PORTER NOVELLI GRABS VIAGRA

Porter Novelli has won the Viagra account, according to Jeff Cook, Pfizer's assistant director of media relations.

BSMG Worldwide was the runner-up for the "erectile dysfunction" drug, which had more than $1 billion in sales last year.

PN will handle both international and domestic assignments for Viagra. Kate Cronin, senior VP at PN, handles the account.

Pfizer has used Ruder Finn, Edelman, Robinson Lerer & Montgomery and Chandler Chicco & Co. for various Viagra work in the past.

AOPRW LANDS $1.5M HUGHES JOB

Hughes Network Systems, a leader in satellite communications equipment and services, has awarded its $1.5 million PR budget to Alexander Ogilvy PR Worldwide.

"We will do PR campaigns for Hughes' five divisions in both the U.S. and overseas," Kerri Morgan, managing director of AO's Washington, D.C., office, told this newsletter.

She heads the Germantown-based HNS account with Heather Jameson. Six other staffers are on the account also.

HNS has more than 30 years' experience in satellite communications, which is a market that is expected to reach $48 billion a year, according to Pioneer Consulting.

Ken Rabin, who had headed Burson-Marsteller's U.S. and global healthcare practice from Washington, D.C., is set to announce his future plans within a week or so. The former CEO at InterScience Communications and managing director of Hill and Knowlton's healthcare unit, recently relinquished his post at B-M to take care of his ill wife. "I didn't have the time required to run a global practice," Rabin told this NL...Richard Simonelli has left Citigate Dewe Rogerson for a senior VP slot at Manning, Selvage & Lee's corporate practice. Previously, he was at the New York Stock Exchange as managing director in its international client service division...Lisa Ross, formerly the Labor Department's director of public liaison, is now with Ogilvy PR Worldwide in Washington, D.C., where she will do coalition work. She is a six-year veteran of Fleishman-Hillard.

F-H ACQUIRES U.K.'s HERALD COMMS.

Fleishman-Hillard has acquired Herald Communications, a London-based high-tech firm with 110 staffers. HC will retain its name, and join F-H's technology consulting group including "brands" such as Lois Paul & Partners, KVO PR, High Road Communications and Upstream Consulting.

That group, according to F-H, chalked up more than $100 million in fees last year.

Herald has offices in Paris, Munich, Milan and Prague. Clients include Adobe, Palm, CMGI, Kodak, Olympus and Dow Jones.

HC CEO Esme Page and executive chairman Paul Mathieu join F-H's European management group.

GCI ACQUIRES TUNHEIM GROUP

GCI Group has acquired Tunheim Group, a Minneapolis-based firm with 69 staffers.

CEO Bob Feldman said TG will bolster GCI's consumer marketing, corporate and PA practices.

TG's client list includes Target Corp., Andersen Windows, SuperValu, Minnesota Twins, Delta, Microsoft and Kohler.

Kathy Tunheim, president, said one of the reasons she made the deal was to provide more opportunities for staffers within the GCI network.

She founded the firm in 1990 after serving as VP-PR at Honeywell.

RUBENSTEIN SPEAKS FOR DENISE RICH

Howard Rubenstein is spokesperson for Denise Rich, the big Democratic Party fund-raiser whose fugitive ex-husband Marc was pardoned by President Clinton, triggering a media firestorm. She's an "old friend and a lovely woman," Rubenstein told this NL.

Rubenstein said he is serving as spokesperson for her foundation during the current crisis. His son Steven is also involved in the media work.

Marc Rich fled to Switzerland in 1983 after being indicted by a federal grand jury on more than 50 counts of wire fraud, racketeering and trading with the enemy. He evaded more than $48 million in income taxes and could have been sentenced to more than 300 years in prison.

Loretta Ucelli, who was President Clinton's director of communications, is joining Edelman PR Worldwide as EVP and chair of its crisis management sector. She will be based in New York.

ATLANTA PR PRO FIRED OVER REMARKS

Phyllis Fraley, who handled media relations for the Atlanta Development Authority for nearly 10 years, was fired Jan. 23, the day after she uttered mild criticism of Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell's use of city employees for writing speeches.

Fraley's clash with the Campbell administration came after the Sunday Journal-Constitution reported that the mayor had relied heavily on public employees to help him supplement his income as a speaker for hire. City workers researched and wrote speeches and handled and collected Campbell's fees, the paper reported Jan. 14.

On Jan. 22, after Campbell expressed second thoughts about the practice, a reporter interviewed Fraley about whether former Mayor Maynard Jackson also had assigned city workers to assist his efforts to earn outside income. Fraley was a press aide to Jackson during his final two years in office.

"I can't recall anyone on my staff being pulled to do that type of work," Fraley said in the article published in the Jan. 23 edition of The Atlanta Constitution. "All he needed was half a dozen bulleted data points, and he could speak eloquently, extemporaneously for two hours," said Fraley, who earned about $25,000 a year with the ADA.

BALTIMORE MAYOR HIRES PR FIRM

Warschawski PR is handling national media relations for Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley in conjunction with the victorious Baltimore Ravens trip to the Super Bowl.

WPR has secured publicity placements in national print and broadcast outlets on the impact of the Ravens bid in the Super Bowl is having on the economic turnaround in the city, according to the Baltimore-based PR firm, which is run by David Warschawski.

WPR spokesman Mark Brousseau told this newsletter that the firm had arranged last week's New York press tour for the mayor that included interviews with CNBC, all five affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC, UPN, WB, The New York Post, and Bloomberg radio and wire services.

CEO TURNOVER JUMPS-DILENSCHNEIDER

CEOs of 40 of the biggest 200 companies in the U.S. lost their jobs in 2000, double the number of such victims in the previous year, and the pressures that caused this continue at companies, says the Tenth Annual Trend/Forecasting Report of The Dilenschneider Group, New York.

Teams supporting the CEO such as PR face high turnover rates, says the report. It notes that "hundreds" of CEOs of small companies were fired in 2000. Most of the axings came in the computer field but closely following were financial services and industrial products.

Putting heat on the companies, said the report, were "aggressive investors and lawyers" who have put pressure on corporate boards.

Causes for the firings include poor financial performance; lack of team building; poor communication; misunderstanding of the importance of culture, and an inability to adjust quickly enough to changing times.

Many of the CEOs left with "large pay packages" but the report says this won't continue because "society just won't take it." The report, with predictions about the Internet, youthful markets, investing, high-tech and many other subjects, has been sent to 1,500 U.S. and foreign businesses, media, government and university figures. It is available without charge from the PR firm (212/922-0900, X118).

MAXXCOM BUYS INTEREST IN MIAMI FIRM

Maxxcom, the PR/ad arm of Toronto's MDC Communications Corp., has acquired a 49% interest in Crispin Porter & Bogusky, a local South Florida agency that was founded in 1965 in Coconut Grove.

Maxxcom, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, paid between $10 million to $20 million in stock and has the option to purchase the remainder of CP&B in 2006.

CP&B, which had 105 employees and about $145 million in billings in 2000, plans to open a new office, either in New York or on the West Coast.

Four years ago, the Florida Anti-Tobacco Pilot Project selected CP&B to launch an anti-smoking ad campaign targeted at youths between 12 and 17.

Their ads brought national attention to CP&B, and in 1999, the agency teamed with Arnold Communications of Boston to win the American Legacy Foundation's $18.5 million nationwide anti-tobacco ad campaign.

CP&B is one of four finalists for BMW's $20 million to $40 million account to roll out its new vehicle, the Mini.

COLUMBIA, TN COLLEGES SNAG AL GORE

Former VP Al Gore plans to spend most of this year teaching at Columbia University and colleges in his home state of Tennessee- Fisk Univ. (Nashville) and Middle Tennessee State Univ. (Murfreesboro)

At Columbia, Gore, a Harvard graduate who also studied religion and law at Vanderbilt University, will teach a six to eight-week graduate course called "Covering National Affairs in the Information Age" beginning next month.

The course taught by Gore, a former reporter at The Tennessean (Nashville), is not for credit.

Tom Goldstein, dean of the School, hopes Gore will stay on for the fall.

Charles Brotman, 73, chairman/CEO of Brotman Winter Fried Comms., Washington, D.C., volunteered again as public address announcer for President George W. Bush's inaugural parade. Brotman has announced every parade since Dwight D. Eisenhower was sworn in a second time in 1957.

PR PRO BEMOANS LOSS OF COLUMN

Paul Steiger, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, told Philip Ryan, a New York PR pro, he has no regrets about discontinuing "Business Bulletin," a column that ran every Thursday on Page 1.

The Journal recently replaced the column, which had been billed for years as a "special background report on trends in industry and finance," with a new column about economic issues, entitled "Capital."

In a letter to Steiger, Ryan said he missed the old column, and "forgive me, but your `Capital' disquisitions are, frankly, a bore."

Ryan said BB was "about the only way for a small company doing small things to ever end up on page one of the Journal. It will be missed by many for that reason alone."

He said it was "clever of the Journal to set aside one weekly feature to capture all the stuff PR people send out...a large net from which your editor would pluck just a few items which were unusual, or a sign of the times, or of use to your readers.

"Now we PR people will have to send our releases to an even greater number of Journal reporters," said Ryan.

In reply, Steiger said the BB column had "served the Journal's readers well, but the paper has grown beyond it. The `Marketplace' section and other parts of the paper have taken over much of the material that once was the sole domain of the Bulletin," said Steiger.

"Lots of other readers have found 'Capital' to be anything but boring. So, sorry to be eliminating a favorite target, but I think most readers will prefer the change," said Steiger.

BARNICLE GETS A GIG ON CABLE TV

Mike Barnicle, who writes a column for The New York Daily News, will host "The First 100 Days," a new political talk show on cable's MSNBC, starting Jan. 29.

Barnicle will conduct interviews with guests on the daily hour-long program that will air at 6 p.m.

Barnicle takes over the hour that had been reserved for Chris Matthews. MSNBC recently said Matthews would have two hours of programming a day, starting with "Hardball" at 5 p.m. leading into "The Matthews Group" at 6 p.m. But "The Matthews Group" never materialized.

In a memo to staffers announcing the new show, MSNBC general manager Erik Sorenson said layoffs are expected to be disclosed at the end of next week as part of NBC's company-wide cutbacks.

MSNBC TO SIMULCAST ALBOM'S SHOW

MSNBC, a cable TV network, is simulcasting Mitch Albom's nationally syndicated radio talk show weekdays from 3 to 5 p.m., as of Jan. 29.

The "Mitch Albom Show" will replace "MSNBC Live," a daily mix of news and features.

The 42-year-old Albom--who also writes a sports column for The Detroit Free Press, and is author of the bestseller Tuesdays With Morrie--conducts interviews with newsmakers, celebrities, actors, musicians, athletes and writers.

The show, which orignates from WJR radio in Detroit, currently airs in New York on WABC Monday through Friday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., and includes co-hosts comedian Ken Brown and former model Rachel Nevada.

AVIATION EDITOR DIES IN PLANE CRASH

Jeffrey Cole, who was aerospace editor of The Wall Street Journal, was killed in a plane crash just after takeoff from the Front Range Airport near Watkins, Colo., about 25 miles east of Denver.

Cole was a passenger on a L39 Albatross jet flown by the founder and chairman of Atlas Air, Michael Chowdry, 46. Atlas moved its headquarters to Purchase, N.Y., from Golden, Colo., last year, but Chowdry continued to live in the Denver area.

The 45-year-old Cole, who had interviewed Chowdry earlier in the day, was invited by Chowdry to take a flight in the Czech-made jet trainer.

PEOPLE

Michael Agovino was named deputy editor of Newsweek's website NewsweekMSNBC.com. Arlene Getz was appointed international editor of the site.

Agovino, previously an editor at Esquire magazine for almost eight years, will generate story ideas, edit copy and monitor the news.

Getz's first task is to reinvent the international news section on the website and expand its international news coverage.

P.J. Bednarksi, previously executive editor, was promoted to editor of Broadcasting & Cable, and Carol Jordan, previously with Multichannel News, was named new group deputy editor of Cahners TV Group publications.

Peter Frank has joined Travel & Leisure as senior editor from Conde Nast Traveler, where he had been news editor.

Josh Hyatt, previously a senior editor at Inc. magazine, has joined FSB: Fortune Small Business magazine as executive editor, and Ellyn Spragins, who had been at VP of editorial development at Oxygen Media, has joined as a monthly columnist.

Hyatt, who will be based in Fortune's Boston bureau, will edit, write and oversee some of the magazine's major projects including FSB's Ultimate Resource Guide. He will also continue to write his weekly column, "E-Ventures," for The Boston Globe.

Spragins will write for the "Ways and Means" column beginning in March.

(Media news continued on next page)

FREELANCER WINS NYFWA PRESIDENCY

Susan Rodetis, a freelancer, was elected president of the 398-member New York Financial Writers' Assn. for 2001. She moves up from VP to succeed Reuters reporter Dan Bases, who announced the group's treasury had swelled to more than a half million dollars in the past year.

A Princeton, N.J.-based accountant, Henry Murphy, was hired to audit the books.

The other new elected officers for 2001 are: VP-Eugene Smith, Utility Spotlight; Treasurer- Richard Papiernik, Nations Restaurant News, and Secretary-Assistant Treasurer-Brad Finkelstein, National Mortgage News.

The election, which took place Jan. 24 at the annual meeting, held at the Marriott Marquis Hotel Times Square, went off without a hitch.

Before last year's election, the nominating committee tried to drop Rodetis as a candidate for the number two spot because it felt her freelance work as a parttime editor for Paine Webber made her inelgible to hold office as an active member.

An alternate slate with Rodetis on it was proposed by Myron Kandel and Martin Cherrin. The former presidents argued that Rodetis should not be dropped because she "derives far more than half her income from financial journalism, and none of her work involves PR." The Kandel/Cherrin slate won.

Before this year's election took place, Rodetis said she still does only freelance work for financial educational projects.
The vote for the new slate of officers was 53 to 1.

Associate Member Reps Picked

In a separate election, George Auerbach, a retired PR consultant, Shelly Faldetta of Paribas and Gail Silberman of Bankers European Load Advisors were picked to serve as associate member representatives by a vote of 26 to 0.

Faldetta and Silberman replace Alan Goldsand, a publicist, and Thomas Mariam, director of global communications for Clifford Chance Rogers & Wells.

The big news of the annual meeting was the treasurer's report which shows the group has a cash balance of $521,095.75, as of Jan. 24, 2001, and total accounts payable of $165,034 for a net balance of $356,071.75.

The group's general manager uses an office in her home to handle administrative duties.

NYFWA Balance Sheet (As of Jan. 24, 2001):

Current Assets
HSBC-Money Market - 220,433.69
Certificates of Deposit - 90,000.00
Treasury Bills - 66,000.00
Vanguard Education Fund - 49,897.54
HSBC-Checking - 4,764.52
Total - 431,095.75

Accounts Receivable - 90,000.00
A/R plus current assets - 521,095.75

Liabilities & Equity
Accounts Payable 165,024.00
Current Status $356,071.75

CNN LOSES TOP NEWSPEOPLE

Jim Moret, who is co-anchor of "Showbiz Today," has resigned from the Atlanta-based cable network's Los Angeles bureau.
Moret, who refused a transfer to a new anchoring job in Atlanta, was among the many casualties of the network's reorganization and layoffs.

Also gone: Steve Cassidy, deputy international managing editor and former New York bureau chief, who resigned; Bill Tucker and Tony Guida, the hosts, respectively, of CNNfn's "In the Money" and "Entrepreneur Only," which were cancelled; White House reporter Chris Black; correspondents Carl Rochelle, Jim Hill and Greg Lefevre; Detroit bureau chief Ed Garstein; Atlanta business reporter Dan Ronan; Dallas reporter Charles Zewe, and Washington anchor Sonia Ruseler.

CNN White House correspondent John King is expected to leave CNN in three months when his contract expires. He was not part of the layoffs.

About 400 CNN employees are being told this week that they are being laid off.

NEWSDAY BEEFS UP N.Y. COVERAGE

Newsday has hired John Mancini, who was metropolitan editor of The New York Post, and Debby Krenek, who was editor of The New York Daily News.

The Long Island-based Newsday has been expanding its circulation by giving the New York edition a stronger Queens focus. The edition's circulation currently stands at about 100,000.

Mancini will run Newsday's Kew Gardens, Queens, bureau, which covers New York. He will supervise a staff of about 45 reporters. Krenek, who was named associate editor of special projects, will help develop a a more New York-focused website.
The Tribune Co., Chicago, acquired Newsday last summer in its purchase of Times Mirror, and then shut down New York Newsday.

The Daily News also has expanded coverage of Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx in recent months.

The Post is dropping the Sunday books section, and cutting back on the use of freelancers.

MEDIA BRIEFS ______________________

A panel of four medical/health journalists will address the next "Meet the Press" meeting of HPRMS. The meeting will start at 8:30 a.m. on Feb. 2 at the Griffis Faculty Club at the N.Y. Weill Cornell Medical Center of N.Y.-Presbyterian Hospital at 525 E. 68th st. Res.: Nanci Steinberg, 212/722-1944.

HealthNewsDigest.com, which provides current and breaking news on the health industry for professionals and consumers, and is syndicated to more than 2,000 websites, is now available on the Avant-Go mobile Internet service which provides free interactive and personalized content and applications to people with handheld devices and Internet-enabled phones.

WEB FORCING ASSN. MERGERS

Association mergers will increase "dramatically" in the next few years partly due to competition from the Internet, says the December 2000 Executive Update.

The "primary job" of associations is "delivering information" and members can now get this information from the web, online databases and electronic publishing, says the article.

Groups face lower revenues from meetings and publications and it's "not clear" if they can replace this with electronic publishing, it adds.

Mergers are especially likely among groups that have many dual members. Many groups have added services and increased the overlap, it notes. The loss of a CEO may precipitate a merger, it adds.

Top Staffers Left Both PRSA & IABC

PR Society of America and the International Assn. of Business Communicators both lost their top staff officers in 2000. They have talked merger twice in the past. Both groups are experiencing lower renewal rates and have financial difficulties. Both have websites that are still in development.

The most recent PRSA/IABC merger talks ended in 1988 after 22 joint committees spent hundreds of hours researching aspects of a merger ranging from name to location of h.q. and surviving publications.

No name was ever agreed upon. It appeared that PRSA would keep its New York h.q. and that IABC would close its San Francisco h.q. IABC stopped talking in February 1988, saying members wanted to keep their "stand-alone organization." IABCers perceived the merger as a takeover.

Some members of the two groups said the current financial problems could force new talks. The EU article, by William Taylor, says that an umbrella organization can be created that leaves merger partners with their own names and identities. Common offices and finances create efficiencies.

Key issues such as name, office location and mission statement need to be decided early but not all issues, he says. Otherwise, he adds, the merger teams will get exhausted and the desire to merge will fade.

PR WOMEN PAID LESS, SAYS NEW BOOK

A "glass ceiling...thwarts the ambitions of highly educated women from the trades to the professions, from hourly workers to senior executives," says a new book by three women PR professors.

Women in Public Relations: How Gender Influences Practice has been authored by Larissa Grunig, University of Maryland; Elizabeth Toth, Syracuse University, and Linda Hon, University of Florida.

"Men dominate the field of PR in positions of power and responsibility," it says, even though they are "the minority."

The authors said they worked as a team because "collaboration has become the hallmark of women's workstyle in the academy." Women "prefer a group work environment, they evaluate communal efforts more highly, and they consider collaboration a survival strategy," they add.

"Gender inequality at work" was found to include "masculine value systems, women's exclusion from social and informational networks, women's timidity about salary negotiation, a dearth of female role models and mentors, faulty college curricula, socialization, negative attitudes among senior managers, the balancing act between office and home, stereotypes, women's lack of self-esteem, sexual harassment and `lookism,' ageism, markeplace factors, and the marginalization of PR as an organizational function."

'Lookism' a Form of Harassment

"Lookism" is the tendency of some to "focus more-either positively or negatively-on women's appearance ratherthan on their job performance."

One woman told the book's authors she was referred to as a "bimbo" and a "sex kitten." Another respondent said men are sometimes so uncomfortable around an attractive woman that they do not hear what she is saying. Other respondents said this is more of a problem for attractive women than for good-looking men because men see "body parts first" in a woman whereas women don't do this to men. "A really pretty woman" has to go to extra lengths to "prove herself," it was said.

Pay scale charts, some of them ten years old, are used to show PR women earn less than men.

Recruiters Say PR Women Paid Equally

Eight PR recruiters told this NL that women PR execs earn as much as men and have equal titles.

Robert Woodrum, of Korn-Ferry International, which handles about 150 PR searches a year for blue-chip companies, said there is "absolutely no discrimination" against men or women. About half of the candidates KFI sends on big jobs are women and they have previously been paid the same as men, he said. "If there is a $300,000 job, we will send men and women in that salary range," he said.

Arnold Huberman said there is a "glass ceiling" in corporate management but not in corporate PR depts. or PR firms. Women get about 60% of the jobs and "I see no difference in pay/titles," he said.

Dennis Spring said he sees "more and more" women in PR jobs each year and that salaries are based on what the person has been earning. He said ability and background are key factors, not gender.

Lisa Ryan of Heyman Assocs. agreed there was no discrimination and said the top three placements by the Heyman firm in 2000 were women.

Adrianne Scordato of Gundersen Partners said salaries of men and women job candidates are about the same and that no client has ever specified a man or a woman for a PR job.

Ted Chaloner said his job searches have resulted in women being hired about 60% of the time and that he has seen no difference in pay based on gender.

John Fry did a count of all his searches in 2000 and found that 74% of the hires were women. He said women have "varying career tracks" because of family considerations but that they have found ways to offset career interruptions. Some women, he said, have opted for their own firms for flexibility.

PR OPINION/ITEMS

A new book, Women in PR, and a survey by Women Executives in PR have put the spotlight on the current dominant role of women (at least in numbers) in today's PR world.

Our typical PR contact until about ten years ago was a male in middle or early middle age who talked to us several times a week and maybe even daily. He was almost always at his phone, as though bolted to his desk. Chatting with reporters and sending them clips of stories was his No. 1 occupation.

He read all the papers and knew most of what was going on. He had an almost unlimited expense account for building press contacts. This included taking not only us but other reporters to lunch at the same time. Jokes, news tips, and reports of good books, movies and shows flew fast and hard.

His expense account allowed him to socialize as a couple. He and his wife took us and our wife to numerous shows, sporting events, dinners and nights-on-the-town. They often invited to us to their home and they came to our home.

His philosophy and that of many PR pros was that, like any salesperson, he had to sell himself first before he could sell any stories. His dress, speech and attitudes matched those of reporters. He knew that reporters, like any other group of people, tend to believe those who are like them.

The expense account of one such pro was $5,000 a month and no client or boss would dare ask him how he spent it. He prided himself on getting at least one job offer a month to make sure of his independence and marketplace value.

What about today?

The typical press contact is a young woman who calls and asks whether we got a release.

We have never heard from her before and will probably never hear from her again. If we start questioning her about what's in the release she will say she doesn't know and refer us to someone else.

She would never dream of inviting us to lunch, much less take our wife and us out to dinner and a show. Should we call her (or the person she referred us to), the odds are great that we would get voicemail. Neither she (nor young PR males) are apt to have read the day's newspapers so it's hard to kick around current topics with them. They seem to have taken vows of intellectual poverty. The young, ill-informed PR pros have been nick-named "Trinket Know-Nothings" by high-tech editors. They were referred to as "bimbos" in last year's West Coast conference called "Buzz 2000." If there is such thing as accreditation in PR, it's currently being attractive, young and female.

On the male side of this equation, we find the typical male top executives of a PR firm have removed themselves from press contact. Red Herring quoted a PR executive last year as saying that "it's a badge of honor" that senior PR people "don't have to deal with reporters."

We asked several PR firms why their people don't have the oldtime expense accounts and we were told that clients as well as ad agency parent companies watch every penny that is spent. But we also know that the big PR firms are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on ad campaigns in the same trade publications that give them awards.

We agree that there are many lowly paid young women toiling in the PR field. Pay is not good in the first few years of PR because of the large number of people seeking jobs. New York PR entrepreneur Lizzie Grubman told the Nov. 20, 2000 New York she gets 100 resumes a week from "aspiring PR pros." However, at the mid and senior levels, the evidence from recruiters (page 7) and elsewhere is that PR women and men today are getting equal pay and titles. One problem with Women in PR is that many of its pay charts are five and ten years old. A 1995 study of 207 PRSA members quoted in the book found women make 95% of what men make.

An important point made in the book is that PR has become "marginalized" and that "PR for PR" is needed. We'll use stronger words. PR "flipped" about ten years ago from being independent and intellectual to being dominated by marketing. PR pros, like security analysts, became salespeople instead of objective sources of information. PR lost its nerve (or "soul," as the Eastern Europeans put it). This happened about the time women became dominant (in numbers) in PR and when ad agencies started buying out the field. No doubt other factors are involved. PR needs to know how to win back its independence.

The number of association mergers will "increase dramatically" in the next several years, says an article in Executive Update which we think the leaders and members of PRSA and IABC should read closely (page 7). The groups tried hard but failed a merger attempt in 1987-88 but today is different. The Internet, with its vast array of free offerings, is both a huge competitor to the groups and an opportunity. Both groups have valuable databases (Silver Anvil case histories at PRSA and monographs at IABC) that could generate a sizable income if marketed jointly. There could be many other savings. Perhaps even a "PR for PR" campaign could be mounted. Members of the two groups are not too happy these days because of financial mismanagement at both, failure to communicate with members, and undemocratic election procedures.