Business has been bad all year for PR firms that represent high-tech products and internet services, and the terror attacks of September 11 made things worse. O'Dwyer's reports layoffs at PR firms including Citigate Communications, Alexander Ogilvy, Brodeur Worldwide, Cohn & Wolfe,Niehaus Ryan Wong, TSI Communications, GCI, Edelman and Ketchum.

Building "buzz" was the hallmark of dot-com PR, writes Lois Paul of the PR firm of Lois Paul & Associates. Now that the dot-coms have crashed, she says PR must deliver "real messages" and present "real companies, not personalities or 'vision.' ... The best PR people are invaluable to companies during this type of downturn," she says, because "PR today is all about reputation management."

President Bush has displayed a phenomenal memory: he has now learnt by rote entire sentences and phrases which he repeats endlessly. But the great wonder is that every word spoken by him about the war or Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda is greeted by analysts as adding something significant to the course of events. The more cliched the president sounds, the greater the zeal of commentators to dissect his words and hold intensive discussions about the president's thoughts.