GCI's GRATES CRUISES TO GM

Gary Grates, president of GCI BoxenbaumGrates, becomes head of General Motors' internal communications unit on March 31. He had been supervising the GM business for the last 18 months, spending most of the week living in Detroit.

Grates will assume the chairman slot at GCI BG, devoting about a quarter of his time counseling clients, and drumming up new business.

GCI CEO Bob Feldman plans to name a successor to Grates by the end of next month. He called Grates' shift to GM a move that "reflects the kind of flexibility" GCI has as it works to satisfy the needs of its clients.

PRSA's Byrum Links

PRSA President Reed Byrum is now "of counsel" to GCI Group. The former Trilogy Systems executive will provide advice to GCI Read Poland, which is located in his hometown of Austin. He will work closely with Jeff Hunt, president of the unit.

Byrum, besides his PRSA duties, has been active in the Austin community. He serves on the boards of Capital Area Homeless Agencies, Ballet Austin, and the University of Texas Foundation for Religious Studies. He also counsels St. David's Episcopal Church clergy in PA and development.

SIMONS JOINS RF

Beverly Simons, who has more than 30 years of PR experience primarily in healthcare, has joined Ruder Finn's corporate branding unit as executive VP. She joins RF after an eight-year stint at Ketchum, where she promoted Novartis, Genentech, Baxter Biosciences and Aventis.

Simons will work with Rachel Spielman, group director, and handle health accounts, such as Zelnorm for irritable bowel syndrome, and Elidel, an eczema treatment. Both are from Novartis.

The PR veteran started her career at J. Walter Thompson's pharmaceutical and health communications unit. She also was deputy manager of Hill & Knowlton's New York health group, director of PR at Barnum Communications and president of McAdams PR.

Scott Friedman, who had run Manning, Selvage & Lee's New York tech practice, is now at Text 100 working on the IBM business. MS&L consolidated its tech and healthcare practices in October.

IPG SUSPENDS DIVIDEND

Interpublic has suspended its quarterly cent dividend for the first time since the company went public in 1971. The stock hit a 10-year low of $8.85 on Feb. 13.

That suspension is required under the deal IPG ironed out with creditors to renegotiate terms on $2.9 billion in long-term debt.

The company was to pay shareholders a dividend on March 15. It most recently paid stockholders a 9.5 cent dividend. Future payments will "be determined on a quarter by quarter basis" until creditors ease the financial restrictions on IPG.

The debt renegotiation also restricts IPG's ability to make acquisitions. IPG said creditors have agreed to ease some of the financial restraints once the company raises $400 million in assets.

The pending sale of NFO WorldGroup, which IPG acquired April 2000 for $500 million in stock and the assumption of $175 million in debt, should do the trick.

Separately, UBS Warburg has provided IPG an interim $500 million credit line maturing July 31, 2004.

The ad/PR conglomerate can tap into that line on May 15.

L-S PITCHES HENKEL'S DUCT TAPE

Henkel Consumer Adhesives, Cleveland, is working with retailers to ensure there is a plentiful supply of duct tape on their shelves, according to its website. The move follows Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's recommendation that Americans stock up on duct tape so they can seal their windows in the event of a biological attack.

Cleveland-based Liggett-Stashower PR is pitching the story to national media.

Melanie Amato, director of communications for Henkel, told this NL sales have more than doubled, with the biggest spike in coastal areas of the U.S.

Ridge's duct tape plug has been a PR bonanza for HCA, which sells Americans more than 1.5 billion linear feet of Duck Tape brand duct tape each year. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's op-ed piece Feb. 12 was called "Pass the Duct Tape."

HCA notes that duct tape "is no stranger" to emergency situations, such as hurricanes. The company is planning a "rapid response" delivery system if its inventory monitoring controls detect a spike in demand.

HCA, formerly known as Manco Inc., is part of Germany's Henkel Group.

NYC PROBES CORPORATE TERROR TIES

New York City's comptroller, Bill Thompson, has called for shareholders in the city's fire and police pension funds to review General Electric, Halliburton and ConocoPhillips for ties to terrorist-linked countries. Thompson wants shareholders - which have $254 million in holdings in the three companies - to establish a board of directors to review the corporations. "Their use of off-shore and United Kingdom subsidiaries to establish operations in countries that sponsor terrorism violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the law," Thompson said in a statement.

The three companies' involvement in terror-sponsoring countries, Thompson said, exposes the companies to the prospect of negative publicity, public protests, and a loss of consumer confidence, all of which could negatively affect shareholder value.

The comptroller's office points out that Halliburton opened an office in Iran under the name of its Cayman Islands subsidiary in February 2000. Thompson's resolution requests a statement be put before shareholders for a vote at Halliburton's annual meeting in May which says that the Iranian government has sponsored terrorist operations and the U.S. government has imposed sanctions prohibiting virtually all trade and investment activity with Iran by U.S. corporations.

Thompson also cited GE and ConocoPhillips' ties to Iran, as well as Conoco's work in Syria, all under the guise of Canadian or U.K. subsidiaries.

Discussions between GE and the comptroller's office began earlier this month, while Conoco has not yet challenged the motion.

PASS DROPS OPRAH FOR EDELMAN

Oprah Winfrey's senior publicist Audrey Pass has been hired by Edelman PR Worldwide's Entertainment Marketing unit because Peter Land, GM of the group, "heard good things about her from the national media."

Pass handled media relations for Winfrey, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," Harpo Films and, O! The Oprah Magazine.

Land says Edelman has 15 staffers dedicated to entertainment marketing in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Pass, who will be based in New York, will work on publicity, movie and TV promotional ties, celebrities and product placement.

She will handle clients such as Warner Bros., Viacom, Johnson & Johnson and Samsung. Pass, prior to her work with Winfrey, was PR and marketing director for The Second City comedy troupe.

COPITHORNE RESURFACES

David Copithorne, who stepped down as CEO of Porter Novelli International last May, has joined online health education developer Outside the Classroom as its first chief marketing officer.

Copithorne, a tech PR veteran who sold his firm, Copithorne & Bellows, to Omnicom's PNI in 1995, is charged with managing corporate and financial communications at Boston-based OTC.

Thirty-five universities in the U.S. have mandated OTC's flagship product, AlcoholEdu, an online course on the effects of drinking alcohol. The company also collects data about student health issues for schools.

Copithorne said in May he left PNI to spend more time with his wife and two children.

AUGUSTA NATIONAL PR REP GETS J-C PLUG

Jim McCarthy, a Washington, D.C.-based PR consultant hired by the Augusta National Golf Club, would like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to cut back on its coverage of the club's membership dispute.

In an article published Feb. 13 on the J-C's opinion page, McCarthy said the paper's coverage has "long since crossed from serious journalism into an inveighing crusade."

By the news story count alone, McCarthy said the J-C has now exceeded that of The New York Times (more than 61 articles total), "whose coverage of this story some eight weeks ago was widely criticizedby observers of the media as `obsessive' and `ideologically driven'."

McCarthy said it seems likely that "your readers are rightly wondering whether they are receiving worthy news or activist campaign bulletins."

He believes the J-C's news coverage has "consistently ignored the valid and widely held public affairs position that single-gender clubs are perfectly acceptable."

Martha Burk, chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, told GolfWorld.com "we are going ahead with plans to protest" outside the Augusta National Golf Club during Masters week, which is less than two months away.

Burk, who initiated the campaign to get the ANGC to admit women members, said "our protest will be orderly. We will make our point and not disrupt. We are not going to try to get into the tournament. CBS wouldn't put us on camera even if we stripped on the green."

Burk told GolfWorld.com's Ron Sirak that she is determined to use the proximity of her demonstrators to the club to maximize the PR impact of the protest.

She told Sirak that she has been to Augusta to scout out protest sites and to find a house she can rent for the week and use as a protest headquarters. "This is not going to be a traditional bullhorn-and-picket thing," she said. "We are going to do our best to embarrass them."

D&E's EATON DIES AT 77

Henry Eaton, 77, co-founder of Dix & Eaton, Cleveland's largest PR/IR firm, died Feb. 7.

Eaton was editor of Material Handling magazine when he and John Dix, who was the publishing company's ad services director, opened D&E in 1952 with an investment of $1,500 apiece. He concentrated on IR/PR clients while Dix handled the advertising accounts.

Eaton stepped down as chairman in 1998.

NEW CABLE CHANNEL AIMED AT BLACKS

The Major Broadcasting Cable Network (MBC), an African American-owned and operated cable network, unveiled a new channel, called "MBC News: The Urban Voice," at a press conference held at the Cable Advertising Conference in New York Feb. 11.

The 24-hour news channel targeting black audiences will hit airwaves on April 4, the 35th anniversary of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

The network, which is available in 24 million U.S. homes in 2,400 cities in 48 states, currently airs original family-oriented programs such as "Health for the Nation," and "Spiritual Impact" and presents more than 79 football and basketball games featuring traditionally black colleges and universities.

Willie Gary, a Florida lawyer who started MBC in 1998, believes MBC News will make a "tremendous impact by broadcasting the positive aspects of African American culture," which he said are "too often ignored by other networks."

MBC News, which will be launched as an hour-long program, will try to fill a void left by Black Entertainment TV (BET) when it recently dropped all news programming except for its "Nightly News at 11."

Travis Mitchell, EVP for MBC, said MBC News will "bring an appropriate balance back to shed true light on that community, to tell that there are kids and young people in those communities who are students and not thugs," said Mitchell.

There are plans to expand MBC News to 24 hours by the first quarter of 2004. Mitchell estimates about five million households will initially have access to the MBC News channel.

The company has tentative plans with Cablevision to bring the network to the New Jersey-New York region by year's end.

Partners With FNC

MBC has partnered with Florida's News Channel, a cable network that delivers state news to more than 20 Florida cities from a studio in Tallahassee, to assist with the news operation, including production and distribution.

MBC News, which will have complete control of the news content, will hire some of its own correspondents and anchors-former CNN Headline News anchor Gordon Graham will be the MBC News lead anchor-but rely on deals with freelancers, print reporters and broadcast journalists around the world to compile its news feed.

Radio One, a Lanham, Md.-based broadcasting company targeting blacks, made a deal with Comcast Corp. in January to start a cable entertainment channel later this year.

United Stations Radio Networks is collaborating with Black Enterprise magazine on a new financial news report. The "Black Enterprise Business Report" will feature three timely original reports per day and will provide commentary on general financial matters and personal investment issues.

The reports will air Monday through Friday during morning-drive, midday and afternoon-drive time periods.

MEDIA BRIEFS

The National Assn. of Hispanic Publications will convene its 18th annual convention on March 19-22 in Las Vegas.

The association, founded in 1982, is comprised of 214 publications with a combined circulation of more than 12 million. Its member publications reach more than 50% of Hispanic households in 55 U.S. markets on a weekly basis, according to Ivonne Cunarro, executive director of the NAHP, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

All attendees will get a free copy of the "2003 NAHP Media Kit & Resource Book," valued at $100. The directory lists all member publications, including readership demographics and ad information.

More information about the convention is available online at www.nahponline.org or by calling NAHP at 202/662-7250.

BizBash Media, which publishes BizBash Event Style Reporternewspaper, has published its first directory for the event and meeting industry, called the BizBash Goodie Bag Book of Offers.

David Adler, founder of BizBash and CEO, said the new directory, which contains more than $40,000 worth of gifts, offers and discounts from 75 meeting and event suppliers, will be distributed to a select group of 2,000 decision-makers and key influencers in the industry.

Additional Goodie Bag Books will be published this spring for other market segments, including on- and off-premise catering managers.

PLACEMENT TIPS

Ladies' Home Journal and Woman's Day are introducing new designs in their March issues as part of their biggest overhauls in years.

Woman's Day's editor Jan Chesnutt is debuting new how-to columns, and LHJ's new editor Diane Salvatore is adding eight sections, including home decorating.

Both magazines have monthly circulations of 4.1 million+, and the median age of readers is about 48.

The goal is to attract younger readers and new advertisers, while retaining homemaking and family advice features that subscribers have turned to for decades.

Mark Rogers was named senior editor-tours & packages for Travel Agent magazine. He will also cover Africa and group travel.

Rogers, who has been a senior editor with TA's custom publishing unit for the past seven years, working on special supplements and advertorials, is based in New York and can be reached at 917/326-6339; [email protected].

(Media news continued on next page)

TV STATION ALLOWS PAID INTERVIEWS

WTVH-TV, in Syracuse, N.Y., is selling feature-style interviews on a 5 p.m. news and talk program, called "Central New York Live!".

Donna Adamo, a former news anchor, who now hosts CNY Live!, is conducting the paid interviews, which the station sells for up to $600 for a three minute segment.

A rate flier distributed by the station before the show's Jan. 27 premier promises advertisers "the opportunity to spotlight your business during the 5 p.m. news."

"WTVH will be featuring interview-style `advertorial' segments daily in our 5 p.m. newscast about topics that appeal to Central New York viewers," the flier says.

The station has begun disclosing on the air which interviews during the 5 p.m. show were paid and which were not by running a disclaimer.

WTVH is owned by Granite Broadcasting, in New York. Its Buffalo TV station, WKBW-TV, also sells some segments on a news, talk and entertainment program, called "CNY Live!".

The station defends paid interviews by saying that they appear only during entertainment segments on the one-hour program and are clearly separate from news content.

PEOPLE

Peter Barnes has joined Hearst-Argyle TV as chief of its Washington, D.C., bureau. He had been Washington bureau chief for TechTV, a technology-news satellite and cable network, and will succeed Gary Griffith, who retired in December.

Felicity Barringer, who currently covers the newspaper publishing beat for The New York Times, has been named United Nation's bureau chief, replacing Julia Preston, who is becoming a deputy editor in the newly formed investigations department.

Beth Piskora, who covered the Wall Street beat for The New York Post, is leaving to join Standard & Poor's. Retail reporter Lisa Marsh has left to write a book on Calvin Klein.

William Broom, 78, who was Washington, D.C., bureau chief of the former Ridder Newspapers, has died. Broom, who was elected president of the National Press Club in 1975, had been working as VP/public affairs at The Philadelphia Inquirer when he retired in 1990. He also handled PR for the Southern Pacific Railroad before becoming editor of The Long Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram in 1965.

REDBURN NAMED TECH EDITOR AT NY TIMES

Tom Redburn, 52, was named technology editor of The New York Times, replacing Richard Meislin, 49, who was appointed editor of news surveys and election analysis.

Redburn had been assistant business editor for the newspaper since 1997. Meislin had been tech editor of the Times since 2001.

NEW MAGAZINE TARGETS AD COMMUNITY

A new magazine, called inter national ist, has been started by DM-NY Global in association with the International Advertising Assn.

Nancy Giges is editor, and Deborah Malone, who founded DM-NY Global, is publisher of the magazine, which will be published six times in 2003.

Giges and Malone had worked together at Ad Age Internationalwhen it was started by Crain Communications in 1992.

Giges said the new magazine will cover IAA news and events, stories about industry trends and issues, regulatory concerns, profiles of people talked about and commentary by leading industry figures.

The January/February number, which is the first issue, has an article about how major advertisers are "Plugging into the New Ad Economy," a commentary by Martin Sorrell on the benefits of advertising during a recession, and Jim Stengel, chief marketing officer of Procter & Gamble, talks about how he has guided his company's marketing efforts.

The magazine will be distributed to IAA members and a select group of advertising and marketing executives for a worldwide circulation of 6,000.
Giges can be reached at 914/683-5108; fax: 428-5497; [email protected].

MEDIA BIAS CHARGES ARE CALLED UNTRUE

Virgil Scudder & Assocs., a New York-based media training firm, has told its clients that the media is not run by a "bunch of anti-business liberals."
"There is plenty wrong with today's media in the U.S. but bias is at the bottom of the list. Shallow and irrelevant coverage is at the top," VS&A told its clients.

"Our experience, based on a quarter century of preparing clients to deal with the media is this: while more reporters are liberal than conservative, and more media owners are conservative than liberal, the vast majority of news stories aren't slanted in either direction.

"Good journalists recognize biases-their own and those of others-and go to great lengths to keep them out of their stories," the firm says in a recently published report.

Get What You Deserve

Business people generally get the media treatment they deserve, said the report. "It's based on the quality of their story and their ability to tell it. Bias rarely has anything to do with it. And, the results are favorable or balanced far more often than not," the report said.

The 501(c)(3) "charity" status of the Arthur Page Society (page 7) is something that could be explored. Page is similar to PR Society of America in that it has individual memberships, conducts conferences and seminars, and publishes newsletters and a membership directory.

PRSA is a C/6 organization, the principal difference being that companies cannot make tax deductible contributions to PRSA. Such gifts can be made to the PRSA Foundation and the Page Society.

Publication of the membership directory of Page is listed in its federal tax return under the heading of "Statement of Program Service Accomplishments."

Since this directory is not available to the public, we wonder how it can be listed as a "service accomplishment."

This part of the tax return also says: "Discuss achievements that are not measurable."

This must be a difficult part of the form for Page to fill out since PR is so measurement minded these days. The fact that Page and PRSA have different tax situations, while being similar, shows how flexible tax laws can be.

Page is similar to the International PR Assn., a group of 900 PR people from 90 countries, in that it receives a substantial corporate subsidy each year.
IPRA started receiving corporate funds in 1990-91 when Nissan gave $100K yearly to support an awards program.

NEC and Voltas of India made $100K gifts in succeeding years. Dai Nippon Printing Co. of Japan, one of the world's largest printers, has become a major contributor, giving about $166K in 2001.
Even with such gifts, IPRA found itself with a bare treasury in 1995. It has since rebounded. Retained funds totaled about $135K at the end of 2001.

Page members played a big role in putting together the "credibility summit" Jan. 14 in Madison, N.J.(1/22 NL). James Murphy, 2002 president of Page, was chair of the meeting and eight other members of Page took part in it.

Murphy and seven of the eight Page members are also members of PR Seminar, a group of about 200 blue-chip corporate and agency PR people that meets each May at an exclusive resort.

The credibility summit, in which about 60 leaders of 19 PR/IR organizations sought ways to restore faith in U.S. corporations, was certainly a public service activity.

But more such meetings are needed. The well-heeled members of these groups need to do a lot more for the rank-and-file of the PR world.

Individual members of Page pay $1,250 a year in dues (probably an expense account item) and corporate gifts average about $100K yearly.

Many of thePage members also go to the annual PR Seminar, where registration last year was $1,800 (plus $800 for companions).

Quite a few Page/PRS members are also in The Wise Men, a New York group that meets monthly at the Harvard Club. Its membership list is confidential.

Arthur Page, a member of the Harvard Club and New York Yacht Club, was one of the early membersof the Wise Men. No doubt Page would approve of corporate PR leaders meeting as much as possible.

Page was an ardent foe of President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Page once said that "in a country where the opportunity to get rich is banned, the fate of the poor will be bad."

Page at one time felt ex-newspeople would be the best PR people since they would be believable. But as VP-PR of AT&T, he said PR was best staffed from within by those who knew the business.

An example of the spread in freelancing is the membership list of the New York Financial Writers' Assn., a group of about 300 financial reporters and financial PR pros. The current membership directory lists 40 "freelancers," the biggest single category of members and one that did not exist until the 1990s.

New York magazine's Michael Wolff, in a column Feb. 10 on the "death of books," says that employees of publishers work in "really deadening conditions...as congenial an atmosphere as an insurance company...virtually any other business, save for the most bureaucratic and regimented, has more day-to- day comforts, joie de vivre , and personality than book publishing...on top of doing embarrassing, often even humiliating work in enervating, soul-destroying circumstances, you don't get paid any money."

Somehow this reminded us of the plight of fledgling PR A/Es. Until the beancounters arrived with measurements foreverything, there was much more joie de vivrein PR.
--Jack O'Dwyer

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge demonstrated the power of PR when he recommended that Americans stock up on duct tape so they can seal their windows to protect against a biological attack.

Henkel Consumer Adhesives, which makes the Duck Tape brand of the sticky stuff, quickly assured Americans, via a message on its website, that the company would keep production lines rolling because it is committed to doing whatever it takes to guard the homeland against terror.

A Henkel spokesman told this NL that sales of the tape doubled in the aftermath of Ridge's recommendation, especially in metropolitan areas on the coast.

An ironic part of the duct tape saga is that the product is owned by Germany-based Henkel.

Germany opposes President Bush's war with Iraq, a conflict that may trigger those retaliatory attacks that Ridge has warned about.
--Kevin McCauley