EDELMAN CHECKS IN AT WYNDHAM HOTELS

Edelman PR Worldwide has won the seven-figure Wyndham International PR account, beating out Porter Novelli for the Dallas-based hotel/resort business.
Fred Stern, Wyndham's VP-corporate communications, said a dozen PR firms were invited to pitch.

He said Edelman won because of its broad travel experience and extensive office network. Edelman was the No. 1 travel PR firm in '99 with fees of $8M.

Cathleen Johnson, executive VP and national tourism director at Edelman, will handle the account from Chicago. The firm's Dallas office will provide additional support.

The PR firm's goal is to position the 169 branded Wyndham properties as the upscale choice for business and leisure travelers.

Stern noted the Patrice Tanaka & Co., the 10-year incumbent, decided not to pitch the account.

John Frazier, COO at PT&Co., said the firm made that decision because it was "time to move on." He also noted that Wyndham has a new management team in place.

WAINWRIGHT JOINS MERCK AS VP-CC

Joan Wainwright has signed on as VP-corporate communications at Merck & Co. She was deputy commissioner for communications for the Social Security Administration, serving as its chief spokesperson and responsible for national communications strategy. At Merck, Wainwright will oversee media relations and executive/employee communications.

F-H, GYH HANDLE PR FOR $9.2M HCFA DRIVE

Fleishman-Hillard and Garrett Yu Hussein will handle PR duties for the Academy for Educational Development, which has just been awarded a social marketing contract from the Health Care Financing Administration.

AED's job is to develop educational programs to show how the 74 million consumers enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance plans benefit from the three programs.

HCFA has budgeted $9.2 million for the first year of the five-year pact.

The D.C.-based non-profit group has conducted programs throughout the world in areas such as reproductive health, drug/alcohol/tobacco abuse prevention, nutrition and health policy reform.

AED president Stephen Moseley oversees an annual budget of $135 million and a staff of 850+.

HCFA, last week, awarded a $5.4 million account to a team headed by Ogilvy PR Worldwide.

Jim Martinez has left KemperLesnik Communications, where he had been president of the Chicago-based firm's PR unit.

Harry ("Hud") Englehart, who is COO of the integrated ad/PR firm, said he will oversee the PR division. Englehart joined the firm in 1996 after several years with Hill and Knowlton.

Before joining KemperLesnik in 1999, Martinez had been senior managing director of H&K.

Veteran ABC News correspondent Jack Smith has joined Burson-Marsteller's San Francisco office as a senior counselor in the firm's media practice. He spent his last four years at ABC developing and covering the technology beat.

"I look forward to working with Burson's high-tech clients, some of whom I was reporting on just a few months ago," said Smith, who spent 26 years at ABC.

Shandwick PA is doing PR for the White House Historical Assn.'s seminar Nov 14-16 as part of celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the White House. Jody Powell, CEO of Shandwick PA, said the Association is one of a string of new business wins, including United Way (national media rels.), Chemical Safety Board and Memorial Herman Health System (Houston-based healthcare provider).

Arthur Levitt, SEC Chairman, while discussing Reg FD at the Securities Industry Assn. annual meeting in Boca Raton on Nov. 9, said some executives should be more "tight-lipped" about their company's financial outlook. "Investors do not need an analyst to interpret news," he said. Companies accustomed to "using whispers and practicing favoritism and exclusion-rather than openness and broad disclosure" will suffer during the Reg FD era, said Levitt.

PRSA/NY, IABC/NY, Women Executives in PR, Black PR Assn., and other groups are cooperating on the "First Annual New York Communicators Holiday Charity Celebration" Dec. 7 from 6-10 p.m. at the Float Night Club, 240 W. 52nd st.

Entertainment includes music and dancing. Proceeds will go to Toys for Tots and N.Y.'s Neediest. The function is an historic first for major New York communications groups. Info.: 212/228-7228 (PRSA).

GOODYEAR DENIES 'SILENT RECALL.'

The Los Angeles Times accused Goodyear Tire & Rubber of quietly replacing thousands of failed van, light truck and sport utility vehicles tires for the past four years, but only for those people who complained.

Goodyear PR officials have declined to comment beyond stating that they are not conducting a "silent recall," said Davan Maharaj, who broke the story.

John Perduyn, senior VP-global communications for the Akron-based company, said the Times was asking Goodyear to "supplement the efforts of plaintiffs' attorneys to try lawsuits in the media rather than in the courts where a fair and impartial presentation of the facts can be made by both parties."

Robert Jenkins, a retired Bedford, Mass., businessman, said a Goodyear tire dealer in Florida told him that there was a "silent recall" involving the Marathon tires on his vehicle, and that he could replace them at a discounted price of $16.50 each.

When representatives of his trailer company told him Goodyear was "exchanging" his tires, Jenkins contacted his attorney, who filed suit in June.

Acknowledges Tread Separation Problem

Even before Jenkins' suit, publications catering to owners of recreational vehicles published reports tipping off subscribers to Goodyear's exchange program, and last month Goodyear acknowledged that tread separation involving its 16-inch Load Range E light-truck tires has been linked to at least 15 deaths and 120 injuries, but said it did not believe a recall was necessary because it found no defect in the tires.

The company did not disclose that it had been offering free replacements of the tire for years.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration said it was stepping up its inquiry into the 15 deaths involving Goodyear's light-truck tires.

Chuck Sinclair, who is Goodyear's director of North American tire communications, insisted that Goodyear is not conducting a silent recall. Sinclair said the company strengthened its Marathon tires a few years ago after noticing that consumers were overloading their trailers "with customized modifications like dishwashers, air conditioners and large TVs.

"We do not have a free replacement program in place. We handle each situation on an individual basis," Sinclair told the Times.

COPYRIGHT DISPUTE GOES TO HIGH COURT

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether publishers can include the work of freelancers in electronic databases without their permission.

The U.S. Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit, in New York, held in a ruling last year that this common practice was a violation of the freelancers' rights under federal copyright law.

The appeal was filed by The New York Times along with Newsday, Time Inc. and two companies--Lexis/Nexis and University Microfilms--which sell databases in electronic and CD-ROM form.

The Times said the appeals court ruling would require "the destruction of decades' worth of articles currently stored in electronic archives."

The plaintiffs, a group of freelance authors led by Jonathan Tasini, said the remedy would be a renegotiation of reprint rights through a central clearinghouse. The legal issue turns on a provision of law under which the owners of a copyright in a "collective work," such as a newspaper, are entitled to reproduce the individual works in "any revision of that collective work."

The appeals court held the electronic databases could not be considered a "revision" of the original printed publication.

`SPINNING IS EUPHEMISM FOR LYING.'

Richard Stengel, who is editor of Time.com, said his sojourn in politics taught him why the press is so often lazy, and why telling the truth is not always the best policy.

He gave up his job as senior editor at Time early last summer to become a senior adviser and chief speechwriter for the presidential campaign of former Sen. Bill Bradley.

The first thing he learned is that "spinning is just a euphemism for lying."

"Spinning is selling a version of events that you want others to believe rather than the version that you know to be true," said Stengel in an article that he wrote for the Nov. 13 issue of Time.

"Most voters don't like to hear unpleasant truths. If you insist on telling the truth, at least do it with a smile. Even the press prefer this," he said.

Stengel found most reporters are afraid of getting either too far ahead or too far behind.

"That's why, if things are going wrong with your campaign, you've got to right it lickety-split. In two days the media horde can undo strategies that took months to create," said Stengel.

"I'm not saying that all campaign correspondents are indolent and superficial; just that if you want them to write a probing critique of an opponent, you'd better hand it to them on a silver platter," he said.

Agency.com (ACOM), a combination of eleven dot-com firms in which Omnicom has a 36% interest, hit an all-time low of $9.13 last week, down from a high of $98. It went public in Dec. 1999. Omnicom's 18.5 million shares, worth $944M as of Dec. 31 when ACOM traded at $51, are now worth $168.9M. Initial OMC investment in ACOM was $11.7M in cash. ACOM had a net loss of $39,000 in the third quarter vs. a loss of $7 million as revenues climbed to $57M from $26M in the year earlier quarter.

Razorfish (RAZF), another Omnicom investment, was at $5 last week, down from a high of $56.94 but above its low of $4. OMC sold four million shares of Razorfish at $35 on March 14 for a profit of $110M. OMC has not sold any of its Agency.com shares.

Nasdaq, which lists many dot-coms, is down 25% so far this year.

TRAVEL WEEKLY'S D.C. BUREAU CHIEF DIES

Fran Durbin, 56, who was Travel Weekly's Washington, D.C., bureau chief, died Oct. 29 after a long illness. She joined TW in 1972 as the assistant bureau chief and moved up to chief in 1976.

She was recently awarded ASTA's 2000 Travel Writer of the Year Award.

Michael Millingan, assistant bureau chief, said Durbin's successor has not been named.

BURNETT TO REVITALIZE LEFT-WING MAG.

Bob Burnett, a Cisco Systems co-founder, appears to be an unlikely candidate to revitalize In These Times, the 24-year-old Chicago-based magazine with left wing political views.

Burnett, 59, made millions from Cisco stock and is by his own admission, in the nation's top one percent in terms of net worth.

He was hired last month to help improve the non-profit's fiscal condition and reach a wider and younger audience. Joel Bleifuss, the magazine's editor, believes Burnett's combination of business experience, fund raising skills and political ideals make him perfect for the job.

The magazine has about 2,000 financial supporters, who give from $25 a year to $30,000, according to Bleifuss.

Its circulation has fallen from its peak of about 40,000 in the late 1980s to about 15,000 now.

The magazine has dropped its identification with socialism in favor of the subtitle, "Independent news & views."
Burnett told Tim Jones, who covers media for The Chicago Tribune, that the magazine needs to get beyond Republicans and Democrats and realize that millions in America consider themselves "just out there."

Burnett said this did not mean a change in the magazine's editorial direction. "I'm an old lefty," he told Jones, adding that he will vote for Vice President Al Gore because he "is the lesser of two evils."

Jones, who interviewed the new publisher in his office in Berkeley, Calif., said the "resurgence of consumer activism and Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader has contributed to Burnett's belief that the public has a hunger for political magazines and a discussion of issues that resonate with people-the environment, economic justice, the gap between rich and poor, the wage gap for women, and racism."

Evidence suggests the audience for political commentary is growing, according to Jones, who cited American Spectator magazine, which increased its publishing frequency this year to twice a month, and Mother Jones, which reported a 13 percent rise in circulation in the most recent reporting period, to nearly 167,000.

(Media news continued on next page)

CONSUMERS ON 'NET MOST FOR Rx NEWS

More than 85 percent of Internet users are seeking health and medical information on websites, according to a nationwide survey by Decision Analysts, Arlington, Tex.-based market research firm.

The survey also shows 28.5 percent of respondents believe the information they are getting is "extremely useful" and 42.4 percent believe it is "very useful." Only about 2.7 percent said the information is not useful.

Of those using the Internet to gain medical knowledge, 25 percent are seeking information about pharmaceuticals, 23 percent are trying to learn more about new treatments, and about 21 percent are using the Internet to investigate potential medical conditions, the survey shows.

Consumers also are turning to the Internet for information about physicians and medical literature.
More information about the survey of 565 Inter-net users can be found at www.decisionanalyst.com.

TIME WILL PUBLISH 'NET SHOPPING GUIDE

Time Inc.'s Southern Progress division is starting an upscale shopper's guide to the Internet, called HotDots. The first issue of the magazine went on newsstands Nov. 6, with a guaranteed rate base of 400,000.

Mark Mayfield, who is on sabbatical from his regular job as editor of Southern Accents, another Southern Progress magazine, is overseeing HotDots.

Mayfield said HotDots is being positioned as a women's lifestyle and shopping magazine and not another resource for techno-geeks.

Actress Sela Ward is on the cover of the first issue, which features cover lines on "Get Gorgeous! 50 Best Beauty Buys," and "Forget the Mall: 323 Top Gifts on the `Net."

During the first year, the magazine will be published bimonthly, but it is expected to go monthly in 2002.

CLINTON VETOES SECRECY BILL

President Bill Clinton has vetoed the Intelligence Authorization Bill, noting that a section of the legislation calling for criminal penalties for unauthorized disclosure of classified information would have had a chilling effect on the public's right to know.

Section 304 of the IAB would have made it a felony for both former and present government employees to disclose "properly" classified information to any unauthorized person, even if there was no harm to national security.

Many newspapers and other media have been working to defeat this measure since it began to make its way through Congress, without the benefit of public hearings or debate.

"While we respect the government's need to keep certain information confidential, Section 304 of the bill would have created the first official secrets act in our history-something that always has been anathema to our nation," said John Sturm, president/ CEO of the Newspaper Assn. of America.

WWD TO PUBLISH NEW MAGAZINE

Women's Wear Daily (WWD) will start publishing a new magazine in February, called BeautyBiz.

The monthly will focus on the leaders, strategies, issues and trends driving the global cosmetics and fragrance industry. It will offer a wide mix of in-depth interviews and profiles on the industry's most influential people.

The magazine also will report on the retail scene, and provide analysis of issues, product development trends, new looks in advertising and consumer opinions on the state of the business.

Kerry Diamond has been named editor of BeautyBiz. She has been a reporter and editor on WWD's news staff, most recently as beauty news editor.

Diamond will continue to report to Pete Born, VP and associate publisher in charge of beauty news coverage for WWD and executive editor, beauty, for parent Fairchild Publications.

PLACEMENT TIPS ___________________

Style & Entertaining, the new Part 2 magazine published by The New York Times Magazine, which debuted Nov. 5, has regular features on fashion, travel, media, books and designs. William Norwich is editor of the magazine, which will be published twice a year.

FeatureSource.com, a new Internet publicity service that grew out of a book publishing company's efforts to get coverage for its authors, is accepting content for distribution.

"Offering content from many sources gives the media an even greater reason to visit FeatureSource.com each week and browse for articles," said Phil Theibert, who is director of marketing for Meadowbrook Press.

"We found we got much better placement of stories about our books and authors when we sent out long and short articles instead of news releases," said Meadowbrook Press publisher Bruce Lansky.

Theibert, who is a former newspaper editor, said editors love it when "we send them an article they can download and use to fill up the news hole."

Theibert can be reached at 800/338-2232 or [email protected].

Sports Illustrated For Kids has added new departments to its redesigned format, which will be unveiled with its December issue, now on newsstands.

The first sports magazine written for kids ages 8-14, will do more in-depth coverage of a wider range of sports, which will include issue-oriented topics related to sports.
Neil Cohen is managing editor.

IABC WORLD BOOK MOVE QUESTIONED

Librarians and directory publishers have questioned the wisdom of the International Assn of Business Communicators' decision to cease publishing its printed World Book of members.

An electronic version of the directory, accessible only to members, has been on IABC's website for years. The print version, also only available to members, last year had 735 pages.

The 13,500-member group said most of its members have access to the web and that "the print edition is out of date almost as soon as it comes off the press" because of job changing and new members.

Library consultant Barry Lee said annual printed directories are mostly accurate even toward the end of their years. He called the IABC statement "an exaggeration." Lee is a board member of the Directory Publishers Forum and Network, a group of 120 directory publishers, and president of Research & Reference Services, consulting firm.

Members of the Forum that were reached by this NL knew of only one print directory (Nathan's Legal Market directory) that had shifted completely from print to electronic form.

Electronic & Print Versions Most Common

Port City Press, Baltimore, one of the largest printers of directories in the U.S., said publishers today are commonly adding CD and online versions while continuing their print versions. It said print press runs are down by 50% because of the shift.

Corporate and PR firm librarians and "knowledge" officers expressed strong disapproval of electronic-only directories.

Publishers are shifting to the much cheaper electronic-only directories but charging the same amount, said one librarian.

Another said print can never be replaced by online directories because the latter do not allow for side-by-side comparison of different years. "Journalists love to browse in print directories because of the serendipitous knowledge that might be picked up," said one.

Another said it's much quicker to check a name or address in a print directory than to access a website, punch in a user name and password, and describe the information being sought.

On the other hand, they point out, an online directory that is searchable by categories can do an amazing amount of research in a short time. Mass e-mailings and label printing are among many options.

PRSA Exploring CD Version

PR Society of America, which has delayed publication of its own membership directory until January because of financial reasons, said it has no intention of dropping the print version but is exploring electronic and CD versions.
IABC lost $341,605 last year after a loss of $107,116 the previous year. Net assets were $519,150 as of Dec. 31, 1999. It renewed 1,161 fewer members than expected in the six months to March 31 (loss of $203,175 in income). It has spent $1 million on an e-business (TalkingBusinessNow.com) and is seeking to raise $400,000 more to fully implement it.

World Book and Communication World (IABC magazine published eight times a year) took in $34,000 and cost $623,440 in 1999. The audit did not break out the revenues/cost of World Book.

PRSA DIRECTORS DID NOT ACT ILLEGALLY

The nine directors of PRSA who publicly supported Joann Killeen for chair-elect against official candidate Art Stevens in the recent election did nothing illegal, said Arthur Abelman of Moses & Singer, PRSA's law firm.

Several PRSA members had quoted Abelman as telling them that the collective action of the directors was somehow improper or "inappropriate."

However, Abelman said they did not quote him correctly. He said the directors did not do anything illegal although what they did might be interpreted as a criticism of the Assembly because it opposed a decision of a committee of the Assembly.

But people do not lose their right of freedom of speech just because they are directors of an organization, he said.

Other PRSA Leaders Are Concerned

Jack Felton, who this spring headed a special committee of the board that studied the nominating process, said that if board members take part in the nominating process next year "a number of other concerned PRSA leaders have volunteered to publicly censure those who repeat the kinds of activities undertaken this year."

He had argued before the Assembly Oct. 21 that a "small clique" on the board had "made a grab for power" in supporting Killeen vs. Stevens.

The enlarged 20-member nominating committee, representing all segments of the Society, is supposed to pick candidates for the board, he said. "The board is not supposed to pick its own officers," said Felton.

Stevens Issues Statement

Stevens, meanwhile, issued a statement Nov. 2 on the election in which he thanked his supporters and congratulated Killeen.

He said PRSA needs to continue to work on its "well-documented" financial problems and that the staff "continues to need focus and support." The national board "continues to need a spirit of cohesion." He described accreditation, globalization, ethics, and member services as "works in progress."

Said Stevens: "We must reconnect with chapters, sections and districts and put an end to the frustrating feeling of divisiveness that has been allowed to fester for far too long. The need to focus outward toward our target audiences increases every day." He said these continue to be his priorities.

IABC's decision to drop its printed directory in favor of an all-electronic one (page 7) is a poor one but only the latest bad decision to come out of this organization. The worst was last year when IABC lopped 19 of the 34 income and spending categories from its financial report, citing advice from its new auditor, Deloitte & Touche.

Complaints led IABC to restore the numbers, revealing that $398,755 had been spent on "web development" in 1999 vs. nothing in 1998. The D&T report had a spending category called "other" totaling $548,955.

CFO Sherm Smith, who helped us with this story, either quit or was fired by IABC on the day he returned from a vacation. We don't think his was the head that should have rolled.

Another bad IABC decision was spending $1M on an elaborate e-business that sounds like it's competitive with CNN, Newsmax and other commercial websites. The new site is so complicated it needs another $400,000 to get off the ground.

Worse yet is that false reasons are being given for killing the print directory. IABC says "the print edition is out of date almost as soon as it comes off the press." Directory publishers, attacking this "straw man" argument, say a small part of any print directory is out of date right away but the great bulk of the entries are useful for years.

IABC drops expired members two weeks after their expiration date (vs. three months for PRSA), meaning about 2,400 listings of members are killed during the course of a year (IABC renews about 80% of members).

You can't electronically look up a friend who didn't renew but he or she would still be in the print edition. From a research viewpoint, an electronic directory is a disaster because it can't be compared to previous editions. From a PR standpoint, IABC has robbed itself of a handsome directory that should be its No. 1 sales tool. Oddly, IABC only lets members buy it. This is the same IABC that now wants the public to come to its new e-business.

IABC says money was not the "driving force" behind dumping the printed directory. We doubt that. It has admitted that renewals are down by $200,000 this year after the group lost an overall $339,987 in fiscal 1999. It only had net assets of $519,150 on Dec. 31, 1999 on income of $4.8M. Power has coalesced at IABC h.q. in recent years with Elizabeth Allan taking the titles of both president and CEO and elected IABC chairs rarely being heard from. This is also true of PRSA where chair Steve Pisinski made no speeches for general distribution last year and the National Investor Relations Institute, none of whose elected leaders or board members has distributed a speech for years (a fact confirmed by NIRI president/CEO Lou Thompson). The 120-member house of delegates of IABC gave up its right to set dues for the group in 1992.

PRSA also had a severe drop in membership renewals this year, the rate falling from 85% to 72%. The Society of Professional Journalists saw dues income drop to $526,454 in the year to July 31 from $574,454 in 1999. This is a loss of about 1,000 members in a group with about 10,000 members.

Why these three communications groups are losing members in the midst of prosperity is a question that needs to be examined.

We think it's the impact of the Internet. There are plenty of news and how-to materials for PR pros and journalists that are free on the web and that are far more up-to-date and even riveting than anything offered on the websites of PRSA, IABC or SPJ. Organizations change very slowly while the web is improving at warp speed.

PRSA member Bob Stack, a resident of Juno, just north of Palm Beach, said he, too, had trouble figuring out the "butterfly" ballot that has become such a matter of contention. "I have felt in previous years that this was a poorly designed ballot and I had to study it before making the correct choice," said Stack. He could understand how senior citizens (most of the population of Juno) would have trouble with it. Voters could ask for another ballot but whether the voters or the people at the polls knew this is questionable, he said. A voter who punched the second "bullet" on the ballot would have voted for Pat Buchanan. If the vote was intended for Gore/ Lieberman, the voter might have, on second thought, then punched a hole in the third bullet. The two holes invalidated the ballot. Stack believes most of the Buchanan and invalidated votes were meant for Gore.

If enough of a racket is made about the Palm Beach vote, the voters may get a chance to do it again, as advocated by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe in the New York Times and New York Post columnist Sid Zion. Courts sometimes bow to publicity. The murder of Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Conn., languished for 26 years until authors Michael Fuhrman and Dominick Dunne put the spotlight on it in their books...giving people a second chance is part of the American tradition. A bridge player who calls for the wrong card to be played in dummy but switches to a second card in the same breath is allowed to play the second card. A golfer is allowed a second shot off the first tee if the first shot goes awry. This is called a "Mulligan" and is legal because the first shot is considered to have been taken before play started.