With the recent Google update, nicknamed Jagger, and for the past year or so, many in the industry have been saying linking is not important, or that large numbers of links just don't cut it anymore.
In fact, the Jagger update may lead one to believe that was the case. This is because Jagger seems to have targeted reciprocal linking campaigns, penalizing some sites for reciprocal linking while removing others and devaluing sites with large numbers of inbound links.
And while reciprocal linking may be dead, that's not to say that linking in general is dead.