I completely agree with you on the shifting requirements of being a public relations professional – though being a relatively young one (25), I learned PR alongside social media and web techniques. I think that because of my generation (Y), I have grown up exploring and testing different social media avenues and as such saw the alignment between online and offline public relations.

I'm lucky to work at an agency that also sees the alignment, and yes – we do everything from SEO to blogging to twitter to the traditional stuff. I can't comment on what's being taught at schools at the moment with regards to the merging of social media and PR, because I learned everything through on-the-job experience – I can say, however, that I learned to use both together in all the work experience I have accumulated. Using myself as an example that reflects that in the past 3 years that I've been actively working in the Public Relations industry, there has been an understanding that social media and public relations align well together.