Public relations "is an increasingly vital marketing tool," writes The Economist, "especially as traditional forms of advertising struggle to catch consumers' attention." Overall spending on PR in the United States is growing, reaching "some $3.7 billion last year, according to Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a New York investment firm that specialises in media. It forecasts PR spending will grow by almost 9% a year. This is faster than the overall market for advertising and marketing, now worth a colossal $475 billion and growing at 6.7% a year." With media fragmentation increasing the need for content, "crisply written or well-produced PR material [3] can more easily get an airing [4]. ... Some branches of journalism have come to depend on a drip-feed of information and products from the PR industry [5]."