SALERNO IS OUT IN 'SHOCKER AT MAGNET

Dave Kratz, 43, has been named CEO of Magnet Communications succeeding Darryl Salerno, 48, who held the post since Magnet's formation a year ago.

He reports to Patrick Lemarchand, CEO of Havas Advertising's Diversified Agencies Group.

Salerno's ouster "came as a complete shock to the entire staff," one Magnet executive told this NL.

Kratz, who had headed Magnet's PR division, is "not doing interviews at this time," said Sandra Sokoloff, a spokesperson for the firm. The firm released a statement from Kratz, a lawyer, in which he said he planned to build upon Magnet's strong foundation of talent, resources and
clients to propel the agency to the next level. There was no mention of Salerno.

The new Magnet CEO founded Kratz & Co. in 1984. It was renamed Kratz & Jensen in 1997.

Magnet was formed via the merger of K&J, Creamer Dickson Basford, Capstone Comms. and ACG Comms. It has 200 staffers and eight offices.

Lemarchand, in a statement, praised Salerno as being "instrumental in the creation of Magnet."

C&W ACQUIRES SPRINGBOK, 65 STAFFERS

Cohn & Wolfe has acquired Springbok Technologies, which is Texas leading high-tech firm with fees in the $10 million range, according to Steve Aiello, C&W s CEO.

Glenn Abel, Springbok s CEO, is a former journalist who counts media relations as an important ingredient to PR. Aiello said he met Abel about a year ago, and was impressed with his creativity and solid reputation in the tech arena.

Joe Lockhart, President Clinton's press secretary, has resigned his post as PR advisor to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. He joined Oracle last November... Ann Wool, EVP in Edelman PR Worldwide s sports unit, is now responsible for building the Ketchum Sports Network. Her father, Michael Morley, is Edelman s deputy chairman/int'l pperations... John Gibbons, a former press secretary at the Dept. of Health and Human Services and SVP at Powell Tate, is now Burson-Marsteller s healthcare market leader in Washington, D.C... Fred Du Val is leaving Hill and Knowlton/D.C., to return to Arizona to run for Congress. He also has set up Du Val & Assocs., a PA firm... Edward von Kloberg, the legendary counselor to foreign governments, is honored as a Rwandan Lion by King Kigeli V on May 30.

ASTA TRAVELS TO SPRING, O BRIEN

The American Society of Travel Agents has awarded its six-figure PR account to Spring, O Brien, New York, according to Chris Spring, president.

KWE Assocs. had the business for about three years, said Victoria Feldman, president of KWE.

Martin PR, which is now Slay PR, also pitched. Spring said a key message for ASTA will be pushing for passage of the Air Travelers Bill of Rights.

SO has had an advertising relationship with ASTA.

VP David Kleinman will oversee the ASTA biz.

OMC AVOIDS TOPIC OF DEBT AT MEETING

Omnicom executives painted a rosy picture of the ad conglomerate's finances at an annual meeting that lasted 15 minutes May 21 but wouldn't discuss debt.

Chairman and CEO John Wren said 2000 was "a great year, a record-breaking year," and that 2001 would be another year of record growth. He pointed out that OMC scores high in the "most admired" rankings published by Fortune magazine.

CFO Randall Weisenburger said 2000 was the 13th straight year of revenue and profit growth and that PR accounts for about 15% of revenues while ads account for 44%. PR has been growing faster than ads. (24.6% vs. 13.5%).

Jack O'Dwyer, editor of this NL and an OMC stockholder (forced to buy stock in order to attend an OMC meeting several years ago), asked why Wren and Weisenburger only mentioned revenues and profits and not debt.

OMC's longterm debt as of March 31 was $1.05 billion vs. $263 million at the end of 1999. In addition, its convertible deventures soared to $1.07B from $229M at the end of 2000 for a total debt of at least $2.27B (including $143M in bank loans). O'Dwyer said that while revenues went to $6.1B in 2000 from $5.1B the year before, debt appears to have increased at least $1.5B.

OMC Floats 'LYONSs' Form of Debt

He also asked for an explanation of $850M in "Liquid Yield Option Notes" that were offered in February by OMC (netting $830M). Neither Wren, Crawford nor Weisenburger answered the question.

A broker told this NL that LYONs are a type of zero-interest convertible bond created by Merrill Lynch. "It's a cheap way to borrow money but can be costly if the stock dips," the broker said. Conversion of the debt into stock dilutes the stock.

(continued on page 7)

PRIVATE FOUNDATIONS MAKE NEWS

Private foundations are using their tax-sheltered billions to get selected messages in strategic places, most notably in news stories, according to a study conducted by the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Rick Edmonds, who helped conduct the study, said several financially strapped magazines have "doubled their editorial budgets and mortgaged a year's worth of cover stories in striking a deal to publish a foundation-underwritten mega-series."

Edmonds said the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation of Menlo Park, Calif., and the Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia, and other foundations have been able in recent years to establish a "significant beachhead" in serious journalism and in some unexpected places such as Glamour magazine and on MTV, which have been all but unnoticed.

The Foundation Center estimates total grants for film, communications, and media at almost $400 million for the most recent year measured, 1999.

The Kaiser Foundation has embarked on a program that has "spun a whole web of relationship with media," according to Edmonds.

Under the leadership of Harvard professor Hale Champion, the Kaiser board decided to narrow its focus radically to health communications, specifically to providing information that would help shape health policy, he said.

"'Grantees' have given way to 'collaborator' in the Kaiser lexicon--and some of those collaborators at any given time are working news people," according to Edmonds.

At the high volume end of Kaiser programs is the double-barreled relationship with "ER," the nation' s top-rated TV drama.

"One of the show's chief writers, Neal Baer, a physician and public health policy buff, has been consulting with Kaiser since early in the show's run to beef up the verisimilitude of ER scripts with timely references to new medical findings or healthcare issues of the day," said Edmonds.

On a more modest scale, Kaiser offers "mini-fellowships" for health reporting. The grants--typically $5,000 for newspapers and $10,000 for broadcast--are for a specific reporter to develop an agreed upon topic, usually for his or her regular employer.

CORP. PR PROS SHOULD HAVE MORE SAY

Alan Towers, president of TowersGroup, a New York-based PR firm, said corporate PR people have all the responsibility for protecting their company's reputation but little influence over the policies and behavior that create reputation.

In a speech at the Conference Board s 2001 Corporate Communications Conference that was held May 22 in New York, Towers said PR pros have to win back the job of reputation management from the branding and identity firms "that have taken over our turf because they re seen as more
strategic.

"If we want to restrict ourselves to being communicators, we don t need a role in shaping corporate behavior. But if we want to manage reputation, we have to influence what our
companies do, not just what they say," said Towers.

NAVY CARRIER IS USED FOR MOVIE EVENT

Disney premiered its new movie, "Pearl Harbor," aboard the nuclear-powered carrier, USS John C. Stennis.

Most of the $5 million premier party was paid for by Disney, but the carrier was provided at the Navy's expense.

More than 2,000 people attended the May 21 gala on the 1,092-foot flight deck, where a grandstand was erected in front of a giant open-air theater for the premier-showing of the epic movie, which tells the story of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor through the lives of two U.S. fighter pilots.

The carrier, which was moored near the underwater graves of the battle it recalls, sailed into Pearl Harbor after a six-day trip from San Diego.

The New York Times said the cost of keeping an aircraft carrier at sea runs about half a million dollars a day.

Although the armed services have a long history of helping Hollywood make films and TV programs the Pentagon deems beneficial to its image, the Navy has stopped inviting civilians to come aboard its vessels since the sinking last February of a Japanese fishing boat by the USS Greenville.

Pentagon officials believe the news coverage of the Stennis and the week of events around the premier will be beneficial for the Navy. That kind of publicity is good for morale and recruiting, the Navy contends.

SPACE STUNT GETS NEWS COVERAGE

Pizza Hut recently served "oven-fresh" pizza to the Russian cosmonauts on board the International Space Station as a publicity stunt.

The six-inch pizza was vacuum-sealed and sent to space in March aboard a Russian rocket assigned to resupply the space station.

A tape showing Yuri Usachov, commander of the station, eating the pizza, was shipped back to earth by rocket and delivered to news outlets by Pizza Hut s PR representatives.

The company reportedly paid about $1 million for the stunt and to emblazon a 30-foot tall Pizza Hut logo on a Russion proton rocket in July 2000.

H&K SPONSORS PR PUBLICATION

Hill and Knowlton is the sponsor of the spring edition of the Journal of Integrated Communications, which is published by the integrated marketing communications graduate
program at Northwestern Univ. s Medill school of journalism.

The special issue, which celebrates the Journal s 10th year of publication, is entitled "Defining IMC: Voices In Time."

N.Y. TIMES NAMES NEW EXEC. EDITOR

Howell Raines, who is editorial page editor of The New York Times, will become executive editor in September.

Raines, 58, succeeds Joseph Lelyveld, 64, who will step down after seven years as executive editor, a period in which the paper has won 12 Pulitzer Prizes, introduced run-of-press color to its pages, added new sections, and expanded its national circulation.

Lelyveld is seven months shy of the Times mandatory retirement age for top executives.

A replacement for Raines, who oversees the op-ed page and letters to the editor, was not named.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the Times, said Bill Keller, who has been managing editor, the second-ranking newsroom executive, had been a candidate to succeed Lelyveld. He said Keller will continue as managing editor until September when he will get a new position in the company.

WALD NAMED EXEC. PRODUCER OF 'TODAY'

Jonathan Wald was named executive producer of NBC's "Today" show, replacing Jeff Zucker, who left to become president of NBC Entertainment.

Wald, who has been executive producer for "NBC Nightly News" since August, started his new job on May 21.

He sees no problem in bringing his hard news background to "Today's" magazine-style format.

The first hour of the show, which has expanded to three hours, will be as hard as any news show on TV, said Wald.

Steve Capus, the executive producer of MSNBC's "The News With Brian Williams," has replaced Wald at "Nightly News," and David Corvo is the new executive producer of "Dateline NBC."

PEOPLE _____________________

The San Francisco Chronicle has named five new editors:
Narda Zacchino, 54, was named senior editor after more than 30 years as a reporter and editor at The Los Angeles Times.

Andrew Ross, 55, the co-founder of Salon.com and its first managing editor, was named associate editor of content.

Ken Altine, 39, will become editor of The Sunday Chronicle. He had been a consultant for the paper the past six months and was interim business editor.

Mi-Ai Parrish, 30, who was previously Sunday editor of The Arizona Republic before becoming deputy managing editor for features, was named associate editor of the Sunday Chronicle.

Kenneth Howe, 50, was named business editor. He has been a business reporter at the paper for 14 years.

Sharon Crenson, a reporter for The Associated Press, in New York, was appointed a national writer for investigations.

THIRD DENVER DAILY DEBUTS

The Denver Daily News has begun publishing as a free tabloid newspaper.

Mike Kirschbaum is publisher and editor of the new paper, which has three employees working out of an office near downtown.

The other two dailies - The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News - formed a joint operating agency in January. They began a new publishing schedule on April 7: The News publishes alone on Saturdays and the Post publishes alone on Sundays.

PLACEMENT TIPS __________________

Healthy Traveler, which is a column in National Geographic Traveler magazine, will be published as a quarterly supplement.

The first issue will be polybagged with all 715,000 newsstand and subscription copies of NG Traveler s Jan./Feb. number.

The supplement will cover health concerns and offer safety tips for readers traveling abroad.

Keith Bellows, editor, is spearheading the new publication. He is based in Washington, D.C.

Most of the editorial content will be produced by freelancers.

George Stone will continue to write the Healthy Traveler column.

HT will be published with a single sponsor. United Healthcare is sponsoring the first issue. The insurance company s medical-research team will serve as the publication s advisory board.

Jeff Greenfield will host a new TV talk show on CNN, called "Greenfield at Large," in which he will talk with people from all walks of life musicians, business people, atheletes, teachers, etc.
about a range of issues from politics to culture.

The new show, which is scheduled to start June 4 in the 10:30 p.m. slot, will replace "The Spin Room," a half-hour political show featuring liberal Bill Press and conservative Tucker Carlson,
who will continue to appear on "Crossfire" and "Inside Politics."

Sree Sreenivasan wants to get information about computers and new high-tech gadgets for his weekly segment on "Eyewitness News This Morning," which airs on WABC s Channel 7 station
in New York.

Sreenivasan, who is an associate professor at Columbia Univ.'s graduate school of journalism, shares his insights on what is the best and what is best left on the shelf every Thursday.

He also writes about high tech for several publications, including Times Digital, The New York Times, Business Week, and India Today.
He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected].

(Media news continued on next page)

SABEW PRESIDENT BACKS REGULATION FD

Bill Barnhart, financial columnist for The Chicago Tribune, is opposed to any watering- down or repeal of Regulation Fair Disclosure.

"Regulation FD is the investor's friend," said Barnhart, who was just elected president of the 3,300-member Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

Barnhart said the rule, which was implemented last fall, has "sparked a boom" in publicly accessible conference calls, which formerly were closed to average investors, and it has forced professional stock analysts to conduct "genuine research instead of sitting like lap dogs at the feet of companies."

He opposes a view expressed by James Glassman of the American Enterprise Institute, who testified on May 17 at a House subcommittee hearing.

Glassman, a former business writer for The Washington Post, said, "Since the regulation was enacted, the volatility of markets has increased making them scarier places for the public and increasing the cost of capital for corporations."

Barnhart said no evidence supports this view. "Volatility in the stock market has declined dramatically since March, as represented by intraday and daily price movements and share volume," said Barnhart, who noted the Nasdaq volatility index hit a 52-week low on May 17 at the Chicago Board Options Exchange.

Barnhart said the "substantial April/May rally, which has put the Dow just 500 points from its all-time high, has occurred in the midst of proliferating public conference calls and other Reg FD- inspired company communications with shareholders."

Tom Gardner, co-founder of The Motley Fool investor service and a pro-investor witness at the hearing, asked: "If a company releases bad news simultaneously to everyone and its stock falls from $30 to $25, is this any more volatile than if the company had selectively released information to professionals on Wall Street, who dropped the stock from $30 to $27, and then released the information to the public, who sold it down to $25?"

CNN LETS DOBBS ACCEPT SPEECH GIGS

Lou Dobbs, who recently returned as the anchor of CNN s "Moneyline," will be allowed by CNN to give paid speeches to groups.

Although CNN has a rule that says news people cannot make paid speeches if they are "funded by an association or group you report on," a CNN spokeswoman said an exception has been made for Dobbs because he made the speaking commitments prior to his return to CNN.

Dobbs spoke at a gathering last week of top Ford Motor executives and dealers at Amelia Island, Fla. It was reported he got at least the $30,000 fee offered to other speakers.

Dobbs said he will donate all of his speaking fees to charity.

He was reprimanded by CNN in 1992 for making promotional videos for three Wall Street firms, and he agreed to return the more than $150,000 he got for the outside work.

REPORTER AND PAPER SETTLE CHARGES

The San Jose Mercury News and Chris Nolan, a business reporter who was demoted after trading in a Silicon Valley company, have settled charges she brought against the paper.

Terms of the settlement, reached May 11, were not disclosed.

Nolan, who had filed labor grievance and sex discrimination charges, eventually left the Mercury News for The New York Post, where she now has a Silicon Valley column.

In 1999, Nolan bought 500 shares of Autoweb.com at the initial offering price under a "friends and family" allotment not available to the public. Nolan, a friend of the company s CEO, eventually sold her shares and made about $9,000.

Nolan said she told editors about the deal before and after she sold the stock, and no one disapproved. After The Wall Street Journal reported on the trade, Nolan was demoted and
accused of violating the paper s ethics policy, which prohits business reporters from investing in local companies.

PLACEMENT TIPS ___________________

Business Week and Golf Digest editors wll co-produce a series of editorial supplements for distribution to upper income subscribers of both magazines.

The first project in the "Golf & The Good Life" series will be "A Financial Guide to Buying Your Dream Golf Home."

The supplement will run in the Nov. 19th issue of BW and December issue of GD with a combined print circulation of 1,050,000.

CNBC has expanded "Business Center" to two hours. The show, which averages 320,000 viewers a night, has moved its starting time up 30 minutes and airs from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. (EDT) on weeknights.

"Moneyline," which averages 258,000 viewers, is on from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

BOSTON GLOBE CLOSES BUREAU/SECTION

The Boston Globe is closing its Manchester, N.H., bureau and halting publication of its Sunday New Hampshire news section.

The last issue of the weekly section will be published June 24.

Beginning July 1, the Globe will provide expanded versions of its North Weekly and North West Weekly sections with at least a page devoted to New Hampshire news.

The Globe is owned by The New York Times Co.

OMC AVOIDS DEBT TOPIC (cont d from p. 1)

The OMC LYONS are convertible at $110 a share (OMC is now around $94), after Feb. 7, 2002. Companies resort to such bonds when other forms of borrowing may be closed to them or are too expensive. Fears of a recession have made some lenders cautious. Media researcher Jack Myers has forecast a tiny 0.2% growth in ad spending for 2002.

Instead of paying about $60M a year in interest on $850M in debt, OMC pays nothing, thus conserving its cash. But OMC can deduct the "imputed" $60M in interest from its earnings each year, thus saving about $24M (since its tax rate is 40%).

A recent column in the New York Times by Floyd Norris said that by "carefully manipulating" the terms of zero-interest bonds, some companies may not have to include the shares they will issue when calculating per-share earnings even when the stock price has risen past the conversion price.

Norris quoted Jonathan Glaser of JMG Capital Partners as saying that if the stock of a zero-bond should fall, "potentially it's a death spiral." A company might have to borrow again just when its finances are most troubled, he told Norris.

Intangibles Rise to $2.9B

OMC's "intangibles" have also soared in recent years, because of its numerous acquisitions, and represent a drain on net because they have to be deducted from earnings at the rate of 2.5% each year with no deduction from taxes.

Intangibles, representing the amount paid for acquisitions over book value, rose from $1 billion in 1996 to $2.9B as of March 31. OMC amortized $58.3M in intangibles in 2000.

The size of the intangibles means that OMC had a negative tangible net equity of $1.4B on March 31.

Insider Sales Top Purchases

O'Dwyer also asked why, if the future is so rosy for OMC, insiders have sold, or offered for sale, about $26M in OMC stock but have purchased only $1.6M since Jan. 1, 2001. From September 1999 to August 2000 OMC insiders sold $47.9M of OMC stock while buying only $4.7M, a ten-to-one ratio of sales to purchases. The question was not answered.

Wren, in reply to another O'Dwyer question, said OMC has not to his knowledge been made part of the lawsuits that charged insiders at Razorfish.com improperly sold stock. OMC, a major owner of Razorfish, sold about $135M of the stock just before its price collapsed last year.

O'Dwyer told the meeting he feels OMC, Interpublic and WPP Group are violating at least the spirit and possibly the letter of the law of Fair Disclosure passed last October by the SEC by not providing reporters with the same access to executives that analysts have.

The rule was passed, said O'Dwyer, because analysts have shown themselves to be under too much influence by the companies they are analyzing, resulting in only one percent of their recommendations being negative. Fortune, the New York Times, New Yorker, USA Today and "60 Minutes II" have all condemned the loss of independence by the analysts, he
noted. No material facts may be given to security analysts that are not also given to the press and public.

O'Dwyer said that OMC, by having no PR for itself, is saying this function is not worth having while at the same time it is trying to sell the function to companies and institutions throughout the world. "You're saying by your actions that the best thing to do with the press is avoid it...you're not taking your own advice," he said.

O'Dwyer said that the annual report only states that OMC paid $849.8M for acquisitions in 2000 but does not identify any of them. "How do we know what you're buying, it could be a brick factory?" said O Dwyer.

Crawford replied that OMC's acquisitions are announced throughout the year in the trade press and are not a secret.

Wren, asked what firms OMC could buy now that there are almost no sizable independent ad agencies or PR firms left, said that OMC has 33 different "platforms" that can make acquisitions in various fields.

F-H GRABS FIVE 'BIG APPLES

Fleishman-Hillard was the big winner at PRSA/New York's Big Apple Awards luncheon held May 22, grabbing five awards including best of show honors.

The "Best of the Big Apples" award was for work on behalf of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

The "Sing for a Cure" campaign used music to build awareness of the extent of breast cancer, and encouraged support into its treatment.

Other F-H winners were programs for Barclay's Global Investors (marketing communications support of new products);Yahoo! (marketing for existing technology); American Assn. of Clinical Endocrinologists (special events or observances: more than seven days), and AstraZeneca (interactive technology).

PRSA/NY awarded two Big Apples each to seven PR firms. They included Burson-Marsteller, Hunter PR, Ketchum, Patrice Tanaka & Co., PepperCom, Porter Novelli and Ruder Finn.

COLUMNIST SOLICITS PR PROPOSALS

Washington Post columnist Bob Levey has asked readers to recommend ways in which the New Jersey Turnpike's image can be improved.

Levey said the superhighway, which will celebrate its 50th birthday this November, has "PR problems that it has never even dented, much less resolved.

"The NJT has been mocked and insulted to a fare-thee-well. In its next 50 years of life, it needs to fight back," said Levey.

"So from the land where spin was invented, I invite Washingtonians to help retool the NJT's image," said Levey, who asked readers to e-mail him their PR suggestions to
[email protected], or fax at 202/334-5150.

PR OPINION/ITEMS

Omnicom's displeasure with being covered by the press reached unacceptable proportions with its refusal to explain the $850 million in "Liquid Yield Option Notes" that it sold (page one).

Two of our CPA friends hadn' heard of such instruments and neither did a PR staffer who has been at the American Institute of CPAs five years.

Our broker knew about them and said it's a "zero-coupon bond with a lot of moving parts."

OMC doesn' have to pay the interest on the loan immediately but can deduct the "phantom" interest (the interest it would have paid) from its earnings, saving on taxes. Eventually, however, the piper must be paid, and bigtime if the stock should drop.

OMC' refusal to explain LYONs shows the disdain it has for the teaching/explaining function of the press.

That OMC executives should have any influence whatsoever over tens of billions of ads placed in news gathering media is frightening. WPP Group and Interpublic, the other two in the "top 3 ad conglomerates," have similar attitudes towards the press. The top nine ad agencies now control upwards of 75% of all ads placed in the U.S. and worldwide based on Advertising Age statistics.

The conglomerates have been able to enforce rigid secrecy until now but several things have changed.

One is that the new law of the land is that reporters must get the same information, at the same time, as analysts. We interpret this to mean that reporters should have the same access to top management as analysts in order to make judgments of the personalities and character of the executives. Reporters should also be able to pose questions on conference calls.

Based on the conference calls we've recently listened in to, most of the analysts questions are soft balls or requests for "earnings guidance." Reporters would ask a completely different set of questions and would pursue answers with much more gusto. The reporters would not be there to sell investment banking services, as some of the analysts admittedly are.

A second development is that by now, there are hardly any sizable ad agencies or PR firms left to buy (unless the firms buy each other). John Wren, CEO of OMC, answering this objection, says it has 33 "platforms" from which to buy companies. The history of conglomerates is that managing so many different types of businesses becomes too difficult and time-consuming for even the most far-ranging executives. A third problem is that adland is facing the first recession in many years. An almost flat 2002 for ad spending is being predicted. Ad stocks have been high-flyers with price/earnings ratios of 38-40. The 500 Standard & Poor's are down in the 20's. In any market slide, the high P/E stocks fall the fastest and the farthest.

One might ask, just what is wrong with a few ad agencies controlling most of the ad purchases in the U.S.? For one thing, when advertisers feel they're being treated unfairly, they cancel their ads. Two chains have pulled ads from the New York News after it reported that 331 of 610 supermarkets failed cleanliness tests. What media will risk offending conglomerates of hundreds of ad agencies? We have never seen any general media tackle the story of the concentration of ad buying power in a few hands.

OMC says it doesn't have PR because it can t afford it, staff costs are kept to the bone, etc. A stockholder at the annual meeting May 22 held up the annual report of WPP and asked why OMC could not have put some color pictures and art in its report as was done by WPP. Chairman Bruce Crawford said OMC used to do that but found it cheaper to put out a barebones report. Coffee and water was served but, unlike last year, no pastries. An O'Dwyer reporter, who arrived early, was just about to take a pastry from a large tray of them when an OMC employee swooped by and said he couldn't have one. The tray was taken to a nearby conference room where OMC's directors met after the meeting.

The asceticism of the OMC offices is being practiced by executives who are themselves almost unimaginably rich. CEO John Wren's stock is worth $163 million; BBDO CEO Allen
Rosenshine's, $129M; DDB CEO Keith Reinhard's, $82M; BBDO CFO James Cannon's, $40M, and Crawford's, $32M. In addition, Wren, Reinhard and Rosenshine each got salaries and bonuses in 2000 of $3M+; Thomas Harrison, CEO of Diversified Agency Services, got $2.1M and Peter Mead, vice chairman of OMC, got $2.1M. But OMC can't afford a PR pro, an annual report with pictures, nor pastries for the annual meeting.

OMC's anti-press policies are especially odd since two of its outside directors have media backgrounds. John R. "Reg" Murphy is vice chairman of National Geographic and was publisher of the Baltimore Sun from 1981-92 and editor and publisher of the San Francisco Examiner from 1975-81. Linda Johnson Rice is president and COO, Johnson Publishing, Chicago, publishers of Ebony and Jet and the largest black-owned publishing firm in the U.S.