Rising PR budgets and increasing public attention to the PR industry do not change the fact that PR will always play a serving role. Accordingly, Olaf Hoffjann presents a theory of PR in which public relations is modeled as an autonomous subsystem of organizations. In contrast, after the economic media crisis and in times of the much-discussed citizen journalism, there exists a weakened but still autonomous journalism. In his extensive systems-theoretical analysis, the author examines the relationships between journalism and PR - first in routine situations and then in conflict situations.