All the talk of cut backs, redundancies, credit crunches and ‘the current economic climate’ provide such an obvious and easy PR hook that we sometimes forget the realities behind the tired clichés – especially as the PR industry remains largely buoyant (touch wood).

A rather average Friday afternoon was rocked by this Tweet and post – change is afoot at UK media company, Shiny Media. Some of their blogs are among my favourite work and non-work sites, so I was sad to hear that co-founder, editorial director and Twitter-pal Katie Lee will be departing along with a number of other staff members. These aren’t just statistics, they are friendly, enthusiastic (and frequently hilarious) journalist-bloggers I have either met or conversed with via the magic of Twitter.

Personal feelings aside, Shiny’s fortunes have been the subject of mass internet debate before. Second-of-three co-founders Ashely Norris’s blog post on the subject spawned a hailstorm of comments some months ago, and raises questions about online publishing in the UK. Such a great group of together, switched-on people run and maintain Shiny’s group of sites, but it seems to have been proven that behind that you need the hard-heart of a business man and a grey-suited number cruncher to keep an online publishing company going.

But if streamlining the operation (sorry, sometimes we just can’t help that PR-speak) means that the excellent sites with honest, approachable voices can continue slicing through the PR spiel and offering entertaining, impartial advice on gadgets, fashion, music, crafts, green living and so on then it’s a necessary evil.

But I do wish shinykatie, radioedit, MyChemToilet and Luciosos all the best for the future. Give them a job, yeah?