Blog Relations recently took a survey of 50 PR professionals on blogs - what do they know about blogs, are they a force for good/bad (or neither), etc. The results can be found here. Most of the respondents live and/or work in the US or UK, so keep that in mind - YMMV in other places (Asia comes to mind). The most interesting take away for me was the answer to this question:

Do Blogs pose a threat to corporate reputations? (May tick more than one answer)

There were 44 affirmatives to that one. My guess is that the "Dell Hell" business was still fresh in the minds of this crowd when they took the survey. The other answer that popped from that area was this one:

It is much harder to spot a crisis coming from a blog than from the traditional media

42 responses affirmed that one, and 64 agreed with this:

A disgruntled employee or a dissatisfied customer could use a blog to ignite a full-blown crisis

I'm not sure how you get 64 from a 50 person survey - some of the people must have really agreed with that one :) It's not all negative though - most of these folks agreed that businesses can benefit from setting up blogs - and thus becoming part of the conversation. That really goes back to something I say a lot: Define your message, or someone else will define it for you. That's what these PR folks said in these answers.

Go have a look at the whole thing - it's interesting reading.