H&K EDGES EDELMAN, RF FOR FACTIVA

Hill and Knowlton will position Factiva, the Dow Jones/Reuters web-based news and information service, as more than just a "gee whiz" technology powerhouse, according to Vince Hulbert, deputy director of the firm's corporate/financial practice in New York.

Patricia Bridges, VP-global PR at Factiva, said she considered seven firms for the mid six-figure account. She liked H&K because of its "experience in repositioning other companies, team approach, global reach and excellent presentation skills." Ruder Finn and incumbent Edelman PR Worldwide were the other finalists.

H&K will largely operate in the U.S. and the U.K. but Bridges said the firm may also handle projects in other countries. Factiva publishes information in 22 languages.

Hulbert said Factiva has received a "lot of credit for its technology in trade publications." The idea now is to "spur a dialog with the business media about the value of Factiva's information."

Eight H&K staffers will work with Hulbert on the account, including Ted Graham, the firm's chief knowledge officer in Toronto, and Sarah Arnott, senior account director in London.

DKC NAMES AD EXEC AS COO

New York-based Dan Klores Communications has hired Luana Floccuzio as COO. She had headed local and New York marketing and advertising teams for NW Ayer & Partners since 1999.

DKC president Dan Klores said Floccuzio will focus on "strategic communications and marketing integration" for consumer brand and corporate clients.

Floccuzio, who was previously a director on General Motors' corporate ad and marketing unit, began her career with GM in 1980 as an engineering intern.

Washington Mutual, Seattle, which recently acquired the 123 branches of Dime Bancorp in the New York area, named Andrew Edson & Assocs. for PR in partnership with Manning, Selvage & Lee. WM has $242 billion in assets and is the largest U.S. mortgage company. Also competing were KCSA PR, Geduldig & Ferguson and Margeotes Fertitta... Qorvis Comms. picked up The Advisory Board Co., a for-profit healthcare think tank, for IR duties. TABC chairman David Bradley owns the National Journal and Atlantic Monthly.

VINES, LIEBLER JOIN STRAT@COMM

Jason Vines and Arthur "Bud" Liebler, VP-communications at Ford Motor and DaimlerChrysler, respectively, have been hired by Washington, D.C.-based Strat@comm. They join Bruce MacDonald, who was VP-communications at General Motors and Saturn, in Strat@comm's Detroit office.

Vines was Ford's point man during the Firestone crisis. Liebler helped create the corporate folk hero image of Chrysler's former CEO Lee Iacocca.
Strat@comm founder Jeff Conley said both Vines and Liebler managed their companies through "good times and bad."

He noted that Strat@comm is the first PR firm to bring the expertise of the Big Three automakers "under one roof."

U.S. STEEL RETAINS EX-CLINTON AIDE

U.S. Steel has hired The Glover Park Group's Joe Lockhart to help spearhead its aggressive $3 million lobbying campaign to push for a $12 billion federal bailout of employee retirement benefits and up to 40 percent tariffs on imports, which would raise the price of every auto and refrigerator sold in the U.S., according to The New York Times.

USS CEO Tom Usher warns that if the industry does not get relief, it will have to eliminate up to 60,000 steelworker jobs.

Lockhart was President Clinton's press secretary and a former senior VP at Robinson Lerer Sawyer Miller.

The Emergency Committee for American Trade, a coalition of steel users, opposes increases on tariffs.

OGILVY BECOMES PLAYER IN JAPAN

Ogilvy PR Worldwide has acquired a big stake in PRAP Japan, the country's biggest international PR firm, Matthew Anderson, Ogilvy's Asia Pacific president, told this NL. He said the firm has more than 200 employees and fees in excess of $15 million.

PRAP is noted for consumer PR, media relations and crisis expertise. It has a "good balance" between domestic and international clients, noted Anderson. "Most global PR firms operating in Japan get only scraps of business from Japanese companies," he said. Sony, Hitachi, Mikimoto and department store operator Takashimaya rely on PRAP for PR. British Airways, General Electric Medical, Levi Strauss, Nike and Pfizer also use PRAP.

PRSA WILL INTERVIEW CPA FIRMS

PR Society of America said it will interview CPA firms, including smaller and medium-sized firms, once Deloitte & Touche completes its current audit around April.

D&T, which was paid $55,000 in 2000 and $54,000 the year before, has been PRSA's auditors since 1992, when it replaced Ernst & Young.

Indications are that the Society will avoid a "Big Five" accounting firm in choosing a new CPA. D&T will be allowed to bid on the new contract.

PRSA members have been complaining for many years about the late financial reports provided by D&T but Society leaders have said the accounting firm was busy with its blue chip customers in the spring and gave PRSA a lower rate as long as the Society did not mind waiting for the report.

The National IR Institute, whose year also ends Dec. 31, uses a local Washington, D.C., area firm which has the audit ready in February each year.

PRSA members usually get the financial results of the previous year in mid-summer, after they have been reviewed by the board and finance committee.

Members Had Been Misled

There's no indication of dissatisfaction with D&T but it's also true that members had been misled about the 2000 fiscal year.

Leaders had predicted a profit of $3,000 for 2000 but this turned into a loss of $678,893.

John Colletti, a Certified Management Accountant, joined the staff in 2000 after working on a project basis at PRSA. He was with Resources Connection, a spin-off of D&T.

With Colletti working on "cleaning up the books," it was discovered that PRSA had not been paying the proper taxes on advertising and other income.
D&T is also the CPA for the International Assn. of Business Communicators.

The Dec. 14, 1999 Forbes rapped D&T in a cover story entitled, "Tax Shelter Hustlers."

The first paragraph of the nine-page expose reprinted a D&T pitch letter to companies promising to eliminate federal and state income taxes for up to five years with D&T getting 30% of the savings.

Forbes said hugely complex tax shelters that skirt illegality are being created by the big accounting firms. It takes years for the SEC and other government bodies to figure out the complex tax-avoidance schemes, the story said. If caught, the offending companies merely pay the taxes they should have so they don't have much to lose in pursuing such schemes, said the magazine.

BELLSOUTH DOWNPLAYS EARNINGS DROP

The Jan. 22 BellSouth Q4 "earnings" report headlines a gain in data revenues, DSL customers and broadband coverage and partially reports the actual per share earnings in the second paragraph of the release.

The actual earnings for the quarter are not reported until the end of the ninth paragraph or 60 lines into the release.

BLS earnings fell 29% to $792 million, or 42 cents a share, from $1.12 billion, or 59 cents.

The BLS release, via PR Newswire, reports "normalized" earnings of 63 cents in the quarter vs. 59 cents in the year earlier quarter.

Subhead on the release says data revenues grew 25%; DSL customers reach 620,500, and broadband coverage reaches 70% of households.

Reuters reported BellSouth's earnings as a 29 percent profit "stumble."

Nancy Humphries, VP-IR of BLS and a national board member of the National Investor Relations Institute, could not be reached for comment.

Jeff Battcher, director of corporate communications of BLS, said he didn't think the company was "misrepresenting its earnings at all."

He said "They're clean, forthright and understandable."

Douglas Parrillo, PR counsel to NIRI, when asked about the BLS earnings report, said NIRI does not comment on reports by individual companies.

Ten of the 14 companies represented on the NIRI national board did not report actual earnings in the third quarter in the opening sentence of their earnings releases.

The NIRI booklet, "Standards of Practice for IR," says that companies should be committed to "full, fair, and consistent disclosure" and should "maintain realistic investor expectations..."

NIRI Members Like Pro Forma Reporting

Fifty-seven percent of 233 NIRI companies said they used the controversial pro forma earnings in their third-quarter news releases, according to a survey conducted by the group.

The Securities and Exchange Commission warned investors in December to display a "healthy skepticism" toward pro forma numbers.

Seventy-five percent of members that use pro forma numbers told NIRI that they included a narrative in the news release to detail how those numbers differ from generally accepted accounting principals.

The terms used to identify other-than-GAAP measures include "including, excluding, includes, excludes (used by 32.3 percent of respondents), "pro forma" (12.5 percent), "EBITDA, EBDADT, pro forma EBITDA (11.3 percent), "before, after" (8.9 percent), "operations, operating" (8.9 percent), "continuing" (7.7 percent), and "cash basis, cash EPS, cash flow," (4.4 percent).

Other terms include: "noncash," "recurring, nonrecurring," "core," "special," "extraordinary," "funds from operations," "discontinued," "normalized," "actual," "benefited from" and "underlying."

Of 90 companies surveyed that had market capitalizations over $1.5 billion, 78 percent of those used pro forma numbers, while only 44 percent of companies under $1.5 billion used pro forma figures.

EDITOR LOVES PR RELATIONSHIPS

Peg Tyre, general editor of Newsweek, said publicists' best hope for getting a cover story is by having a "long-term relationship" with a writer or editor.

Tyre, who was one of three weekly news editors to speak at a Publicity Club of New York luncheon on Jan. 23, got a jump on Valentine's Day by urging publicists to start a long-term affair with a news staffer.

Lisa Kovitz, a Burson-Marsteller media relations executive who moderated the panel, has a long-term relationship with Tyre. Kovitz said in her introduction that they have known each other since they were classmates in high school.

Tyre suggested sending handwritten, one-paragraph pitch notes on a regular basis as a way to cultivate the relationship over a period of time. "Think long term," she stressed.

"They may not read them all, but it doesn't matter. You want to develop a moment that can be shared, and it happens constantly in a long-term relationship with publicists," said Tyre, who added that a great line to use on journalists is to start off a note by saying: 'Hey, that was a great story you wrote about so and so.'"

Tyre prefers to get regular mail and doesn't open computer labeled envelopes. She also stressed the importance of publicists knowing "rudimentary facts" about their clients.

Tyre said Newsweek is undergoing changes in design, and is adding a new department, called "Focus," filled with more soft news items of interest.

"It will open up opportunities for quick hits," said Tyre, who advised the publicists to check the bylines appearing on the items in Focus and to "hammer them" with ideas.

The "Periscope" department, which will remain, will become "much newsier," she added.

Be Creative

Jack Curry, executive editor of USA Weekend, a Sunday supplement distributed by 580 newspapers, is willing to listen to publicists who offer a story that is different from what anyone else has done.

"Be creative," said Curry, whose challenge is to publish stories that are "different, better, and more special than what our papers can do."

He cited two recent examples. One was an anniversary article on Curious George, which he said was made different because the publicist provided some exclusive pictures. The other example was a cover story on the late race car driver Dale Earnhardt. What made this story special was it was written in the first person by Earnhardt's son.

Curry is also interested in discussing alliances with associations and corporations for coverage of events, and contest ideas.

USA Weekend's many contributing editors are "not directly pitchable." Curry told the publicists to get in touch with him, and he will pass the information along to the writer. He can be reached by phone (703/854-4519); fax (854-2122) or e-mail ([email protected]).

Philip Elmer-DeWitt, science editor of Time magazine, told the publicists he prefers to get e-mail inquiries and pitches. He gives the information to the appropriate staff reporter for follow up.

PLACEMENT TIPS

GCN Management will start publishing six times a year as a special section within the regular editions of Government Computer News on Feb. 18.

The section, which will be edited for an audience of top-level government executives and policy decision-makers, will provide analysis of the challenges of managing information technology in the public sector.

Kevin McCaney, who is assistant managing editor/features, is overseeing the new section. McCaney can be reached at the publication's editorial offices in Silver Spring, Md., at 301/650-2132.

Potomac Tech Journal, which was launched in January 2000, got its first formal feedback from readers in the form of a subscriber study conducted by Readex, an independent research company.

The study shows 46% of respondents identified the weekly paper as their primary source of local technology news. The Washington Post tied with "multiple sources" at 20% each.

PTJ was the first startup paper within American City Business Journals, which publishes the Washington Business Journal and 40 other business papers across the country.

Two new ACBJ papers, Dallas-Fort Worth Tech Biz and Front Range Tech Biz in Denver, have followed in PTJ's footsteps.

Bernard Dagenais is editor of PTJ, which is located in Arlington, Va. "If something happens that is truly important to a local technology company, we want to hear about it," said Dagenais, who can be reached at [email protected].

Redbook's new health editor, Emma Marlin, is the primary contact for all medical, health and fitness-related issues and news items. She can be reached at 212/649-3455.

Network Computing magazine, published by Manhasset, N.Y.-based CMP Media, will publish a new section, called "BuzzCut," in the Feb. 18 issue.

The section will feature analysis of the most important current industry events, according to Doug Barney, editor-in-chief of NC, who said BuzzCut will "tear through the hype and hyperbole, and bring readers the straight story, uncensored and undiluted."

New York magazine's publishing frequency will drop from 50 to 46 issues this year. The magazine, which is published by Primedia, will publish three "double issues" this summer, instead of two.

(Media news continued on next page)

NY FINANCIAL WRITERS IN THE RED IN 2001

The New York Financial Writers' Assn.'s year-end financial report reveals the association has $376,610 in the bank, but its expenses last year rose to $328,962, resulting in an overall net ordinary income loss of $28,802.

Members of the NYFWA got copies of the report, which covers a period from Feb. 1, 2001 through Jan. 22, 2002, at the annual meeting on Jan. 23.

One long-time member said it was the first time the association has showed an itemized breakdown of income and expenses. The NYFWA was founded in 1938.

The report shows the association's primary source of income is the Financial Follies, an annual event that grossed $223,045 in ticket sales and $24,450 in program ad revenue in 2001.

The Follies also accounted for NYFWA's largest single expense, totaling $203,921, with the Marriott Marquis hotel, where the dinner and show were held, getting $125,535. Fees for the orchestra were $17,825, while the music director and pianist got $14,500 and $4,899, respectively.

Other sources of income were derived by ticket sales to the Spring Dinner ($38,092), and membership dues ($10,560). Interest income from savings and checking accounts totaled $15,275.

The report indicates the association's new general manager, Jane Reilly, was paid $28,034, while the accountant's fees totaled $5,260.

A new slate of officers and directors were elected at the annual meeting.

Gene Smith of Utility Spotlight magazine, who was elected president, said his top priority is to increase membership and to get more committee volunteers.
Currently, the association has 317 members, which includes 228 active members, 43 associates, 40 life members and six students.

Last year, 42 new members joined, and 38 dropped out.

FINE LIVING WILL LAUNCH IN MARCH

Scripps Networks, which is owned by The E.W. Scripps Co., has created a magazine, TV network and website under the name of Fine Living.

The TV network and website (fineliving.com) will be launched on March 17. The network will reach more than five million subscribers in a distribution pack with Time Warner Cable.

The first issue of the monthly lifestyle magazine will be distributed to 1.3 million homes on Feb. 22.

Fine Living's programming categories will include segments on travel destinations, transportation, nutrition, adventure, design and architecture.

The magazine's content will complement both the network's programs and its website.

Scripps also operates Home & Garden TV Network, the DIY Network and the Food Network.

Stephanie Eno is program director for the TV show, and Maggie Simmons is editor-in-chief of the magazine.

Eno is based in Knoxville, Tenn., at 865/694-2700, and Simmons is located in New York at 22 W. 19th st.; 212/675-6699.

BLOOMBERG PLEDGES MORE OPENNESS

Michael Bloomberg, the new mayor of New York, told a group of black and Hispanic journalists he wants to make his administration more open and accessible.

"I would rather err on the side of openness," Bloomberg told the journalists, who were invited to a breakfast at Gracie Mansion last week, where he will not be staying.
"We should allow people to say what they want to, not stop them from voicing their views," said Bloomberg, who founded Bloomberg financial news information service.

The new mayor plans to invite other ethnic groups to meet with him and to keep an open door policy, in contrast to the previous administration, headed by Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

"I plan to meet once a month with different presses, particularly the smaller ones who rarely get an opportunity to ask questions when the major media are present."

MEDIA BRIEFS

The Reader's Digest Assn., and its custom publishing partner McMurry Publishing, have signed a five-year deal with Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. to publish its quarterly lifestyle magazine.

Stephanie Platt, who is VP of communications for Ritz-Carlton, which is headquartered in Atlanta, is editor-in-chief of the 50,000 circulation quarterly.

Pan American Airways has retained BBL Communications, an ad agency in Portsmouth, N.H., to relaunch Clipper magazine. BBL will publish the magazine on a bimonthly basis, launching its first edition in April 2002.

Pan Am, which is also headquartered in Portsmouth, operates scheduled 727 service out of Portsmouth to eight cities.

Talk magazine has suspended publication, effective with the February issue, currently on newsstands.

MOVED: Gannett/USA Today has moved into its new all-glass headquarters in Tysons Corner, Va. The new address is 7950 Jones Branch dr...New York 1 has moved its New York offices to 75 Ninth ave., 6th floor. 212/465-0111.

Martha Steffens was named the first chair in business and financial journalism at the Univ. of Missouri's School of Journalism in Columbia, Mo. Steffens had been executive editor of The San Francisco Examiner before becoming a media consultant.

'NANNY STATE' ACTIVISTS UNDER ATTACK

Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and The Center for Science in the Public Interest are initial targets of an ad campaign launched by the Center for Consumer Freedom to strike back at proponents of the "nanny state."

Bankrolled by the restaurant and food industry, the Center wants to out "food cops, healthcare enforcers, vegetarian activists and meddling bureaucrats" who use the media to issue dire warnings about health risks involved with either eating or drinking. It charges those groups with conspiring to restrict the public's food and beverage choices via "intimidation, taxation and misinformation."

The Center is an outgrowth of the Guest Choice Network. Mike Burita, communications director at the Center, told this NL his group wants to counter the "new left movement" propaganda that is reaching "deep into communities and homes."

Burita said the Center also follows the money trail of the nanny state. Its activistcash.com site monitors activities and cash received by more than 50 groups. The site tracks donations made to activist groups by more than 750 foundations. The goal, according to the site, is to dig up the dirt of the activist cash machine. Profiles of individual activists and favorite protests of celebrities are also listed.

NCAA OPPOSES ATHLETE UNIONIZATION

A move by the United Steelworkers Union to organize football and basketball players at major colleges was discussed Jan. 22 in New York by William Kirwan, chair of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.

Kirwan expressed strong opposition to the "pay for play" proposal, saying it is against the spirit of intercollegiate athletics.

College sports take in $3.6 billion but cost $4.6B, said Kirwan. Profits from football and basketball help pay for as many as 18 other sports for men and women in college, he told about ten reporters at a luncheon in the "21 Club" hosted by The Dilenschneider Group.

The steelworkers union has joined with current and former football players at the University of California/LA to organize the Collegiate Athletes Coalition.

They note the increase in TV money raised by college football and basketball, that some coaches are making $1 million a year, and that the NCAA has a poor record in court in defending its control of college sports.

Football and basketball players-while they receive free tuition, room and board-train and play at least 20 hours a week and many of them train throughout the year, say the steelworkers.

They make enormous profits for name schools but only a handful of the athletes ever make it to professional teams, says the USU. In 47 colleges, not a single one of the black athletes graduated from his or her school.

Graduation rates of Division I student-athletes is slightly higher than those of non-athletes (58% vs. 56%).

Kirwan, who is president of Ohio State University, said unionizing college athletes "would be the end of college athletics as we know it....unions have no place in the university environment."

He said he is concentrating on improving the academic performances of student athletes.

CATAN MAKES PITCH FOR RAGGEDY ANN

Catan Comms. has mounted a publicity campaign to get Raggedy Ann, the 86-year-old doll, inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, Salem, Ore.

United Media, one of the world's largest licensing companies, retained the New Jersey-based PR firm, which had handled the successful publicity campaign for Pets.com's Sock Puppet.

PR counselor Wayne Catan said one of the first charges was to gain exposure for Raggedy Ann's induction into the Toy Hall of Fame. "We got press in USA Today, CNN, New York Post, Boston Globe, Fox News and the Associated Press, so it was an auspicious beginning," said Catan.

"The campaign was created to get Raggedy Ann fans to sign a petition that will help push her into the Hall this year," he said. More than 8,000 supporters have signed a petition on the Internet at www.raggedyann-museum.org.

The inductees will be announced on March 27.

SNAPPLE DENIES OSAMA CONNECTION

Snapple, which claims its drinks are made with the 'best stuff on Earth,' is the target of rumors that it is connected with Osama bin Laden.

That's not so, Jack Belsito, CEO of the Snapple Beverage Group, tells visitors to the company's website. Snapple "never had any direct or indirect relationship with Osama bin Laden," says a letter from Belsito.

Furthermore, he stresses that Snapple has never had any contact with bin Laden's "network of terrorists or any other terrorist group." The letter's purpose is to "combat inaccurate rumors" in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. They claimed that Snapple was either owned by or associated with bin Laden.

Belsito notes that Snapple "has a zero-tolerance policy for any group or individual who persists in trafficking rumors of this kind for personal or professional gain."

He thanks "members of the media who were responsible enough to uncover and correct the libelous rumors about Snapple."

To Belsito: "Accurate reporting, especially during times like these, is critically important if Americans are to resume their normal everyday lives."

Snapple is a unit of Cadbury-Schweppes.

The company at one time used a Saudi Arabian distributor that was partly owned by The Saudi Binladin Group, which is the multi-billion dollar entity that is owned by Osama's family.

The high life style of Philip G. Potter, identified as a security analyst at Morgan Stanley, was described in the Oct. 20, 1997 New York Times.

He said he was an "uber-consumer," who bought $800 suits and had a $3,500 watch.

The next day he was fired.

An unidentified spokesman at Morgan confirmed the firing was related to the article. Morgan's Code of Conduct, the press noted, says: "You should not be identified as a Morgan Stanley employee or use the firm's name in any way without first clearing it with corporate communications."

A similar item appeared in the March 22, 1989 O'Dwyer NL. Johnny Thompson, VP-PR for Pillsbury, told reporters, "It ain't over 'til it's over," in discussing Grand Met's raid on Pillsbury.

He thought it was an innocuous quote.

But a Pillsbury lawyer bawled him out, saying, "We are not going to let this company go down the tubes because some stupid IR hack can't keep his mouth shut." Thompson resigned his job.

Jack Morris, VP-IR for Pillsbury, said a lawyer from Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom threatened "to jail me if I speak again." Morris also resigned.

There's no doubt a rigid silence is being enforced in the PR/IR community. The recent 5 to 10-year history is marked by a near absence of public speeches by PR/IR executives and is in contrast to the 1970s and '80s, when PR execs frequently released speech texts. The most speeches, by far, were made by Hill & Knowlton people including Loet Velmans, Tom Eidson, Richard Cheney, Robert Dilenschneider and many mid-level staffers. A 228-page collection of the speeches and monographs was published in 1976. H&K, in this manner, exercised PR leadership. Burson-Marsteller's Harold Burson spoke often.

We do not know of a single published speech by the top H&K executives, Howard Paster and Tom Hoog, in the past ten years. We asked someone at H&K to check this out but haven't heard back. Paster was President Clinton's top lobbyist and Hoog had his own lobbying firm. There is no one fully dedicated to "house" PR at H&K nor at any of the big PR firms. Except for an occasional speech by David Drobis of Ketchum or Richard Edelman, the firms are silent. Only two written speeches have come from the last three PRSA presidents, Kathy Lewton, Steve Pisinski, and Sam Waltz. Board members are permanently silenced.

What accounts for this eerie silence in the field of "communications?" "Lawyers!" was the common response of PR academics, journalists, and PR execs we talked to.

A journalist said that once an industry becomes owned by public companies, all communications are cut to the bone. This happened in the newspaper industry, he noted. Interpublic, Omnicom and WPP, the three biggest owners of PR, have no one on staff to take questions from reporters or chat with. An agency PR exec said all the PR CEOs care about today is the bottom line since, "if they don't make their numbers, they're out." IPG, OMC and WPP have a lot they don't want to talk about. With its recent borrowing of $500 million (it must pay back $650M), IPG's debt of $3.1 billion is approaching double its stockholders' equity of $1.8B. Its credit rating has been downgraded.

Another factor is the "one voice" philosophy. Members let their associations and coalitions of associations do their talking. The big PR firms have banded together in the Council of PR Firms and act through that.

With all the stories about false reporting and non-reporting of finances by Enron and its former CPA firm, Arthur Andersen, this would seem to be the chance for PR/IR industry trade groups to show good practices. Enron employed six PRSA members and two NIRI members. But IABC, whose year endedlast Sept. 30, is sitting on its numbers until sometime in February when its board meets. PRSA, backing away from previous quarterly reports, is making members wait until April or May for 2001 numbers. By then, the figures will be too old to be meaningful. Members need current bank balances, receivables, payables, etc., since leaders at both PRSA and IABC have misled members about finances in the recent past. NIRI directors continue to put out confusing "earnings" reports for their companies. BellSouth (NIRI director Nancy Humphries is VP-IR) downplayed a 29% Q4 earnings drop by headlining gains in data revenues. Although NIRI has numerous "professional development" courses, we don't think IR is a true profession. Nowhere in NIRI literature is there a statement that members serve the public interest first (the definition of a profession that is in our Unabridged Webster's Dictionary (3,000 pages). There's a lot about serving IR, clients, investors, potential investors, etc. NIRI is highly protective of members' interests, refusing to provide its members directory to the press (PRSA will give 200 of its new directory to leading media). NIRI says it is not a law-making body. But rule-makers such as the SEC and FASB take years to do anything. FASB has been working on one rule for 20 years, Business Week (1/24) noted. NIRI could urge members to put the real earnings first in a release and announce immediately all insider trades of their employers. No amount of laws will unbutton the lips of tight-lipped companies.
--Jack O'Dwyer