B-M RESIGNS $2M GATORADE BIZ FOR COKE

Burson-Marsteller dropped the $2 million Gatorade account because it wants to pursue more Coca-Cola business, Chet Burchett, president/B-M USA, told this NL.

Omnicom's Fleishman-Hillard has picked up the account. B-M's Jim Motzer, who headed the Gatorade account at the firm's Chicago office, will shift to F-H.

Burchett said last week he "advised Gatorade ten days ago that we wanted to pursue global Coke business."

Sonya Soutus, director of corporate communications at Coke, said B-M also has done marketing communications work, but would not get into details.

WPP Group's B-M has worked for Gatorade since the mid-`80s and won additional business in March when it beat out Omnicom units Porter Novelli and Ketchum, for a special assignment.

PHILIPPINES RECRUITS WEBER SHANDWICK

The Philippines Dept. of National Defense is relying on Weber Shandwick to keep in touch with the Pentagon, White House, Congress and various federal agencies under a two-year contract worth $20,000 a month.

The Philippines has the second biggest deployment of U.S. forces-after Afghanistan-in President Bush's "war on terror." The 1,000 U.S. troops have been training Philippine soldiers to fight Abu Sayyaf rebels who want to establish a Muslim state in the southern part of the country. The Abu Sayyaf group is said to have ties with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

Barry Rhoads of Rhoads-Weber Shandwick Government Relations oversees the Philippines account. He was deputy general counsel for the U.S. Base Realignment and Closure Commission and a trial attorney at the Justice Dept. before that.

H&K'S RICE IS GCI's SAN FRANCISCO MAN

Hill and Knowlton's San Francisco general manager Rick Rice has been named president of GCI Group's office in that city.

Rice also served as H&K's global technology practice director, and has counseled clients, such as Yahoo!, Gateway, Compaq and E*Trade Group.

Prior to joining H&K in 1993, Rice was a founder of Belcher & Rice Comms., which did corporate, financial, crisis and marketing communications work.

RUBENSTEIN CALLED IN FOR CHURCH CRISIS

Rubenstein Assocs. is helping the Diocese of Rockville Centre-which has more than 1.5 million Catholics living in New York's Nassau and Suffolk counties-implement its plan to deal with priests charged with sex abuse, according to Gary Lewi, senior executive VP at the firm. "Our work is very straightforward," he said. The job, said Lewi, is to spread the message that the Diocese is committed to confronting the sex abuse problem. Seven Long Island priests have been accused of abuse. They were transferred to other parts of the country.

Joanne Novarro, director of information for the DRC, did not return a call about why the Church needs PR and why it hired RA.

Lewi, however, called RA the biggest firm on Long Island, where the counties are located. RA reps the Association for a Better Long Island, and Republic Airport.

Lewi was Press Secretary for former Sen. Al D'Amato, the proud Long Islander who hails from Island Park.

F-H LENDS ORSO TO ST. LOUIS ARCHDIOCESE

Fleishman-Hillard has "donated" Jim Orso to the Archdiocese of St. Louis to serve as acting director of communications.

The F-H senior VP officially joined the Archdiocese's office of communication April 23. He "is on loan to the Archdiocese for several weeks to assist in handling expanded communications needs resulting from the high level of public interest on the issue of sexual abuse by priests," said a statement from Timothy Dolan, Auxiliary Bishop.

The former St. Louis Globe-Democrat metro editor is to communicate with both Catholics and the entire community about the archdiocese's commitment to "promote an open dialogue and eliminate the evil of child abuse and sexual abuse from our midst," according to Dolan.

William Noack, 60, has retired after 37 years with General Motors' PR unit and is opening his own firm in Washington, D.C...O'Dwyer's Directory of PR Firms, 2002, sports over 420 individual company logos, as well as Worldcom and Pinnacle member logos. Firms which include logos and agency statements with listings are also listed on www.odwyerpr.com. The 2002 Edition lists 125+ new firms. $175 from the J.R. O'Dwyer Co.

N.Y. TIMES RAPPED FOR ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS

Prominent New York Rabbi Haskel Lookstein is calling for a one-month boycott of the New York Times starting May 9 to protest the "shockingly biased reporting" and "unfair and unbalanced reporting of news from Israel," according to a full-page ad and letter to the editor published in the May 3 Jewish Week.

"Every day one sees misleading headlines, photographs chosen to elicit sympathy for suffering Palestinians at Israel's expense, and disproportionate space allocated to Palestinian perspectives and spokespersons," reads the ad. "Noticeably missing are equal portrayals of Israeli victims of Palestinian terror, adequate reporting of Palestinian and Arab rejectionism and intransigence, and a reluctance to properly portray the corruption, murderous dictatorship and complicity of the Palestinian Authority in its terrorist campaign against innocent Arab and Israeli civilians." it continues.

To the editor, Lookstein wrote: "It is not enough to send letters and e-mails to the Times; one has to act in accordance with one's views."

He urges NYT subscribers to call the paper and explain why they want their subscriptions suspended. That's the only way the Times will get the message, in his view.

The Rabbi also wants Jewish organizations to suspend placing obituaries in the Times.

Catherine Mathis, VP-corporate communications, said, "We are very aware of the great sensitivity of news developments in the Middle East."

WAMU USES BABBITT FOR 'GREEN' PR

Washington Mutual has retained former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to help defuse controversy over its plan to build a "new city" of 10,000 people in California's Santa Monica Mountains.

WAMU plans to develop the Ahmanson Ranch, a former cattle and sheep ranch, that it acquired via the $10 billion acquisition of H.F. Ahmanson savings and loan company in 1998.

Opponents of the potential 3,050 home golf course project predict massive traffic nightmares and various environmental calamities. They are led by the "Save the Ahmanson Ranch Coalition," a group co-chaired by director Rob Reiner and actor Martin Sheen.

SARC contends that WAMU can achieve tax benefits and much goodwill if it turns the 2,800-acre property over to the public or a conservation group for use as a park. WAMU believes it can get the best return for investments if it goes ahead with the $2 billion project. Its CEO Kerry Killinger has agreed to meet with SARC officials if they first meet with Babbitt. The ranch project was first approved by Ventura County in 1992, but its construction was thwarted by lawsuits.

WAMU has $275 billion in assets, and plans an aggressive national expansion drive as evidenced by its acquisition of New York's Dime Bancorp earlier this year. Its first-quarter net jumped 12.8 percent to $950 million.

BEERS WANTS $600M FOR PROPAGANDA

U.S. propaganda chief Charlotte Beers has asked a House subcommittee for a five percent hike in the public diplomacy budget to $595 million. The former J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather CEO said the U.S. has to "improve and magnify the ways in which we are addressing people of the world-not necessarily other world governments-but people."

That outreach is especially targeted at "disaffected populations" in the Middle East and South Asia, where a poor perception of the U.S. "leads to unrest, an unrest that has proven to be a threat to our national and international security," she said during her April 24 testimony.

Beers told the House panel she needs to increase polling by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in "Muslim countries and communities to provide policymakers with information on foreign publics' attitudes, perceptions and opinions so public diplomacy messages can be more effectively targeted."

The Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs chief talked about the need for other research "enhancements." Those include increased polling in sub-Sahara Africa on HIV/AIDS, democracy and the economy; focused polling in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines; opinion research studies in Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela and the Caribbean; a mix of focus groups and polling in Russia; studies in Europe to gauge the level of anti-American sentiment, and targeted polling in the Middle East on a variety of issues.

Beers said the State Dept. is committed to working with foreign broadcasters to produce documentaries that highlight positive aspects of American life, culture or community. She noted that the State Dept. is using $15 million from the Emergency Response Fund to pay for "an aggressive campaign of message placement." The plan, she explained, "is to air short video programs profiling the lives of certain Muslim-Americans" in targeted media in nine Muslim countries.

D&M COLLECTS $400K FROM ZIMBABWE

Dickens & Madson Canada, the firm that spread news of an alleged assassination plot against Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, has a contract worth $225,000 from his government. The firm has received $400K from Zimbabwe due to heavy travel-related expenses, says its president Ari Ben Menashe. The parties have not as yet issued formal amendments to the contract.

Menashe claimed that Morgan Tsvangirai, who lost to Mugabe in the presidential race earlier this year, was behind the plot. Menashe distributed a grainy video said to be of Tsvangirai discussing the plan to kill Mugabe just prior to the election. Tsvangirai denied being part of any plot, and dismissed the video as part of a smear campaign.

D&M's contract includes a provision that allows a $20,000 bonus, if by yearend: "Zimbabwe is generally perceived internationally as being a peace loving and progressive member of the international community."

CATHOLIC EDITORS LAUD MEDIA COVERAGE

The editors of three Catholic publications-The National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, and America-agreed that the secular print media have done a good job covering the priest scandal in interviews with Tim Rutten of The Los Angeles Times.

Since January, at least 177 priests accused of molesting children have resigned or been removed from their ministries.

Father Thomas Reese, S.J., who is editor of America magazine, said there cannot be too much coverage, as long as there is one child in danger.

Wake Up Call

While some people in the church feel the headlines and words give the false impression that all priests are pedophiles, Reese said the problem is "so serious that many people inside the church had to be hit over the head with a 2-by-4 before they woke up and began to deal with it."

Margaret Steinfels, who edits Commonweal, a biweekly journal of opinion, said the L.A. Times and The New York Times, where her husband Peter Steinfels is a religion writer, have done "a very good and balanced job," and The Boston Globe has done what it had to do.

She believes newspaper editors must continuously ask themselves "whether this is a story they're reporting or one that they're driving."

"So far, though, I don't think there have been any egregious errors," she told Rutten.

Tom Roberts, who is editor of the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly newspaper, said his paper has been reporting on this problem for 17 years, but the story never took off nationally until the Globe, N.Y. Times and L.A. Times got involved.

Roberts, who singled out the Globe and its editor, Marty Baron, for praise, said it shows the effect the press can have when it mobilizes itself in a responsible way around an important issue.

Roberts believes David Briggs, a reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, also deserves credit for "doing a superb job of bringing the problem to light in that diocese."

Reese and Steinfels said they would like to see a more sustained media focus on the problem of child abuse. "If I were advising newspaper editors right now, I would say it's time to expand the story beyond the Catholic clergy," said Reese.

WSJ EDITOR: MAKE NO DEALS

Barney Calame, who is deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, said business reporters should be aware of the danger of being manipulated by PR people.

In a speech he gave April 28 at the annual meeting of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, in Phoenix, Calame said regular sources can sometimes try to develop a sense of obligation among the reporters they work with or exact a favor in the future.

"Our job as reporters is to make sure we have some control of the way we're manipulated," said Calame, who noted business journalists are faced with an increasing number of ethical dilemmas as they try to access hard-to-get information.

He gave an example of a business reporter placed in a situation where a source, say a CEO of an important company, will give out valuable information only if the words, "decline to comment," follow their name.

Using the information, no matter how necessary it is to the story, without attributing it to the source is ethically questionable, Calame said.

"The problem here is you've lied to your readers," he said. "This guy has spun you for an hour and a half and you've wiped his fingerprints completely off the story."

MEDIA BRIEFS

Newsweek was awarded the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, the most sought-after prize in magazine publishing.

The Maine Times, which started in 1968 as a crusading weekly newspaper on environmental issues, focusing on the paper industry, has ceased publishing.

Nine newspapers have added The Wall Street Journal's special pages to their Sunday editions. Sixty-two newspapers, with a total circulation of 9.6 million, are now publishing the branded pages in their Sunday editions, making it the largest personal finance publication in the U.S.

Inc. magazine is seeking entries for its fourth annual Inc Web Awards, recognizing companies that have used the web to transform the way they do business.

Entry forms are available at www.inc.com/web awards.

The Toronto Business Journal, which was started last April, has stopped publishing.

Bloomberg has several openings available for reporters, editors and headline writers in all of its bureaus. The jobs are posted on the New York Financial Writers' Assn.'s website at www.nyfwa.org.

Newspaper Assn. of America's Spring 2002 Competitive Media Index shows 55.5% of adults read a newspaper each weekday, up from 54.3% in the Fall 2001 CMI, which itself was a gain over the 53.5% reported at this time last year. Sunday readership held steady at 63.9% of adults reading the paper each week.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman, ABC News medical correspondent, was suspended for a week for allegedly making a radio commercial for Tylenol.

(Media news continued on next page)

USA TODAY GETS NEW EDITORIAL PAGE ED

Carol Stevens, 46, was promoted to editorial page editor of USA Today by Karen Jurgensen, editor of the McLean, Va.-based paper.

Stevens, who was named deputy editor of the editorial page in 1999, will succeed Brian Gallagher, who was promoted to executive editor last month.

She will start her new job on June 1.

GIBBS TO CO-HOST 'WALL $TREET WEEK'

Maryland Public TV has named former financial analyst Karen Gibbs to co-host "Wall $treet Week with Fortune."

Gibbs, who is currently with Fox News Channel, signed a three-year deal to join Geoffrey Colvin of Fortune as host of the weekly program, which will debut in June.

Gibbs, 49, was a VP and senior futures analyst at Dean Witter before joining CNBC, and later Fox.

MSNBC HIRES NACHMAN AS TOP EDITOR

Jerry Nachman, a former newspaper editor, TV producer and radio newsman, was named editor-in- chief of MSNBC.

He was also named a commentator on a late-afternoon talk show, where he will discuss the events of the day.

Erik Sorenson, the president of MSNBC, which is owned by Microsoft and General Electric, said Nachman will guide the editorial staff as it plans news coverage, advising them on which news to cover and how to approach stories.

WEISBERG NAMED EDITOR OF SLATE

Jacob Weisberg was named editor of Slate.com, succeeding Michael Kinsley, who was founding editor of the Redmond, Wash.-based online magazine.

Weisberg, who was Slate's chief political correspondent, will begin as editor immediately and will be based in Slate's New York bureau.

COHEN TO EDITOR OF HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Jack Loftis, 67, who has led The Houston Chronicle newsroom for 15 years as its top editor, will retire July 1 and be succeeded by Jeff Cohen, 47, who grew up in Houston and is currently the editor of The Albany (N.Y.) Times Union.

Both papers are owned by The Hearst Corp.

Cohen is married to Albany criminal defense lawyer Kathryn Kase.

WORKING MOTHER GETS NEW EXEC. EDITOR

Gail Belsky has joined Working Mother magazine as executive editor.

Belsky had worked in Time Inc.'s custom publishing division, where she created and edited two women's service magazines for Target Stores.

Christine Ford, who is managing editor of WM, will oversee day-to-day operations.

PEOPLE

Bryan Monroe, who is deputy managing editor for local news, visuals and technology at The San Jose Mercury News, was awarded a fellowship at the Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Robert Dudney was promoted to editor-in-chief of Air Force Magazine, succeeding John Correll, who retired.

Adti Roy, previously a reporter for KHQ-TV in Spokane, Wash., has joined NBC 10 in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., as a general assignment reporter.

PLACEMENT TIPS

Susanna Homan, an A/E at PR 21, is working nights as a reporter for The Chicago Sun-Times, covering the party beat.

Homan's news items and photos fill a full-page every Saturday in the Chicago tabloid. Her page is called "Susanna's night out."

Homan, who covers music concerts, restaurant and nightclub openings and other events in Chicago, also has a Friday segment on WKQX radio, where she reports on upcoming weekend events.

She goes mostly to events that will appeal to adults in their 20s and 30s. She can be reached at 312/396-9750.

John Simons, who had covered the technology beat for nine years, has stopped prowling the Silicon Valley beat to focus on drug companies for Fortune.

Azizah, which began 18 months ago as a quarterly, is looking for articles that will dispel negative images about Muslim women in the U.S.

Tayyibah Taylor is editor-in-chief of the Atlanta-based magazine, which also has standing features on fashion, food, decor, health, travel, books and personal finance.

The writer's guidelines are published on the magazine's website (www.azizahmagazine.com).

Taylor can be reached by e-mail at taylor@ azizahmagazine.com.

Peter Lewis, who is Fortune's technology editor, has launched a new website (fortune.com/ontech).

Rolling Stone's content is being retooled to focus on shorter, newsier stories on music, movies and other forms of entertainment.

A new managing editor will also be hired to replace Robert Love, who is stepping down.

Seed, a science magazine, has been started by 21-year-old Adam Bly, who is editor and president. The first issue is on newsstands throughout the U.S. The magazine, which is based in Montreal, is financially backed by Rich Leckner, who owns Maison Bison, a PR firm in Montreal.

IPG DROPS PR AS SEPARATE CATEGORY

Interpublic, which says its Weber Shandwick unit is the largest PR operation in the world, has stopped the separate reporting of PR as a financial category.

In new categories unveiled when IPG reported quarterly earnings May 2, "marketing communications" includes direct marketing, sales promotion, event marketing, healthcare, PR, branding, and interactive, in that order.

When PR was reported separately, it was down 25% in Q4 of 2001 and down 5% in the year. The new MC category, accounting for 26.6% of revenues in Q1, was down 14% in the quarter, IPG said.

UBS Warburg, noting that the "major difference" in IPG's new categories is that PR has been lumped together with direct marketing, sales promotion, etc., estimated that PR was down 30% in Q1.

Omnicom (Ketchum, Fleishman-Hillard, etc.) reported April 30 that PR revenues were down 9.3% in the first quarter and attributed this to lower spending in tech PR.

IPG CEO John Dooner and CFO Sean Orr did not go into the reason for PR's decline but Warburg attributed it to a drop in tech PR budgets.
WPP Group (Hill and Knowlton, Ogilvy PR) in late April reported a 12.8% decline in PR fees in Q1.

IPG, OMC Report Earnings

IPG's revenues were down 15% in Q1 to $1.42 billion. Earnings, on a comparable basis, were down slightly to $66.7 million, or 18 cents a share, from $76.6M, or 20 cents, in the same 2001 quarter.

The 2002 quarter, under new accounting rules, does not include depreciation of good will, as did Q1 of 2001, when actual net was $28.7M, or 8 cents.
Most companies are making what OMC CFO Randall Weisenburger said is an "apples to apples" comparison of the two quarters (removing intangibles from Q1 of 2001).

OMC's Q1 net rose 11% to $128M, or 68 cents a share, on sales of $1.7B, up 8% (removing intangibles from the same 2001 quarter).

The OMC annual report said it acquired 39 companies in 2001 for $844M in stock, cash and assumption of liabilities, and now conducts business via 1,500 subsidiary companies. A few acquisitions are known but OMC refuses to identify most of them except to say that "relatively small transactions" were involved. IPG has made more than 200 unidentified acquisitions from 1998-2001.

In reply to questions from analysts, IPG said its net debt was a little over $3 billion at the end of Q1. OMC would not estimate what its debt is. The annual report indicates about $2.5B in debt.

Neither company supplied balance sheets with its earnings report. They are due to the SEC May 14.

PR Specialists, Los Angeles, acquired ServiTrust Corp., a telemarketing firm. PRS, which is publicly traded on NASDAQ, specializes in developing and promoting websites. It also operates Boxing.com.

NIRI ADOPTS 12-PART ETHICS CODE

The National IR Institute, headed by Don Eagon, VP-IR of Diebold, adopted a new "rigorous" 12-part ethics code to replace its current seven-part code.

The 5,300 members have until May 15 to sign the code or face "forfeiture of membership privileges."

The IR industry has been under fire lately because of IR practices involved in the Enron scandal and the spread of "pro forma" or hypothetical earnings that emphasize the positive and may mislead investors.

The SEC and a number of states are investigating the practices of security analysts (whose stock advisories are 99% positive or at least neutral).

A Senate panel in April approved legislation that would make it easier to prosecute stock fraud cases. NIRI had lobbied hard for the 1995 Securities Reform Act that made it harder to sue auditors in fraud cases.

Ted Pincus, chairman emeritus of the Financial Relations Board, said April 30 that Enron was afflicted with "lapdog accountants, attorneys, investment bankers and PR resources" and that PR and IR must overcome "the yellow streak of spinelessness that has infected our profession and similar corporate services since the 1980s." He spoke at dinner where he received the "PR Pro of the Year Award" from PRSA/Chicago.

The NIRI code calls on members to avoid "even the appearance of impropriety"; provide analysts and media "fair access to information"; fairly disclose "important information," and report to authorities "fraudulent or illegal acts within the company."
The full ethics code is at www.niri.org.

LEADERSHIP FAULTED AT PRSA, IABC

Failure of leaders of PR groups to speak out has been criticized in an editorial by Brian Kilgore, PR counselor formerly with Burson-Marsteller and other firms, who now edits BAK's Report, Toronto (www.briankilgore.com).

"Joann Killeen, the elected head of PR Society of America, is the most important PR woman in America, but try to find anything she ever said," wrote Kilgore.

He also faulted John Clemons, VP of internal communications at Nextel, who is chairman of the International Assn. of Business Communicators, and Tony Ivarone, president of the Canadian PR Society. Kilgores is an ex-president of CPRS.

"The biggest PR leadership failure at PRSA, IABC and CPRS is the refusal of the elected and paid leaders to stand up and be counted in front of audiences that are important to members," he wrote.

Also faulted for not speaking were Catherine Bolton, executive director of PRSA, and Julie Freeman, paid president of IABC. The 1,600-member CPRS is handled by a consultant.

The associations are making "no effort" to implement a PR for PR program that would help give PR pros their place at the "right hand of the CEO," said Kilgore. Also faulted was 2001 PRSA president Kathy Lewton for supplying the text of only one speech.

News items:

--WPP Group reports PR down 12.8% in first quarter of 2002 after being down 6.7% in 2001. PR was the category "most affected" at WPP.

--Omnicom says PR is down 9.3% in Q1 of 2002.

--Interpublic says its PR units were down 5% in 2001, down 25% in Q4 of 2001, and are in a new category that was down 14% in Q1 of 2002.

UBS Warburg, noting the loss of a separate figure for PR at IPG, which claims to have the largest single PR unit (Weber Shandwick), estimated the first quarter loss in PR income at 30%.

The big ad conglomerates, which invested billions in PR to smooth out recessions, are finding PR to be anything but recession-proof.

Edelman PR Worldwide and Ruder Finn, the two big independents, were down 5% and 4.5%, respectively, in 2001. They don't report by the quarter so we don't know Q1 2002 results. The question is whether the independents are faring better in the downturn than ad agency owned units.

We know one thing after listening to the analyst conference calls hosted by IPG and OMC executives last week. The information-averse world of the big conglomerates is the opposite of the information-providing culture of PR.

WPP would not even let us or any reporter listen to its conference call. IPG lets reporters listen but bars questions by them. OMC said it would allow reporters' questions this year but the call was ended after 43 minutes without us (or many others) getting on line. Last week we reported how George Mannes of TheStreet.com happened onto the recording of a BellSouth IR person deciding who would get onto a company conference call. We're sure someone at OMC put us at the end of the cue or blocked us altogether. We e-mailed questions to the executives but they were ignored.

OMC and IPG won't identify the great bulk of the companies they acquire (except for well known deals like True North by IPG). OMC refused to give an approximate figure for its debt to the analysts.

The highly respectful questioning by analysts at the conferences is a far cry from the kind of questioning that reporters would inflict on the executives. One flaw with the teleconferences is that analysts can't see how the executives react to questions. The analysts also can't work as a team, following up on a line of questioning. The teleconference technique provides a maximum of control over who gets to ask questions and provides a minimum of information.

The major general and financial press, were IPG, OMC and WPP to face such a rabble, would tear the executives to shreds. "What?!" they would exclaim to OMC execs, "You don't know what your debt is? "You spent $844 million in 2001 buying 44 companies you won't identify, borrowing nearly $1 billion, and you won't even estimate your debt?!"

The OMC and IPG execs would also be raked over the coals for failure to supply balance sheets with sales and earnings reports. Companies far bigger and more complex than either supply this information (such as General Motors). IPG, with $3B in debt, and OMC, with debt probably of $2.5B, both have had their credit ratings lowered. OMC is now a BBB with the Credit Monitor unit of Moody's KVM unit.

The ad conglomerate conference calls produce a thin gruel of information. Ditto for the copy in their annual reports. IPG says McCann-Erickson won "Agency of the Year" honors "in every region of the world" but doesn't say who gave it these honors. Other honors are claimed, some with the source and some without it. FCB New Zealand, it is noted, was Advertising Age's "Asia Pacific Agency of the Year." AdWeek named the Deutsch unit "Agency of the Year." Weber Shandwick was a "leading winner" at the PRSA awards (it won one Silver Anvil while OMC's Ketchum won 10). Also cited are awards from PR Week (U.S.) and SABRE (operated by Paul Holmes). The OMC report says Ketchum now has 52 Anvils, "the most of any agency." Actually, Ketchum has won 73 Anvils in the 52 years of the Anvil's existence. The copywriter mixed up the numbers (who checks this stuff?). Ketchum, it is also said, ranked as "the place where PR people want to work" by The Holmes Report. That too, is false. Ketchum was named as the "number three big PR agency to work for." Ketchum has won so many Anvils that the credibility of this award has been damaged.

The big ad agencies and their PR wings are heavy advertisers in these award-granting publications. Ad Age on March 18 carried a 40-page ad section on the 100th anniversary of IPG's McCann-Erickson unit.

We give credit to OMC and IPG for immediately pointing out in their earnings reports that Q2 of 2001 and Q1 of 2001 are not comparable because depreciation of goodwill has been removed from the 2002 quarter. Diebold, headed by NIRI chair Don Eagon, did not do this in its earnings report. The result was that Bloomberg headlined, "Diebold's first quarter net triples" and the Cleveland Plain Dealer started off its story saying, "Diebold more than tripled its first quarter earnings..." It is not until 30 lines into the story that the PD says that, not counting one-time charges in Q1 of 2001, "Diebold's earnings were flat.
--Jack O'Dwyer