FIRMS LAND BIG MEDICARE PACT.
A quintet of PR and consulting firms including Weber Shandwick and Deloitte Consulting have emerged fmr a three-month review to handle an eight-figure contract for research and commmunications initiatives for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

In addition to WS and Deloitte, Aeffect of Deerfield, Ill., which focuses on marcom campaign measurement; ABT Associates of Cambridge, Mass. (research), and American Institutes for Research of Silver Spring, Md. (behavioral and social science research), have been named for the work, which caps at $32M over four years, including options.

Ketchum, which has been criticized for some of its tactics promoting Medicare initiatives, Ogilvy PR Worldwide, GCI Group and Academy for Education Development were previously CMS’ go-to firms.

Under indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity rules, a government entity will name a handful of firms that it will use as projects develop.

The review was a “full and open competition,” as such the government does not reveal which firms pitched.

ANBENDER IS IN GLOVER PARK.
Julie Anbender, who was chief of staff to departing Public Broadcasting Service president Pat Mitchell, has joined Glover Park Group as a senior VP.

PBS has been rattled by charges of “liberal bias” and reports that then-chairman Ken Tomlinson hounded veteran newsman Bill Moyers into retirement. Tomlinson was succeeded last month by New Jersey Republican Cheryl Halpern.

Mitchell announced in February that she would retire next June when her contract was up. She made that announcement following the controversy connected with the “Postcards from Buster” flap concerning the animated bunny’s spending some time with children whose parents are lesbians.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings complained to Mitchell that she strongly objected to the episode because it featured “families headed by gay couples.” PBS then pulled the cited Postcards from national distribution.

Anbender, while at Burson-Marsteller, had represented PBS. The Democratic operative was deputy director of public affairs at the Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno, and an aide to former Florida Governor Lawton Chiles.

At GPG, Anbender is to work with Joe Lockhart, who was President Clinton’s spokesperson.

H&K DEFENDS ILLINOIS LOTTERY.
After a six-month review process, Hill & Knowlton has successfully defended its seven-figure PR account with the Illinois Lottery.

H&K, part of WPP Group, beat four other firms for the contract, which guarantees two years with two one-year options. The PR work is worth $300K a year.

The review, which began in May, saw eight-year incumbent H&K land two extensions worth a total of $100K as the state considered changing billing methods and didn’t initially receive enough interest in the review.

INDIA GIVES BG&R $700K PACT.
Barbour Griffith & Rogers has inked a $700K one-year contract with India, which is seeking warmer ties with the U.S. The Bush Administration heralds India’s rival, Pakistan, as a key ally in the “war on terror.”

BG&R is to provide “strategic counsel and tactical planning on foreign policy matters before the U.S. Government and select state governments,” according to the pact signed by Ed Rogers, BG&R’s chairman.

That state government effort will be focused on places like New Jersey, which moved to restrict the outsourcing of government information technology contracts to the Subcontinent.

Rogers was deputy assistant to the first President Bush, and served in the Reagan White House as deputy director of political affairs.

He reports to India’s Ambassador to the U.S., Ronen Sen.

PRSA KILLS PRINTED BLUE BOOK.
PRSA, saying that “technology has changed the world,” sent an e-mail to leaders Oct. 6 saying the printed 800-page One Source directory, which contains the names, addresses, e-mails, etc., of 20,000 members, will only be available online starting in 2006.

There was no mention last week of this story on the PRSA website.

“Publication of the printed One Source Directory (Blue Book of members, Counselor Academy members, and PR service firms) has ceased as of the current 2005 directory,” PRSA president Judith Phair told leaders.

“We know that changes like this can be uncomfortable and even difficult,” Phair told the leaders, adding: “This transition to a real-time, online member directory is a reference tool offering a greatly enhanced member benefit. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we move more fully into the digital realm.”

(continued on page 7)

‘NEED TO RAISE GAME’ IN CYBERSPACE.
PR people need to “raise their game or risk being banned by bloggers,” Richard Edelman told a “Corporate Communications in the Age of Citizen Journalism” event on Oct. 6 at the Harvard Club in New York.

Edelman believes most PR pros just don’t get the blogosphere. He released results of an Edelman/ Technorati study that showed only 21 percent of 821 bloggers surveyed report weekly contact from a company or its PR rep. Half (48 percent) say they have never been contacted by either party.

Also troubling to Edelman: only 16 percent of the attempted PR outreach to bloggers is done on a personalized basis.

There is nothing more infuriating to a blogger than getting a canned pitch from someone he doesn’t know, according to the Edelman CEO. That may explain why 33 percent of bloggers in the E/T survey don’t trust messages from PR firms.

Edelman said PR people need to revamp the way they operate to succeed with bloggers. “We have to learn about listening” and adopt a conversational relationship with bloggers, said Edelman.

PR people, continued Edelman, aren’t going to make any friends among the blogging community with hardcore pitches and “one-way street” communications.

Blogging Is a Labor of Love

Dan Gilmor, the former San Jose Mercury News high-tech reporter and author of “We the Media,” stressed the importance of paying attention to bloggers. They closely watch companies without getting paid for their work, he noted. “Bloggers can either be true enemies or great allies,” he said.

Though the blogosphere is vast, Gilmor said there may be eight or four or ten bloggers that PR people must pay a lot of attention to because they have great influence in cyberspace.

Andrew Nachison, director of The Media Center, said PR people should not try to “drive a message” in the blogosphere.

He feels it is somewhat “strange” for PR people to think they can use bloggers as “intermediaries” to carry their pitches.

Edelman, the biggest independent firm, sponsored the event, which was moderated by David Kirkpatrick, technology writer at Fortune.

F-H STEPS UP ANTI-POT DRIVE.
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, with the help of Fleishman-Hillard’s Washington, D.C. office, kicked off its campaign linking marijuana use to poor academic performance with the release of its ‘open letter to parents” ad on Oct. 4.

Slugged, “Marijuana Could Threaten Your Teen’s Success,” the ad is slated to run in Time, Newsweek, People, New York Times and USA Today. The ad coincides with the taking of the Standardized Achievement Test by 1.5 million high school students. The first round of SATs began Oct. 8.

The ONDCP ad, aimed at parents, directly links pot smoking to lower grades. It cites a `00 survey that found teens with a “D” average” are four times more likely to have used marijuana than their “A” student counterparts.

BRUINS DRAFT RASKY BAERLEIN.
The Boston Bruins have hired Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications because the team “doesn’t want to take anything for granted,” as hockey re-opened from its lock-out, Doug Bailey, senior VP at RBSC, told O’Dwyer’s.

Though Boston is a good hockey city, Bailey noted that it took years for Major League Baseball to rebound from its strike year.

RBSC is to “get the word out” to fans that the Bruins are back in business. The Bruins faced off against the Montreal Canadiens in Boston on Oct. 5. There was a pre-game ceremony at which fans walked the red carpet into the Boston Garden.

Bailey said his firm will be involved in various buzz marketing and web initiatives throughout the year. For instance, RBSC may design an instant messaging system to alert fans of reduced ticket prices or promotional offers. He called National Hockey League fans the most technologically savvy bunch among all sports followers.

RBSC reports to Charlie Jacobs, executive VP of the Bruins.

The Boston PR firm also represents the Boston Red Sox and Boston College’s ACC marketing program.

Bailey said his former colleagues at the Boston Globe often ask him why the Sox need a PR firm because the team could fill Fenway Park every night.

It’s the good PR that is driving those fans to their seats, jokes Bailey.

MISERCOLA TO DEUTSCHE BANK.
Mark Misercola has joined Deutsche Bank as head of internal communications for the Americas region. He is a veteran of PriceWaterhouseCoopers (global communications director) and Deloitte (northeast PR director and national human resources chief).

Misercola, who began his career in `77 as a business reporter for the Buffalo Courier-Express, also worked as a speechwriter at IBM, Union Carbide, Avon Products and PepsiCo.

Korn/Ferry International handled the Deutsche Bank placement.

SC TELLS ADVERTISERS ABOUT ABOUT.COM.
Stanton Crenshaw has been hired to raise the awareness of About.com, pitching it as a “premier site” for advertisers.

The site’s 24 content channels contain one million pieces of original information. Religion & spirituality, money, electronic & gadgets, homework help and shopping are among About.com channels.

The New York Times Co. shelled out $410M in cash to acquire About.com from Primedia in March.

The company made the deal to diversify its online ad base and to market its products to About.com’s 22M unique visitors per-month.

Janet Robinson, CEO of NYTC said of the acquisition, “the opportunities for cross-promotion between its channels and our digital properties will be additive for both businesses.”

The NYTC, on Sept. 20, reported that ad revenues for About.com rose 41 percent in August.

PEARLSTINE TO PEN BOOK ON SOURCES.
Norman Pearlstine, the Time Inc. editor-in-chief who turned over the notes of Time reporter Matt Cooper when he was threatened with jail, is to pen a book on anonymous sources.

Cooper’s notes concerned the Bush Administration’s probe into who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

New York Times reporter Judy Miller was released from jail last month after serving 85 days for not revealing her source. She was let go after her source – reported to be Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby – agreed to be named during a hearing.

Pearlstine, a 37-year journalist, called the decision to cave to the court order one of the most difficult decisions that he has ever made in his professional life.

The book, “Off the Record,” will be published in ’07 under Doubleday’s Nan A. Talese imprint.

It will deal with “how anonymous and confidential sources have been used and misused, leading to some of our best and worst journalism,” according to a statement from Doubleday.

Pearlstine promises to provide “insights into the standards and guidelines needed to help restore journalism and the publics’ faith in it.”

BERENTSON IS BACK AT INC.
Jane Berentson will return to Inc. on Oct. 24 as editor of the magazine that was recently acquired by Mansueto Ventures.

She had been executive editor of the magazine for owners/managers of small privately held companies for two years before leaving for the same title at Real Simple, a Time Inc. pub.

Joe Mansueto lured her back because she is a “great manager, an experienced editor and a creative force.” He also likes that Berentson is “intimately familiar with Inc.’s readers.”

Prior to joining Inc. in ’02, Berentson had been executive editor of Worth, deputy page one editor at the Wall Street Journal, editor-in-chief at On the Avenue, and executive editor of American Lawyer.

HULBERT WRITES FOR BARRON’S ONLINE.
Mark Hulbert, who recently celebrated the quarter-century mark at The Hulbert Financial Digest, has agreed to pen a monthly column for Barron’s Online, a Dow Jones & Co. product.

The “Hulbert on Markets” column will run the first Thursday of each month and tackle knotty financial theories and offer investment analysis.

Hulbert currently writes a three-times a week column for MarketWatch, also owned by DJ&C.

MW and BO are involved in another bit of cross-fertilization. Michael Kahn, whose “Getting Technical” column is enjoyed twice a week by BO readers, will now be posted on MW on the first trading day of every month.

Kahn is a guru of technical analysis, as evidence by his most recent tome, “Technical Analysis: Plain and Simple.”

LOG HOMES GET EXTREME MAKEOVER.
ABC's Sunday evening smash hit, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” will help the “log home community” move beyond its Daniel Boone image.

An upcoming episode will showcase the “timeless beauty” of log homes, according to Laurie Sloan, group publisher of Home Buyer Publications, which puts out Log Home Living, Log Home Design and Timber Home Living mags.

More than 15 million viewers will watch Katahdin Cedar Log Homes build a house in Maine. Other contributors to the expected log “masterpiece” are Rocky Top Log Furniture and Country Critter/Blue Ridge Lighting.

The show is expected to spark an interest in log home construction. More than 30,000 American families already call a log home “home.”

Zachary Hooper, of The Rosen Group, is promoting the program. He told O’Dwyer’s that there is no set airdate for the log home show, but it is expected within eight weeks.

MEDIA BRIEFS________

The Los Angeles Times will unveil a website featuring entertainment news on Nov. 1, and is considering hiring a gossip columnist to increase coverage of hometown Hollywood goings-on.

News Corp. has completed the $580 million acquisition of Intermix Media, which runs the teen website, MySpace.com. Intermix nixed a competing offer from ex-CEO Brad Greenspan.

Sports Illustrated upped Rick McCabe to the director of communications slot in charge of promoting the weekly magazine as well as its TV projects and Olympic-related events. McCabe, who was associate director of communications, joined SI as an intern in ’97.

Endurance Business Media, parent to Homes & Land Magazine, has purchased Pacific Publishing and Communications of Santa Cruz, Calif., adding several business titles in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties.

EBM, based in Tallahassee, Fla., said the move accomplishes a company goal of entering the California coastal market. Scott MacEwen continues as president of PP, which includes the Coastal Homes group and Capitola Magazine.

EBM recently purchased the Real Estate Times, a San Francisco publication.

The Economist said its Asia Pacific weekly circulation jumped 12.5 percent to just under 116K copies. The magazine said worldwide circulation grew by 10 percent to 1,038,522, according to ABC figures.

The magazine has promoted Matthew Aylmer, a nine-year Economist veteran, to circulation and marketing director for Asia Pacific, and Rupert Harrow to the new role of head of sales for the region.

Ogilvy handles PR for the magazine in Asia.

(Media news continued on next page)

CROSBY HAS PITCH TIPS, KATRINA TALES.
“Don’t be afraid to shoot high if you have a great story,” MSNBC anchor Rita Cosby told more than 50 PR professionals in September. And get to the point quickly and directly, she said.

Using as a backdrop her experiences “to hell and back” reporting on the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the host of MSNBC’s “Rita Cosby Live & Direct” advised the audience in Norwalk, Conn.: “Make the pitch right, and attack it head-on. Keep it crisp, short; bold the key points. Make sure it's relevant. Don’t bury your lead. Some of these sound pretty basic, but 95 percent of pitches don't have them.”
Cosby spoke at an annual event to honor the late PR executive Larry Tavcar.

The program was co-sponsored by the Westchester/Fairfield Chapter of PRSA and the Fairfield County PR Association.

“You have to pitch us on what we cover,” Cosby added. “So many people send us generic pitches. I’m impressed by pitches that show you're following us.”

The news anchor advised against evading journalists when the news is bad and expecting coverage of good news. “If you dodge us, it will come back to bite you,” she said.

Cosby also encouraged PR pros to foster relationships with media contacts.

Asked what her boss expects, she responded: “Human interest; something different. We're driven by ratings. The key is to get something interesting. That way, you're making the news, not just reporting it.”

‘To hell and back’

Cosby, known for her scoops, said beating the competition generally is important but there were no exclusives in covering the Katrina aftermath.

Using her New Orleans experience as an extreme example, Cosby said: “It helps to have a sense of how our lives are nuts. Normally our lives are really crazy. I get 300 phone calls a day and 1,000 e-mails a day. The key is to bug us at the right time.”

Back from New Orleans the morning of her appearance, Cosby said she and her crew lived out of a car and later out of a recreational vehicle in the flooded city. During the blackout, they drove with their lights off to try to avoid gangs and still had people pounding on the windshield.

One night they parked next to a neighborhood receiving sniper fire “so we didn't have to go far for our reporting,” Cosby said.

Another night their RV ran out of gas at 3 a.m. “so the generator died, the air conditioning died, it was 100 degrees, and I woke up wondering where we were, thinking we’ve been RV-jacked.”

Bunking temporarily on the USS Tortuga provided only short-lived shut-eye. Reveille awakened Cosby and her two producers at 5 a.m.

On a personal note, referring to what she witnessed in New Orleans, Cosby said, “I saw people killed in front of me in the L.A. riots and in Kosovo, but it was so hard to see this.”

She said she is committed to following the story and plans to return to cover the reconstruction.

NEW YORKER COVERS WEB VS. PAPERS.
Popularity of the Internet with younger audiences has caused steady declines in readership of newspapers, wrote the New Yorker Oct. 10, paying special attention to major cuts at the Los Angeles Times.

John Carroll quit as editor of the paper after five years in July. The Tribune Co., which had purchased the Times from the Chandler family in 2000 for $8.3 billion, had cut nearly 200 editorial staffers. The purchase also gave it control of Newsday, Long Island; the Baltimore Sun, and the Hartford Courant.

Daily newspapers, noted the article by Ken Auletta, have lost 3.7M in circulation since 1960 while the population rose 64%. Circulation is now about 55M.

Circulation scandals have hit newspapers, notes Auletta. Newsday has had to set aside $90 million to compensate advertisers who were allegedly overcharged.

The paper’s circulation fell another 9% to 439,708 for the six months to March 31, 2005, according a report released Oct. 7 by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Another statistic in the nine-page article is that the average age of newspaper readers is 53. According to the Carnegie Corp., “Baby Boomers” read papers one-third less than their parents and “Generation X” reads papers another one-third less.

A Pew survey in June found that one-third of Americans say the Internet is their main source of news. Some 1,500 dailies now have websites, according to the Newspaper Assn. of America.

The Tribune Co., with $5.7 billion in revenues, became the second biggest after Gannett, which had $6.6B in revenues in 2004.

Newspaper chains have increased profit margins via staff cuts but their stocks “have not done well” because of fears among analysts that “decline is inevitable,” wrote Auletta.

The 26 papers of Newhouse, which owns the New Yorker, have been adding to staff, he says, as well as The McClatchy Co., which owns 12 dailies.

Auletta says that competition is forcing papers to give the readers “what they want” as opposed to what the editors want.

Dean Baquet, former national editor of the New York Times who succeeded Carroll, told Auletta: “It’s not always our job to give readers what they want. What if they don’t want war coverage or to see poverty in their communities? Southern newspapers are still hanging their heads because generations ago they gave readers what they wanted–no coverage of segregation and the civil-rights movement.”

BRIEF________

John Grapper, chief business columnist for the Financial Times, has moved from London to the paper’s New York bureau. Gapper, an associate editor, continues to pen a weekly op-ed column.

John Authers, previously Mexico bureau chief, has also moved to the Big Apple as U.S. markets editor and page editor for FT Wealth. Authers replaces Stephen Schurr, who has left for London to cover hedge funds.

Peter Doral, a “Lex” column writer, is also set to join the New York Bureau from London.

The advertising policies of the big ad agency-owned PR firms (page 7) are a puzzlement to us because we wonder why these firms are spending so much on ads and so little on PR.

IRS records show $44,000 in ads by the Council of PR Firms itself in 2004. Another $160,000 was spent in early 2005 by a group of 13 CPRF members under the CPRF banner in Advertising Age.

In addition, we have tracked more than $300,000 in ads by 11 CPRF members in PR Week/U.S. since last November. That’s a half million+ in paid ads.

Could it be that the advertising culture of their parents has thoroughly permeated these PR units?

The conglomerates, after seven years, have cut back on their commitment to the Council. Their initial goals included wresting control of the ranking of PR firms from the trade press (using the technique of requiring no proofs of fees beyond the signature of a CFO). Another goal was broadening the definition of PR to include paid ads and just about any activity a PR firm engaged in.

Evidence of the pullback is the permanent reduction in maximum dues from $50,000 to $40,000 and the loss of two big members, both owned by WPP Group–GCI Group, whose last published figures were $151M in fees and 900 employees in 2001, and Cohn & Wolfe ($57M in fees and 410 employees).

At least 80% of the $928,577 in dues collected by CPRF in 2004 came from ad conglomerate units.

Neither the conglomerates nor their PR firms have a lot of money to toss around these days.

The five holding companies have $12.4 billion in debt according to SEC filings–$4.33B for WPP; $2.49B for Omnicom; $2.38B for Publicis; $2.27 for Interpublic, and $975M for Havas.

Interpublic, owner of Weber Shandwick, Golin Harris and other PR firms, is teetering on financial oblivion. It just about made the Sept. 30 deadline for restating its results to avoid defaulting on its debt.

Omnicom (Fleishman-Hillard, Ketchum, Porter Novelli, Brodeur) took the $600 million Bank of America account from IPG but OMC’s stock has fallen from the mid-$80’s to $79 (Oct. 7). That puts it $28 below its high of $107 nearly six years ago (Dec. 17, 1999). OMC was once able to float interest-free convertible bonds but not any more.

As far as we can see, every penny is being pinched by their PR wings, from agency events to individual lunches with the press, memberships in PR groups and subscriptions to industry publications.

Ketchum, for instance, cut its PRSA members from more than 80 in 2001 to about 30 in 2005.

The smaller and midsize PR independents, who compete against these giants, are now seeing light at the end of the tunnel. They can verify their fee income and employment figures, something none of the big PR operations have been allowed to do since 2001. We don’t expect these PR operations to return to our rankings because of the proofs we require. Also, many (including GCI ) have stopped publishing account lists. Their executives must put out accurate figures or face jail terms and fines under Sarbanes-Oxley.

The independents are not laboring under a $12.4 billion debt and have many freedoms that the ad agency-owned PR units do not have. They have greater freedom in hiring and paying PR pros. They can give speeches, take reporters to lunch, hold press conferences, and subscribe to a variety of PR industry trade publications without someone from corporate h.q. blocking this.

We have seen five PR publications die in the past several years including PR Reporter, a weekly that published since 1958; Reputation Management, the monthly magazine published six years by Paul Holmes; the printed Inside PR weekly newsletter published ten years by Holmes; PR Intelligence Report, published several years by Ragan Communications, and Ragan’s PR Journal, a bi- monthly. PR Quarterly, a journal of independent thought by PR pros and academics, is 50 years old this year, limping along on one $735 ad per issue.

No doubt they ran into the same stone wall we have for the past five years with about 95% of the ad agency-owned PR operations. They often limit us to two subscriptions although they have hundreds and even a thousand or more employees and scores of branch offices. They have spent millions in dues to the CPRF and in ads in certain publications but plead poverty when approached. We believe these decisions are being made at the conglomerate level.

PRSA members (page one) are faced with the loss of their printed Blue Book directory of members. The worst part of this is that leaders did not run the decision by the members via a blast e-mail. This far-reaching decision, met with dismay and anger by members we talked to, points up the dysfunctional nature of PRSA governance.

PRSA leaders, showing inconsistency, say other organizations are ditching their printed directories. But when we tell them almost all other groups have sizable deferred dues accounts (while PRSA books all dues immediately), they say they don’t care what other groups do. There’s no need for PRSA to stop providing one of its most valuable tools to members. A printed directory is far easier to use for most purposes than an online directory (which should also be available).

A squad of PRSA chapter presidents should invade h.q. and find out how much money is wasted on events and projects used by a few. The national conference, never attended by more than 10% of members, occupies half the staff about half the year. It probably loses a half million+ if staff time were properly allocated (and not just the $103,122 counted for staff time at the actual conference). There’s also no need for a half million on leader and staff travel, hotels and meals each year. The shift of h.q. downtown was costly and unnecessary and may be behind this latest economy move.

– Jack O'Dwyer