Reciprocal links are still good but don't have them as a majority of your backlinks. 3-way-linking and other multi-way linking are good alternatives but don't use single technique. Links must come from all of these techniques.

I don't do much reciprocal links with directories. What I strive for are reciprocal links from sites of similar or complementary topics.

Another good reciprocal linking strategy is the "I blog about you and you blog about me" kind of deals. It is the best kind of citation and aside from the link advantages, I get free traffic from those blogs. (If your blog is seo related, send me a note at seo[at]creative-weblogging[dot]com and we might be able to do this kind of reciprocal linking).

The best of course are one way links.