig also mentioned that certain UK national papers are losing in excess of £100,000 a day. With closure the only other apparent outcome, I'm fascinated by the concept that newspapers may have to become free outlets to survive, just as news outlets and the NLA begin to charge people for accessing online content.

The death of the newspaper has been announced time and time again, but perhaps we are approaching the point where the only "scorcher" left is print itself going up in flames.

I'm in San Diego over the weekend for the 2009 PRSA International Conference - the largest international PR gathering in the world. Many of the thought leaders of our industry our here to share their thoughts on the future of communications, to teach, to learn and of course to network.

The networking began in earnest last night with a tweetup named in honour of surely one of the world of PR's leading networked communicators Shonali Burke. Shonali used to run the PR for the ASPCA, the USA's equivalent of Britain's RSPCA where her leadership and forward thinking on the importance of measuring public relations won her many accolades.  

Shonali now runs her own consultancy in Washington DC and counts among her clients the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. #shonalitweetup allowed me a great opportunity to chat to some fascinating people also attending the conference.

Well worth following on twitter and in attendance last night were: 

• @shonali - Shonali Burke
• @leeodden - Lee Odden
• @swoodruff - Steve Woodruff
• @rockstarjen - Jennifer Wilbur
• @kamichat - Kami Huyse
• @vargasl - Lauren Vargas
• @pryouready - Ashley Houghton
• @dfriez - Debbie Friez
• @lisasommer - Lisa Sommer
• @natalie_joy - Natalie Joy

and many, many more. Log in to Twitter and seach for the #shonalitweetup to see who else was there.

The conference gets under way in earnest today with a keynote speech from Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post.  The Huffington Post is firmly in the firing line of traditional media owners like Rupert Murdoch who consider that it is plagarising their premium content.  Her comments and views on these issues and the future of our industry are bound to be interesting.  

I'll be hoping to update via our blog, but for real time updates form the conference, follow it's hash tag on twitter #prsa09. If you would like to follow my time here with a focus on PR measurement and the future of PR generally, then please follow me too @richardbagnall for my personal updates. 

Russian billionnaire Alexander Lebedev has announced that the London Evening standard will be given away for free from 12^th October.

Lebedev bought a majority stake in the Standard from Associated Newspapers earlier in the year.  With News International’s free London Paper closing down last month, there will be speculation about the fate of the London Lite.   Despite being owned by Associated and getting much of its content from the same source as the Standard, the Lite competes directly with its ‘sister’ title and has demonstrably taken readers away from the paid for daily.

Lebedev maintains that quality standards will be maintained: “The Standard has been producing exceptional journalism since 1827 and that is not going to change under my ownership”.  He is predicting the circulation will more than double from 250,000 to 600,000 copies a day – higher than the 450,000 circulation the Standard enjoyed before it had to compete with free rivals back at the turn of the millennium.

Lebedev is also predicting other newspapers will go free: “The London Evening Standard is the first leading quality newspaper to go free and I am sure others will follow”.  But doesn’t this move to free media fly in the face of Rupert Murdoch’s plans to charge not only for newspapers but for online content too?

Murdoch’s argument is that people will pay for quality content: “Just make our content better and differentiate it.  If we are successful, we will be followed by all the media.”  This reasoning works for a niche business site such as the Wall Street Journal which has enjoyed an increase in subscriptions by offering unique content to those that value it but will this be the same of commodity news and celebrity gossip?  Critic of the traditional media owners approach Jeff Jarvis argues that commodity news inevitably ends up being free - “if the news is that important, it will find me”.

A recent Harris Interactive poll backs this view up.  Faced with their favourite news site starting to charge, three in four people would find another free site at an alternative.  In the UK there is a long term ‘free’ competitor in the form of the BBC.  Many media owners are concerned that this forces them to offer free content in response.  However as media commentator Matthew Horsman has pointed out, it’s difficult to point to the BBC since exactly the same problem is happening in the States where commercial sites have deliberately chosen to become free in order to compete with one another.

The strange thing about this is that many of us are willing to pay for content for TV – indeed Ofcom figures show that nearly half of all television households in the UK are now choosing to pay for additional TV channels.  We pay for TV primarily because we like the content but we also we like the convenience of paying for something as a bundled subscription, and then consuming what you want, when you want, without worrying about the cost.

With the relaunch and apparent success of SkyPlayer (which allows sky TV content to be viewed over the internet) maybe the solution for the Murdochs is to bundle subscriptions to their key newspaper brands in with the Sky subscripton.  At least it would keep everything in the family.

Last night The Sun announced that they will back the Conservatives at the next general election, 12 years after backing New Labour, with today’s front page announcing that: “Labour’s lost it.” In 1992 the newspaper’s election day headline “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights?, leading to the later claim “It was The Sun wot won it”. Can we judge the shift to Cameron with the same weight? 

I was part of a panel discussing this last night on BBC Radio 5Live’s Richard Bacon show, with commentator Shane Greer and a host of senior media and political heavyweights calling in. It was no surprise that Labour politicians such as Ed Milliband thought the decision lacked the significance of the past, while it was welcomed by Conservative Chairman Eric Pickles. 

Tony Blair’s former spokesman Alistair Campbell played down the significance, writing today that “Sun switches ain’t what they used to be.” He suggested: “It is a big media story, and the media love nothing more than a big media story,” adding that with a fragmented media very different from 1997, consumers are also savvier. “While the public may know the politicians spin them a line from time to time, they sure as hell know the papers do too.” 

Roy Greenslade also took part in last night’s debate, confirming today his view that The Sun is “placing itself as a central actor in a political drama. It is saying that what it thinks really counts. But there's precious little proof of that any longer.” The Sun’s circulation today is 35% lower today than it’s mid 1990s peak. Greenslade, like Steve Hewlett, thought the newspaper a follower of public opinion, not a leader.  

The Sun may not be as significant as it once was. Nevertheless, last night’s announcement hijacked the headlines and to that extent was successful for the paper’s new editor Dominic Mohan. Otherwise it wouldn’t have led last night’s debate on Five Live, or been talked about across the media today. Can a mainstream media title, like The Sun, be as influential as it once was? Does the fragmentation of readership habits mean that no single title will ever again be able to claim an election as its own?