John: I think your point that not everything has to be measured is a good one. I notice most of your detractors are consultants, some of whom make their living selling (you guessed it) PR measurement services.
Measurement is an important component of planning and analysis for people involved in communications. Of that I have no doubt.
Is it absolutely necessary in every instance? Of course not. It's not worth measuring unless you would change something with the information from your measurement. Why would you measure the impact of the CEO stopping to chat with employees in the cafeteria, when you're planning an employee survey on management trust later in the year?
You should check out Angela Sinickas, who includes some very common sense measurement tools (ie. some quick follow-up phone calls), rather than always dishing up another survey.
Thanks, Eric, for your comments of support. I appreciate it ... it's painful to have others criticize me for simply saying what so many people in our profession experience each day.
And it hasn't escaped me that so many who continually push measurement are the very people who make a living selling it. They are like the blog consultants who believe everyone should have a blog and who overreact when anyone dares to ask "why?"
I continually hear about these "boardroom confrontations" where PR must establish its credibility by running out a bunch of ratios and figures. But that scenario is just a tip of the iceberg when one considers the PR universe. Many clients intrinsically understand the value of what we do without needing the comfort of patchwork calculations.
A former colleague of mine whose current firm has a research department told me yesterday that when they include measurement options with new business proposals, it typically doubles the cost of projects. Is it any wonder that so many clients reject those efforts?
On a final note, I actually met Angela Sinickas many years ago at an IABC conference, and we stayed in touch for awhile. She even recommended me for a position with her firm at the time (was it Hewitt?? I can't recall now). So she didn't think I was damaging PR's credibility. 
John, I think there's a definition problem in this discussion. While speechwriting may be an activity that falls under PR (although it does not in every organization), speechwriting is speechwriting, not PR. No, you don't need to measure the impact of a speech (although we did when I worked at Allergan; in fact, with little budget and time expended, we assessed whether EVERY communication met its goal). It's public relations programs, processes, and campaigns that must be measured.
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