KETCHUM LANDS FIRESTONE CRISIS WORK

Ketchum's Washington, D.C., office has won the Bridgestone/Firestone account, beating out Shandwick and GCI Group for the business. Mark Schannon, who heads the office, will handle the business.

Dave Drobis, Ketchum chairman, said his firm picked up the work following "many hours of very direct, frank and honest discussions" with B/F executives.

B/F, added Drobis, is aware of the "great challenge" it faces in winning back customers, but is committed to do whatever it takes to restore the public's confidence in the company.

Fleishman-Hillard dropped the tiremaker's account, which was worth more than $1 million in monthly fees, because it was "frustrated" that the client did not adopt a more aggressive strategy to deal with the crisis.

B-M knew about problems

Burson-Marsteller knew about the B/F tire tread separation problem on Ford Motor Co.'s Explorer sports utility vehicles before the information became public, according to a staffer at the PR firm.

The firm resigned the B/F business in May because of an apparent conflict with Ford.

It continued to provide PR counsel to B/F until F-H was hired in mid-July, according to Christine Karbowiak, VP-PA at Firestone.

GCI BUYS PR FIRM IN MEXICO

GCI Group has acquired Gcom-Kaufmann, one of the top PR firms in Mexico.

"The new agency, GCI Mexico, will reflect the merger of our existing Mexican operations with Gcom-Kaufmann," said Bob Feldman, president/CEO of GCI. He said the office will be staffed by 40 people.

Keith Lindenburg, who had been VP of corporate communication programs at IBM, has joined The Weber Group, Cambridge, Mass., as EVP and eastern region general manager... Antonio Cervone, 37, was named VP of communications for the Chrysler Group of DaimlerChrysler AG. Cervone, who had worked in Chrysler's PR group for 14 years, is rejoining the company from General Motors, which he joined after Chrysler merged with Daimler-Benz AG in 1998. He is replacing Steve Rossi and will report to James Holden, head of DaimlerChrysler's U.S. operation.

COKE CONTRACT VOTED DOWN IN WISC.

Coca-Cola suffered a PR blow when officials of the Madison, Wisc., school district voted 5-2 against renewing an exclusive vending rights contract with Coke.

The school district, which became the first large district in the nation to sign such a contract, against renewal of the three-year contract, which is worth approximately $300,000 a year, because of concerns that the school system was providing its children with products of little or no nutritional value instead of milk, according to Ruth Robarts, a school board member.

In its original contract, the 49-school system in Madison had agreed in 1997 to stock Coke in exchange for $615,000 in up-front money for school programs which would otherwise have been cut. Coke sales were not permitted to children in the 29 elementary schools in the system.

Kevin Morris, VP-PA at Midwest Coca-Cola Bottling Cos., said his company wants to keep its relationship with the school district. "We hope to continue to partner with local schools, as we have for decades," he said.

B-M HANDLING SCANNER PR CAMPAIGN

Burson-Marsteller is handling a PR campaign for the introduction of the "Cue:C.A.T." scanning device that lets readers access websites via bar codes that are printed with articles.

Forbes - under a co-sponsorship arrangement with Digital Convergence, RadioShack, Jaguar (cars), Cross (pens), and others- has sent the "cat," a compact disk, and two sets of wires to its 810,000 subscribers.

RadioShack is distributing the devices free to customers via its 7,000 stores. Distribution of 10 million of the devices is planned by the end of the year.

Tracey Pontarelli, a B-M staffer, said it's a "big and important account" but could give no dollar figure.

AD COLUMNIST LAZARUS DIES AT 68

George Lazarus, 68, noted for his hard-driving style of reporting, died suddenly Sept. 8 while on the way to work at the Chicago Tribune.

A mechanic inspecting the train in the yards at 10 a.m. found Lazarus slumped in a seat with a collection of newspapers on his lap. He had taken the 7:42 a.m. train and employees failed to notice that Lazarus had remained on the train after the last stop. The train had arrived at 8 a.m.

Some friends wondered if he might have been saved is trainmen had noticed him at 8 a.m.

NADER ATTACKS CORP. MEDIA OWNERS

The news media dish out feature-like "pablum" instead of the hard information people need to make informed political choices because the media are owned by a few corporations, according to Ralph Nader, who is the Green Party Presidential candidate.

Nader, who has made media ownership an issue in his campaign, blames the corporate structure of news organizations for causing news coverage to be distorted. "I think there are a lot of these executives at the top who just look at their stock price, who basically think that good journalism is bad business," he recently told the National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

Nader said news had degenerated into "one nonprofit soap opera after another-Tanya Harding, O.J. Simpson, Menendez brothers and Princess Di- that just completely dominates the news and crowds out all kinds of very important issues and subject matters, all the way down to the local evening news."

To counter this, Nader wants cable TV stations to reserve channels for use by citizen activists, labor, education, and consumer groups.

Calls for 'deep democracy'

America needs to create a "deep democracy, focused on areas that the GOP and the Democrats have ignored," Nader said. "It's very hard these days for citizen groups to have a chance to influence public policy," because corporate influence dominates Washington to such a tremendous degree.

He said America's "civil society" is being eroded by a two-party system that is converging into one, but is also "increasingly indentured to corporate interests, with their 22,000 full-time lobbyists here in Washington; their thousands of political action committees, and their shuttles to put their own executives in high government positions."

Nader believes the "democracy gap" in America has come about with the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. He said Microsoft's Bill Gates has the combined wealth of the poorest 120 million Americans. The richest 1% have wealth equal to the bottom 95%.

AGENCY PROS LIKE THEIR JOBS

Employees of the largest PR firms are satisfied with their current jobs and believe they are fairly rewarded, according to a Thomas Harris/Impulse Research Employee Satisfaction Survey.

One-quarter of the 3,162 employees who participated in the third annual survey reported they are "very satisfied"; 40% are "satisfied," and 20% are "somewhat satisfied" with their jobs.

More than three quarters (77%) believe they are fairly to very well rewarded. This includes 8% who reported they were "very well rewarded"; 31% are "well rewarded," and 38% are "fairly rewarded."

When asked where they hoped to be in five years, 40% picked jobs at their present firm, which far outranked other possibilities.

Thirty-one percent opted for management in their current firm and 9% for a position in an international office of their firm. Very few indicated any interest in working for another PR firm, but 31% would like to be working in some other business entirely.

Get Info From E-mail

E-mail has gained in importance as the most frequent (89%) and most valuable (86%) method of receiving information in their firms.

Employees also rated face-to-face meetings with their immediate supervisor (81%), the head of their office (73%) and agency management (61%) as valuable sources of information.

Sixty percent reported receiving information from outside media as third in terms of frequency of use as a source of information.

PEOPLE BRIEFS: Craig Shirley, who has his own PR firm in Old Town Alexandria, Va., and three other businessmen have acquired the first Major League Lacrosse team, which will be based in Baltimore. Shirley, who was elected president of the team that will begin play next June, also is president of a lacrosse website (AllLacrosseAmerica.com)... Frank Zarb, chairman/CEO of the National Assn. of Securities Dealers and The Nasdaq Stock Market, will speak Sept. 13 at NIRI/N.Y. to begin the group's 2000-2001 program year. The meeting begins at 6:30 at the Nasdaq Stock Market, 4 Times Square. $70... Mallory Factor, who is chairman/CEO of a financial PR firm and a merchant bank in New York, and Karen Weir, an investment banker at Babcock & Brown, New York, were married Sept. 3 in Positano, Italy. The bride's father is the chief pilot of Airtrans Airways in Orlando. Factor's previous marriage to Fran Precario, who had worked at his PR firm, ended in divorce... Pam Edstrom, Microsoft's longtime PR consultant, can "definitely cook up a good story pitch," reports The Wall Street Journal. "She also can whip up a big meal," the paper said in an item about how Edstrom cooked a dinner for all 120 guests at a wedding reception for Marianne Allison Ward, an EVP at Waggener Edstrom. Edstrom said she cooked for three solid days before the wedding while working on PR business late into the night. The reception was held at Edstrom's house in Vancouver, Wash.

DEATHS: T.L. Deglin, 92, who was president of Deglin-Wood., a New York-based PR firm, which later became Ted Deglin & Assocs., died Aug. 15... Carobel Pappas, 60, a former Washington, D.C.-based PR pro, who later booked guests for "Good Morning America" for many years, died Aug. 26. After leaving ABC in 1990, she worked for a time for Susan Peterson Productions, a media consulting firm, before joining Johns Hopkins University's school of advanced international service... Kevin McAuliffe, 50, who ran his own consulting firm in New York, and recently compiled a book of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's notable quotations titled "The Sayings of Generalissimo Giuliani," died Aug. 19.

BLOOMBERG TOUGHENS POLICIES

Bloomberg News, which took the blame for publishing a phony release on Aug. 25 that caused the shares of Emulex-a California communications equipment company-to drop 55 points in minutes, will take extra precautions to make sure news releases are not fake.

PR Newswire has issued a "Policy Bulletin" in light of recent events involving Internet Wire, the web-only news release distributor which sent the fake Emulex release.

PRN said the bulletin "serves to clarify and re-emphasize its longstanding policies on membership and source verification."

An Emulex shareholder, who says he lost $15,000 as a result of the hoax, has sued Bloomberg and IW in federal court in New York, arguing they recklessly disseminated misleading information about Emulex.

Matthew Winkler, who is editor-in-chief of Bloomberg, said the financial news service will continue to use information from PRN, Business Wire and IW, without verifying its authenticity in most cases, but reporters will now be required to confirm the releases are real before using them.

No Surprises

"If anything on those releases is remotely a surprise, yes, we're calling them," he told The New York Times.

For example, if a company reported earnings of 60 cents a share and analysts expected earnings of 58 cents, that would not be unusual. If the release reported earnings of only 20 cents, a reporter would confirm the accuracy of the release with the company.

Winkler said the new policy would not slow Bloomberg from posting the news. He said reporters will have to be better prepared to reach company PR officers immediately.

PRN said a member of its client services staff must call the company issuing the release at the phone number listed in its account database.

A known contact at the company must verbally verify that the company sent in the news release and confirm the news release in question.

No release will be disseminated until this verification process has taken place, PRN said.

David Armon, senior VP of PRN, said PRN still cannot vouch for the factual accuracy of its releases. "As long as the attribution checks out, the clients are allowed to say pretty much what they want to say," he told the Times.

Bloomberg and IW would not comment on the lawsuit, which seeks class action status.

Floyd Abrams, an expert in First Amendment law, said the law protects honest mistakes in news gathering, and information about a publicly traded company is by definition of interest to the public.

The plaintiffs would have to prove that Bloomberg and IW knew what they were publishing was false, Abrams said.

PEOPLE ___________________________

Matthew Swibel, who was covering the marketing and media beat for The Washington (D.C.) Business Journal, is headed to New York to be a reporter with Forbes magazine.

Jeff Kosnett rejoined the staff of Kiplinger's Personal Finance as a senior editor.

Naomi Aoki has joined The Boston Globe as a business reporter covering biotechnology companies and trends.

Ande Zellman, a 17-year veteran of The Boston Globe, will join Newsweek in mid-October as an assistant managing editor overseeing the "Science & Technology" and "Arts & Entertainment" sections. She will also work on long-range reporting projects, special issues and opportunities that extend the Newsweek franchise.

Greg Gutfeld, formerly editor of Men's Health, was named editor-in-chief of 14-month-old Stuff magazine, succeeding Andy Clerkson, who is being promoted to general manager of Dennis Publishing. Stuff went monthly with the September issue.

Dan Forman has replaced Bart Feder as news director at WABC-TV, New York.

David Doss, who recently left NBC's "Nightly News With Tom Brokaw," is expected to become executive producer of "Primetime Thursday," the new evening news magazine show hosted by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.

Katherine O'Hearn, who was recently hired by CNN as EVP, has been put in charge of the New York-based financial news channel CNNfn, replacing Teya Ryan, who was named CNN's chief innovation officer and will move back to Atlanta.

Dean Shepherd is joining Bloomberg TV on Oct. 1 as anchor of "Moneycast," cable TV's highest rated pre-market financial news show. Shepherd was anchor on WNBC-TV's "Live at Five" as well as the host of "Inner Circle," a weekly feature on personal finance.

Michelle Burford, deputy editor, and Lavinol Savu, managing editor, have left O, the Oprah Magazine. Catherine Kelley, who was the deputy editor at Elle, will now become executive editor at O.

Richard Rosen, executive editor of New Media and onetime managing editor of sports, features and business at The New York Daily News, has joined Bloomberg financial news service as editor-at-large.

Christian Caryl was named Moscow bureau chief of Newsweek. She had been Moscow bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report since July 1997.

(Media news continued on next page)

NEW DEVICE LINKS MEDIA WITH 'NET

Parade magazine, which reaches 80 million readers every Sunday, will offer a new technology that links traditional print to specific content on the 'Net.

The :CRQ technology, developed by Dallas-based Digital:Convergence, employs special printed cues that, when used with a web-connected PC and a handheld scanner-like device called a Cue:Cat, deliver the reader directly to the web page. Cues are similar to bar codes on consumer products.

Parade's first editorial cues will appear in the Sept. 10 issue on ads placed by :CRQ technology, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and RadioShack Corp.
Parade estimates nearly half of the 98,130,000 Americans who have access to the Internet, get Parade in their Sunday newspaper.

Other licensees include Forbes, Wired, and Adweek magazines, several newspapers, including The Dallas Morning News, and NBC TV.

Cue:Cats are available for free from RadioShack stores nationwide or from www.getcuecat.com.

Forbes magazine has shipped its 810,000 subscribers Cue:Cats, and Digital:Convergence plans to distribute more than 10 million of its devices free through its partners -Parade, Forbes, Young & Rubicam, Belo Corp., and RadioShack-by the end of this year.

Forbes has placed the company's specialized bar codes alongside some of its articles in addition to about half the ads appearing in the Sept. 10 issue.

MEDIA BRIEFS ________________________

Travelocity magazine made its debut Sept. 5 on newsstands. The Fort Worth-based magazine is a joint venture between Travelocity.com, an online website, and American Airlines Publishing. The magazine, which will publish six issues a year, will focus on destinations where Travelocity's users go and travel to.

The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus in Howell, Mich., which is about halfway between Lansing and Detroit, published its first issue Sept. 7. The weekday and Sunday daily, which combines two semiweeklies, The Livingston County News and The Brighton Argus, has about 20,000 paid subscribers.

1099 Magazine is a new magazine published by Ziff Davis Custom Media, Medford, Mass., for Aquent (formerly MacTemps), Boston, Mass. The publication, which will debut in January as a quarterly, is aimed at independent professionals.

Time Warner has acquired Africana.com, based in Cambridge, Mass., from Harvard Univ. educators and co-founders Henry Gates Jr. and Kwame Appiah, along with Harry Lasker III. The site, which provides content about black people, currently boasts more than 500,000 monthly visits and about 3.6 million monthly page views. More than 50,000 people use Africana Mail, the site's free E-mail service, and 57,000 subscribe to the Africana.com newsletter.

PLACEMENT TIPS _______________________

DWJ Television warns that while networks are opening their newsfeeds for the paid distribution of VNRs, "getting your VNR on a network newsfeed is no guarantee you'll actually get on the air."

DWJ said it has been testing network newsfeeds as a distribution channel for nearly a year and there is "no magic there."

"If the production is not good or the story is weak or surrounded by sexier titles, you still don't get any hits. And there's still no substitute for getting on the phone and selling the story," said DWJ.

Brill's Content's poll shows 13% of Americans rely on late show hosts David Letterman or Jay Leno to keep them informed, and a poll by the Pew Research Center reveals 16% regularly get news about political candidates from comedy shows like "Saturday Night Live."

Local news is in demand, especially in the mornings, according to Tribune Broadcasting, Chicago.

Seven of Tribune Broadcasting's 22 stations now offer weekday morning shows-a combined 97.5 hours of local news programming per week.

In June, WPIX-TV, New York, introduced "WB11 Morning News," and WLVI-TV debuted "Boston's WB in the Morning."

Tribune stations in Seattle and Denver launched morning programs earlier this year, and Indianapolis did so in 1999.

The Tribune morning shows offer a local blend of light features and hard news and weather reports.

U.S. travel agents choose Recommend magazine as the publication they would read if they could only read one travel magazine, according to the findings of a survey conducted by Simmons Market Research.

The randomly selected travel agents also like Recommend because it has the "most in-depth editorial coverage, most helpful information and ideas, and is the most helpful in selling travel."

Laurel Herman, who is publisher/editorial director, said: "The trend is for the travel agent to book more leisure travel due to airline commission cuts, and Recommend fills a vital need by providing agents with the most useful product and destination editorial coverage that helps them increase sales."

Recommend, which is published by Worth International Communications, has a monthly BPA audited circulation of 61,000 and a readership of more than 265,000.

Editorial offices are located at 5979 N.W. 151 st., #120, Miami Lakes, FL 33139. 305/828-0123; fax: 826-6950.

POLITICIANS MAKE PR BLUNDERS

New York Senator candidate Rick Lazio and Gov. George Bush have been criticized in the media for making big PR mistakes.

The White House released a "grip and grin" photo of Lazio shaking hands with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, following Lazio's attack on President Clinton for doing the same with Fidel Castro.

The photo of the smiling Lazio and Arafat was taken in 1998 on a Mideast trip by the President and members of Congress.
Lazio has made Hillary Clinton's kiss of Arafat's wife, Suha,-after she made a strident anti-Israel speech-a major issue in his campaign against the First Lady.

The Republican Congressman, during a recent interview with The New York Post, attacked Mrs. Clinton for her close relationship with the Arafats.

Hillary Clinton spokesperson Howard Wolfson said the Lazio/Arafat photo proves that Lazio is a hypocrite.

Lazio said the release of the photo shows that the White House is doing all it can to get Mrs. Clinton elected.

Bush calls reporter an "a-hole"

Gov. George Bush got caught making a vulgar remark about Adam Clymer, a reporter for The New York Times, to his running mate, Dick Cheney.

Standing on a stage at the start of a rally on Sept. 4 in Naperville, Ill., Bush was heard saying to Cheney, "There's Adam Clymer of the New York Times, a major league a-hole." To which Cheney replied, "Yeah, big time."

The remark, which was not heard by most of the audience of 2,000, was picked up by a TV microphone and reporters' tape recorders.

Bush later said he regretted that his "private conversation" made it to "public airwaves" and that "everyone heard what I said."

Karen Hughes, who is Bush's director of communications, said the comment was made in protest of a "series of articles he (Bush) thought were unfair."

Clymer said he did not know of any articles he had written that had provoked Bush. "He's never commented to me personally on anything I've written," Clymer said.

Joseph Lelyveld, who is executive editor of the Times, said: "This is at least Adam's eighth campaign. He knows what he is doing. His work is both fair and accurate. The Times has never heard from the Bush campaign about Adam. If they have a complaint, they should convey it to us and we will review it as we do all serious complaints about our coverage."

McCAIN'S DAUGHTER MAY TESTIFY

Sid McCain, a senior director of publicity at Capitol Records, and the daughter of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), might be called to testify at a hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee on Sept. 13 on marketing violence to children.

Last week Senators McCain and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), who is running for Vice President, said they would hold a hearing to discuss the results of a recent Federal Trade Commission investigation into the marketing of explicit music, movies and video games to children.

McCain, who supports legislation to restrict the sale of violent and sexually explicit entertainment, has not released a list of the witnesses, but he has made it clear that he wants to hear from executives of the major record labels themselves.

Among the rock, pop and rap groups that Sid McCain publicizes is Megadeth, a heavy metal band whose songs include "Symphony of Destruction," "Into the Lungs of Hell," and "Wake Up Dead.

GORE RIPPED BY DRUG COS.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (Pharma) is blasting Vice President Albert Gore for engaging in what it describes as "intense political rhetoric" aimed at pharmaceutical manufacturers.

The industry association was responding to charges made by Gore during a speech at Florida State University that the pharmaceutical industry was "unfairly gouging consumers" by raising the cost of many prescription drugs. Gore maintained that he was in favor of the drug companies "making more profits and having more research," but threatened that he was "not going to stand by if they behave in an unfair way."

"Gee, it must be getting close to Nov. 7th," said Jeffrey Trewhitt, a spokesman for Pharma, based in Washington, D.C. "The fact is, Al Gore is engaging in intense political rhetoric in his campaign for the Presidency. Unfortunately, our industry is being singled out as the victim of that rhetoric."

Trewhitt also added that Gore had been "a friend of the industry" in the past on such issues as FDA reform and support and funding for biotech research. He pointed out that some of Gore's top campaign aides had spent years working in the pharmaceutical industry.

Gore's running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, has raised $91,150 from the pharmaceutical industry. Lieberman is permitted to campaign to keep his Senate seat while also running as the Vice Presidential nominee.

In an attack on Gov. George Bush, on Aug.19, Gore linked Bush to the pharmaceutical industry and said: "They're for the powerful; we're for the people."

RUNYAN JOINS LENSCRAFTERS' PR TEAM

Marla Runyan, who is the first blind athlete on a U.S. Olympic team, has signed on as spokesperson for LensCrafters' "Give The Gift of Sight" vision care program. Rogers & Cowan handles PR for the Cincinnati-based retailer.

Runyan, 31, will compete in the 1500-meter competition at the Sydney Games. She has been legally blind since the age of 9. The sight in both her eyes is 20-300.

We see the advertiser's hand behind the ten million "cat" scanners that are being distributed free to consumers by Forbes, Parade, RadioShack and others (stories on page one and four).

Marketers will now have a count of those "clicking on" ads via the hand-held scanners which are in the shape of a cat. The user swipes the nose of the cat across a bar code in the ad (like bar codes are swiped across scanners in supermarkets) and the user s computer is linked to an advertiser s website. It's also being used on the editorial features for those who want more information.

Marketers love numbers and here is an exact count of people reading an ad and showing interest in it.

It's a technique like the "bingo cards" that some publications have that give the reader the chance to get more info from ads in the publication.

But if no one seeks any more information, then the magazine has a big problem.

Advertisers, who have been disappointed with the low click-through rates of Internet banner ads (less than 1% and falling), may be in for another shock.

Are consumers, who are in the habit of zapping zillions of TV commercials via their remotes, now supposed to sit in front of their computers reading thick business magazines and swiping the ads for yet more information and ads?

While on the subject of marketers, we had a couple of calls last week from PR executives who have been told to do "integrated" campaigns with their marketing departments. They have to do it but they are quite anxious about it. We compared notes about "marketers" and agreed on a number of points. First of all, marketers are not "educators" like PR people. They do not see their job as informing the public. Instead, they see it as making segments of the public behave in desired ways. They don t have a "public service" bone in their bodies, i.e., the attitude that something should be done because it s the right thing to do or it will simply give consumers information they might use. Marketers serve client needs and highly defined goals. They re also perfectionists who want control of every single "touchpoint" between a company and its prospects. The presence of a PR pro who may have open-ended lunches and conversations with reporters about a client and its marketing plans arouses their deep concern. Marketers are used to dealing with huge audiences, sometimes in the millions. Dealing with a single, questioning reporter is not in their job descriptions. From reading marketer s own essays, we find that marketer have low tolerance for each other. They are generals, field marshals and budding "Alexander the Greats" who want to craft the perfect, all-encompassing marketing campaign. They are resentful of competing marshals or anything else that interferes with their plans. Tension is set up for PR pros when marketers give the PR people "messages" (slogans) to deliver when publications want stories.

Another call came from a PR pro who wanted to know what "business-to-business" marketing and PR meant. We decided that it s the old "trade publicity" dressed up in new clothes. This is the easiest way to get editorial space since most trade books are dependent on industry advertisers. We also decided that a PR firm saying it handles "business-to-business" is about as meaningful as one saying it handles" consumer PR." Specialists have long since emerged in high-tech, healthcare, food, travel, etc., and a client should demand expertise in a certain area. Those who say they do B2B should be asked whether they re talking about office equipment or farm equipment.

Marketers are not just bad bedmates for PR pros because the marketers don't see themselves as educators. Entire books are filled with marketing ploys designed to manipulate or even trick consumers. A typical technique is the "set-up" that weakens consumer resistance or takes advantage or a mindset. For instance, the large size of some products now costs more per ounce of the product than smaller sizes, exploiting the consumer belief (established by marketers) that large sizes are more economical. Homebuyers are first shown an overpriced "dog" to set them up for houses that will be shown later... marketers also engage in coercive, monopolistic practices that are hard for PR pros to defend or explain. Coca-Cola (page one) has just had its exclusive school contract in Wisconsin cancelled by the Wisconsin school board. German regulators have accused Wal-Mart of predatory pricing–undercutting local retailers until they fold....an "instant poll" on the O Dwyer website on whether PRSA should drop mandatory accreditation for office-holding is running 2-1 against mandatory APR. PRSA leaders want to shelve the issue for another year