PRSA Hotel Permits O'Dwyer Lobby Exhibit

Washington Marriott Wardman Park lobby where O'Dwyer products will be displayed.

The Washington Marriott Wardman Park hotel, site of the 2014 conference of PRSA Oct. 11-14, is allowing a lobby display of O’Dwyer products. The Society had refused to sell us exhibit space.

Hotel manager William Walsh provided the picture of where the products can be displayed. The Philadelphia Downtown Marriott provided lobby space to the O’Dwyer Co. at the 2013 Society conference.

Previous PRSA/Marriott policy, enforced in 2011 in Orlando and 2012 in San Francisco, was to bar any display of O’Dwyer products.

Strictest policy was at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis where this reporter was ordered from the lobby by hotel security and told to stand across the street. We could only remain in the lobby if we did not talk to anyone or try to give anything to anyone including our business cards.

Washington Post’s Weingarten Is PR Critic

One of the biggest critics of PR and PR people is Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist of the Washington Post who writes both humorously and seriously.

We have asked Society VP-PR Stephanie Cegielski whether Weingarten or any other Post reporter will be invited to cover the Assembly and other parts of the conference, the biggest meeting of PR people each year.

A May 20, 2007 Weingarten column blasted PR people for sending him releases far from his beat. He described their inability to answer questions when he called them. He compared them to poisonous snakes and called PR people “pathetic, desperate dillweeds.”

On May 2, 2012, he called PR people “a hoot” and said their “entire existence teeters on a ludicrous lie they tell their clients: that they are tight with the media.”

Bulldog Closes; Cision/Vocus Lose Money

The May 2 column was touched off by a questionnaire from Jim Sinkinson of Bulldog Reporter which last week closed after 35 years. Weingarten’s column derided the questions that Sinkinson asked such as “What beats do you cover?” and “What do the best PR people do to grab you?”

His answer to the latter question was, “Theoretically I’d be willing to work with a PR person trying to sell me a story about the impending death of PR due to the sudden, simultaneous, slap-to-the-forehead realization by everyone in the entire world that PR is a silly waste of time and money.”

One of Sinkinson’s major businesses, which closed years ago, was tracking editorial changes.

The obsession of PR people with social media has cut deeply into the businesses of those selling media contact points. Vocus and Cision, two of the Society’s $20,000 “Gold” sponsors, lost $21.8 million and $41 million, respectively in their latest available fiscal years.

They were sold earlier this year to $12 billion hedge fund GTCR and merged. Their revenues were $180 million and $156 million, respectively.

PR Society Withholds Tax Return

Cegielski, asked for a copy of IRS Form 990, which has the pay packages of the top six staffers, said it will not be revealed to anyone until the board sees it at the meeting. The 990 was initially due to the IRS on May 15. Final deadline for filing is Nov. 15.

This would mark the fourth year in a row that the Society has withheld the 990 from the delegates as well as the press until just about the last possible moment.

Three pre-Assembly teleconferences have been held with the delegates, Cegielski said. No questions were presented to Mark McClennan and Blake Lewis who are competing for chair-elect of the Society, she said. This is the first contested election of the Society since 2000 when Joann Killeen and Art Stevens competed for chair-elect, Killeen winning.

O’Dwyer senior editor Kevin McCauley has been given credentials to the 2014 conference with the exception of the Assembly. We have been granted a credential to cover the Assembly but are barred from recording it.

We are also barred from the 7:30 a.m. breakfast and lunch of the Assembly and all other events at the meeting with the exception of the opening night reception Sunday. The Society is allowing the O’Dwyer family, including Lucille O’Dwyer and senior editors John O’Dwyer and Christine O’Dwyer to attend if we pay $99 each which we will do.