Flickr Photo: jayskWe're in the middle of a significant shift in how we communicate, and it is changing the world around us, quickly.

Traditional "Big M" media isn't our only source of information any more. Now, we can get news and information from myriad "little m" media outlets -- like blogs, internet radio, and video sites. What's more, we can share and discuss that news with each other like never before.

Summarized in a paragraph, it looks like a tidy transition, but it's not. Change is never that easy. And a shift as profound as this one will cause chaos in places we can't anticipate. There will be unintended consequences, and it will be uncomfortable.

In our sector, I think this discomfort has been particularly acute for marketers. Not only are nonprofit marketers trying to stay on top of a slew of new communications tools, there is a shift in how our community talks about marketing. The theme, echoed on Madison Avenue and in the cubicle next to you, is this:

Marketing is dirty.

For decades, marketers have worked with the old communications model, a broadcast model, designed to push a message out to as many people as possible. And while the marketing community may have talked about building relationships, the broadcast model didn't allow real relationship building. No matter what great intentions a marketer had, the old model meant that the conversation was one-way.

After a while, the language we use to talk about marketing reflected that model. We talk all the time about pushing our message out. We measure the success of messaging by how many opens it gets. We're a little obsessed with quantity, and not quality -- because that's all we could deliver and measure.

So it's natural that, in an era where conversations are suddenly possible, marketing is getting a bad rap. Play the free association word game in your office. Say "Marketing" and see what words people shout back. We just played this game at NTEN. Among the words shouted out: email, website, junk mail, and spam. Conversation and relationship did not come up.

Is this fair? No. Good marketers know that they should be building community, engaging in conversations, and developing relationships. Katya Andressen defends the word in her post, Is Marketing Slimy? I think it's a great manifesto for nonprofit marketers.

And, if you're a good marketer, you're already feeling this out and trying to incorporate conversations into your marketing. But it's going to take the language a while to catch up to the new face of marketing.

Chris Brogan says that more organizations will be hiring community managers soon. Take a look at his list of qualifications for the job. It's not that far off of Katya's definition of marketing. Is it possible that in the near future, marketers will be community managers? I don't know, but I DO know that the lines are blurring, and we're all going to have to assess what that means for us as indivudals, for our organizations, and for our professions.