B-M RUNS MOSCOW OLYMPICS BID.
Moscow has selected Burson-Marsteller and its affiliate, The Willard Group, to handle its bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. The Russian capital ranks as a dark horse contender to favorites Paris (using Weber Shandwick) and London (Hill & Knowlton).

B-M's Olympic experience with the Seoul Games and work on the upcoming `08 Games in Beijing helped seal the deal for the WPP Group unit.

Michael Willard, CEO of TWG, had served as head of B-M's Russia and Ukraine operations before setting up his own firm more than a decade ago.

TWG duties include development of overall PR strategy, media outreach to the national and regional Russian press and media training for spokespeople at the Moscow 2012 Bid Committee.

COOPERKATZ BAGS
N. IRELAND PROMO.
Invest Northern Ireland has awarded its $1.5 million budget to CooperKatz & Co., INI's Larry Buchsbaum told O Dwyer's . He said 22 firms submitted bids, representing a mix of mid and large-sized firms from Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

INI executives met face-to-face with four firms, and CooperKatz won the account because it was "creative and nimble," said Buchsbaum. "I also snuck around and got references from CooperKatz clients," added Buchsbaum.

Andy Cooper will head the account, and the work will aim to drum up investments from companies involved in the technology, biotech, financial services and call center industries.

SITRICK SIDES
WITH ‘SIMPSONS VOICES.
The seven people who voice the dozens of characters on Fox's "The Simpsons" have brought in Sitrick & Co. as they strike to seek a share of the hit show's profits and a huge salary boost.

Sitrick is making the PR case for the actors who want salaries in line with sitcom stars like Jerry Seinfeld and Kelsey Grammar.

Sitrick has distributed a report put together by a financial analyst which says Fox has earned from $2.5-$3 billion from the animated show, based on syndication and advertising revenue estimates. Fox has said those revenue estimates are overblown.

In 2005, the show would become TV's longest running sitcom, replacing "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet."

IPG PAYS $41.1M
IN `03 BONUSES.
Interpublic shelled out $41.4 million in `03 bonuses for top executives, according to an internal e-mail sent prior to the release of the ad/PR conglom's proxy statement. The executive windfall follows a year in which IPG's red ink swelled to $451.7 million (compared to a year earlier $99.5 million profit) and employment dropped from 50,800 to 43,400.

CEO David Bell also reported a 3.6 percent decline in his much vaunted "organic growth" category during the past year.

The New York Times broke the bonus story after it received a copy of the e-mail. Philippe Krakowsky, IPG's spokesperson, confirmed that the e-mail was genuine.

COO Christopher Coughlin issued a statement, noting that IPG paid "minimal bonuses in `01, and none in `02." He called the `03 payments "appropriate" as IPG "made important strides in its turnaround efforts."

Coughlin, during IPG's conference call last month, vowed that IPG would continue to take a "relentless look" at overhead. Bell added that IPG was only in the first phase of its 24 to 36-month turnaround, and stressed that much more needs to be done to improve profit margins.

L&N WINS MEXICAN
MANGO BUSINESS.
Empacadoras de Mango de Exportacion, the association of packers and exporters of Mexican mangoes, has named Lewis & Neale, a New York-based food PR firm, to handle a $1.8 million campaign to promote mangoes in the U.S.

Anita Fial, president of L&N, said the firm bested Porter Novelli and TNS Gallup, a Mexican agency, for the account.

"Our goal is to raise U.S. consumption of mangoes from Mexico considerably above the current level of less than two pounds per capita," said Fial. "To that end, we will be conducting research, crafting brand positioning and launching an integrated marketing program—including PR and advertising, in both Spanish and English—to drive trial and repeat purchase of this fruit."

NASCAR REVAMPS PR OPS.
NASCAR has realigned its PR department, shifting its top corporate communications exec to a new post while adding a Powell Tate veteran to bolster its in-house operation.

Jim Hunter, VP/CC and the professional stock car racing league's main spokesman, has been moved to a new VP/CC slot for regional and weekly racing. NASCAR, an acronym for National Assn. of Stock Car Auto Racing, bills the move as an effort to put more focus on its short-track racing.

The league has brought in Ramsey Poston from Powell Tate as managing director to head consumer and corp. comms., reporting to Hunter. Poston, senior VP and management supervisor at PT, which is Weber Shandwick's D.C. office, is charged with handling PR in the sport's top 20 media markets and assisting Hunter in managing NASCAR's communications department, based in Daytona Beach, Fla.

OVAITT SUCCEEDS FELTON.
Frank Ovaitt has been elected president of the Institute for PR research group, succeeding Jack Felton, who steps down at the end of the year.

Ovaitt founded Crossover International in `95, after serving as VP-corporate affairs at MCI; VP-international at AT&T and editorial services director at Monsanto. His selection caps a six-month search.

He will spend the balance of the year drawing up a strategic plan for IPR. The group defines its goal as "improving the professional practice of PR around the world and encouraging academic and professional excellence in the field of PR."

Ovaitt serves as co-chair of the International PR Assn.'s Campaign for Media Transparency.

VACCINE GROUP ISSUES RFP.
A consortium of public and private health groups has begun to collect proposals for a global PR effort as they launch a campaign to vaccinate 30 million children by 2006.

The public-private effort includes the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization and its fund-raising arm, The Vaccine Fund, which are primarily backed by UNICEF, the World Health Organization, World Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation in particular has given $750 million to seed the effort.

GAVI and the Fund issued an RFP earlier this month and are currently collecting input from firms. The RFP covers PR and media relations across Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan to bolster its in-house staff, based in Switzerland with a presence in Washington, D.C.

Jean-Pierre Le Calvez, GAVI's top PR staffer who is overseeing the review, told O Dwyer's the group has not used an outside PR firm since its inception but has employed a public affairs shop to help with media relations on occasion. He declined to give a budget estimate until a vendor is identified and the scope of the work is refined.

The work should spotlight the need for global vaccination efforts, targeting corporate, government and NGO groups, according to the RFP. PR should also raise the profile of GAVI and the Fund, as well as their public and private backers.

HALLIBURTON WANTS
KIND WORDS.
Halliburton is using its website to help family members and friends keep in touch with loved ones in the Middle East. The Houston-based company has 24,000 employees and subcontract workers involved in Iraq and Kuwait. Thirty-three have been killed in the conflict.

A visitor to Halliburton's site can check on the status of any Kellogg Brown & Root employee.

Halliburton promises to respond to any inquiry within 12 hours. The company also recommends sending a "note of encouragement" to KB&R staffers. "Your encouraging words are appreciated and will be sent to our employees in the Middle East," it says.

Wendy Hall told O'Dwyer's that Halliburton launched the service on April 12. "I do not have exact information for you right now as we are focusing our efforts on our missing employees in Iraq," she said.

Halliburton, which has more than $9 billion in Pentagon contracts, wants to send more staffers to Iraq. It has 442 job openings there. The list includes security supervisors, hazmat coordinators, paramedics, fuel handlers, diesel mechanics, pest controllers and ice plant operators.

Halliburton needs 95 workers in Afghanistan, 66 in Kuwait and 16 in Uzbekistan.

SEMEDO, ROBINSON JOIN LEVICK.
Barbara Semedo, who handled communications for the President's Initiative on Race during the Clinton Admin., and Michael Robsinson, a former PA staffer at the Securities and Exchange Commission, have joined Levick Strategic Comms., Washington, D.C.

LSC is a litigation and crisis management firm that has worked for nearly half of the nation's top 100 law firms. Last year, it added Gene Grabowski, the top spokesperson at the Grocery Manufacturers of America, to its line-up.

BUSINESS REPORTERS
FIND NEW SOURCES.
Business journalists are abandoning corporate executives and other established sources of company news, according to the results of Euro RSCG Magnet's annual media study.

The findings chronicle journalists growing distrust of senior executives and other established sources for business coverage and reveal a credibility crisis that spans all of corporate America, not just those companies embroiled in controversy.

Journalists are now more likely to be influenced by consumers experiences with a company, the quality of that company's products or its status as an industry innovator than by the assessments and pronouncements of its CEO.

"This represents a significant shift from the way reporters have been covering companies for the last two decades and indicates that media will be making coverage decisions and gauging business performance by a new set of criteria in the years to come," the report said.

Steven Ross, associate professor at the Columbia Univ. graduate school of journalism, who is the author of the annual study, said results of this year's survey are based on the responses from 1,875 journalists working at newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets nationwide.

Here is a recap of major findings:

—Only 14% of respondents say they are very likely to be informed by CEOs.
—Respondents list product quality as the most important attribute they consider when reporting on a company overall.
—Respondents rank innovation as one of the top three criteria for measuring a company's success.
—Customer satisfaction ranks third in the attributes more carefully examined by today's media, second only to innovation and product quality.

SURVEY: TEENS DIP
INTO NEWSPAPERS.
The results of USA Weekend's 17th annual teen survey show teenagers get news about young celebrities and athletes by reading newspapers.

The survey, which found a majority of teenagers have a newspaper delivered to their homes and at least see it, shows teenagers are not entirely different from adults in their approach to newspapers, according to Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia Univ.'s graduate school of journalism, who wrote an analysis of this year's survey of more than 65,000 teenagers for the magazine, which is published by Gannett.

"They read instrumentally, looking for material that is personally useful to them sections explicitly about teenagers or high schools, movie listings, fashion stories or horoscopes," Lemann wrote.

Girls turn to newspapers for entertainment news while the sports section is high on the list of news for boys. "And when something truly epochal happens, a Sept. 11 or a war in Iraq, they often will fill in the news flash from TV by reading the more complete account in the newspaper," said Lemann.

"The best way to characterize their attitude is that they believe in newspapers in theory and expect really to read them one day, but in practice they dip in and out of the more accessible sections," said Lemann.

AKER PUSHES
LOCAL TV NEWS PLACEMENTS.
The Aker Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based PR firm, believes local TV news will attract a larger share of the audience as fewer people watch the networks or read publications to get the latest news.

"Gauging news value and crafting messages for local audiences is paramount," the firm said in its recent "Akers Newscard."

"Today, people have just 19 hours a week for leisure, and spend only a fraction of it reading newspapers or magazines," said the agency, which noted all the major media—print, radio, network and cable TV—are losing audiences.

Not all audiences are lost—they ve just gone elsewhere, Aker said. News outlets are proliferating and fragmenting the audiences. Online, ethnic and alternative media are growing.

The agency said the rush to be first places greater emphasis on news distribution, not news journalism. Direct-to-audience, non-media communications are becoming more common and effective, Akers said.

The firm also pointed out that as more information is communicated online, visual communications will increasingly compete with print, and news with video images will rule the day.

MARKETERS SEEK PLACEMENTS
IN ARTICLES.
A growing number of marketers want to persuade the nation's print magazines to open the text of their editorial pages to product placements, according to a report in Advertising Age, April 12.

Jon Fine, who wrote the report, said many argue that product placements in magazines would "violate the church-and-state division between ads and editorial that, at least rhetorically, lie at the heart of magazines time-honored pitch to marketers."

One of the leading proponents of product placements is Matthew Spahn, director of media planning at Sears, Roebuck & Co., who was quoted in the report as saying the "only way we re going to be more successful is to get even more creative and try to find ways to address this church-and-state" issue of editorial vs. advertising in magazines.

Peter Arnett, 69, former TV news correspondent for MSNBC, and Molly Walsh, 43, who works in PR for the Altria Group in Washington, D.C., were married March 6. Arnett is living in Baghdad, where he is writing a book on the last years of the Saddam Hussein regime.

(Media news continued on next page)

WSJ SCANDAL REPORTER
JOINS NEWSWEEK.
Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker said Charles Gasparino, previously a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has been hired as a senior writer for the business section. He joins Newsweek in May.

Gasparino, who has been at the Journal for the last nine years, has consistently broken news on some of the biggest financial scandals of recent years, including the fall of Martha Stewart, Henry Blodget and Jack Grubman.

Whitaker said Gasparino is "one of the best reporters in the field."

Gasparino was also the lead reporter in the first story that detailed the enormous pay package awarded to former NYSE chief Dick Grasso and wrote a series of stories about underhanded practices in the mutual fund industry long before they came under scrutiny. He is writing a book on Wall Street entitled, "Blood on the Street," that will be published later this year.

PEOPLE
Julie Rannazzisi, 36, New York bureau chief for CBS MarketWatch and its top markets reporter, died April 10 after a 17-month battle with cancer.

Siri Garber, former publicist for Paris Hilton, appears on the cover of the new issue of Steppin' Out in lacy black panties and bra. The magazine called her "Hollywood's sexiest publicist."

Nancy Griffin, previously deputy editor of Premiere and a correspondent for Talk magazine, has joined AARP The Magazine as west coast editor.

Iris Sutcliffe, who was an assistant magazine editor at Lucky magazine, was named managing editor of Child magazine.

Erik Meers was appointed managing editor of Harper's Bazaar.

Michael Callaghan has joined Cosmopolitan as a deputy editor.

Janice Min, editor of Us Weekly, is taking a maternity leave at the end of May. She is not expected back until late summer or early fall.
Nicola McCarthy, who is editor-in-chief of OK! in London, was brought in as executive editor to work with Lori Majewski, who already holds that position.

Justin Hibbard, previously a senior editor at Red Herring magazine, is joining Light Reading's San Francisco office to cover next-generation telecommunications services and equipment.

Frank Bruni, who was Rome bureau chief for The New York Times, was named restaurant critic, and Eric Asimov, a columnist on food and wine for the "Dining In, Dining Out" section, was named chief wine critic. The new positions are effective June 1.

MAGAZINE CATERS
TO GAY NEWLYWEDS.
New York-based Rainbow Enterprises is starting a new magazine, called Rainbow Weddings, which will target gays and lesbians who are making plans to get married.

The magazine will provide information to those involved in planning their wedding as well as honeymoon destinations plus features on same sex celebrity couples and practical advice for newlyweds.

The magazine's founder Michael Weiskopf said he sees the publication as "a sourcebook for wedding planners as well as a unifying voice for the growing number of people who are seeking equal rights with heterosexuals to the franchise of marriage."

The magazine will also offer articles on alternative family lifestyles.

The first issue of RW will be published in December. Weiskopf can be reached at 917/562-5650.

NEW SPORTS RADIO SHOW
IS ALL BUSINESS.
Brian Berger, a PR consultant, and Keith Forman, an event management consultant, are co-hosting a new sports business radio show in Portland, Ore.

The hour-long talk show, which made its debut on April 11 on KXL, is believed to be the first radio show in the nation devoted entirely to the business end of sports.

NBA commissioner David Stern was the show's inaugural guest.

Forman said TV, PR, marketing, licensing and merchandising have created the opportunity for the show.

FIZZ COVERS
'CONSTRUCTIVE' WORKS.
Fizz ("Effervescent news for everyone") is the name of a new quarterly newspaper published by Uplifting Media in Brooklyn, N.Y., and edited by Jessica Wapner.

Wapner, who is managing editor at Millennium Medical Publishing, which publishes a monthly medical journal, said her motive for starting Fizz is for "there to be a newspaper/magazine that would be dedicated to constructive works going on around the world, with artful and intelligent writing."

The paper's mission is to combine news, trends, and culture with soul-searching questions and viewpoints. She said the content will range from articles about interesting etymologies to interviews with well-known actors and artists.

Wapner, who will rely on several contributing writers for stories, said "no fewer than six countries" are represented by the authors who volunteered their time and talent to write articles for the first issue.

Future issues of Fizz will include articles on care of the elderly, sustainable living, education, and the arts, she said.

The paper will be available free in local gathering places in the New York area as well as by subscription.
Wapner welcomes story suggestions at 718/440-4641 or [email protected].

FRIEDLAND JOINS
MEXIMERICA MEDIA.
Jonathan Friedland was named group managing editor of Meximerica Media, a new publishing group that is expected to start Spanish-language newspapers in several Texas cities.

Friedland had been the Los Angeles bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal and a former correspondent in Buenos Aires and Mexico City.

Meximerica is led by Edward Schumacher, a former managing editor of the Journal and a former correspondent in Madrid and Buenos Aires for The New York Times.

Among the cities under consideration for the new paper are Austin, Houston and San Antonio, to be followed by others in the West and Southwest.

The resignation of Sherry Treco-Jones as a director of PRSA (page one) is the latest chapter in what is becoming PRSA's "Watergate."

There are charges of undue influence on the nominating process in 2003 and before that and strenuous efforts by PRSA leaders to "cover up" the whole mess.

A committee headed by Jack Felton in 2000 sought to end what critics felt was the undue influence of the late Patrick Jackson, 1980 president, in picking board members and officers.

Felton, who was 1986-87 president, told the 2000 Assembly that an "elite group" had taken control of the Society, blocking others from exercising power.

He condemned the nine board members who that year publicly supported Joann Killeen for president-elect vs. Art Stevens.

He said the bylaws and tradition of PRSA are that the board is to be "separate from the nominating process and the board is not to elect its own officers."

The immediate past president of the Society sits on the nominating committee but has no vote, he pointed out. This shows the "clear" intent is to keep the board out of nominations and elections, he said.

A major complaint against the 2003 nominating process is that 2003 president Reed Byrum and president-elect Del Galloway both expressed strong opinions about candidates to the nomcom. Some of the candidates felt they had been defamed.

Attempts to institute reforms and chastise the 2003 nomcom for its misbehavior, including pushing the deadline back six days, have now been blocked in an 8-6 board vote, showing a deep split.

Significantly, the four new directors of PRSA, Sue Bohle, Maria Russell, Michael Cherenson and Anthony D Angelo, all voted against the reforms of the nominating process. They behaved like good little soldiers.

Had Art Stevens, Jeff Seideman and Phil Ryan been on the 2004 board, these reforms would have passed. However, they were kicked off one way or another by the 2003 nomcom and 2003 Assembly.

These shenanigans (packing the 2004 board) are embarrassing not only to PRSA but to the PR field.
PRSA veterans tell us the only hope, when the PRSA train jumps the track, is the Past Presidents Council of PRSA. We re hopeful.

While the governance task force didn t get too far with the board, neither did the board of ethics and professional standards (BEPS).

Twice it asked the board to investigate alleged abuses on the 2003 nominating committee and twice it was turned down.

The response of the board and president Del Galloway, who makes the appointments with the approval of the board, was to "pack" BEPS the same way the board had been "packed" with new members who would see things the way Galloway and 2003 president Reed Byrum see them.

Not invited back to BEPS was chairman Chuck Wood and vice chair Vivian Hamilton. The board was then expanded from nine to 11 as five new members were added: chair Dave Rickey, vice chair Gary McCormick, Gabe Werba, Ray Durazo and Gail Baker.

With these five new members we doubt you will hear anything more about 2003 nomcom abuses from BEPS. This body has been reduced to sawdust. Whereas the normal committee appoints its own chair, the PRSA president has that power over BEPS and only appoints the chair one year at a time. The independence of BEPS has been destroyed.

PRSA, challenging our statement that Sherry Treco-Jones was the first director to quit mid-term in PRSA's 57-year history, noted that Dana Hughes resigned from the board in 1990. But Hughes, who had been president of the Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Boston chapters, was elected in late 1989 but quit in December without ever attending a board meeting. Patrick Pollino replaced him. The 1990-91 Public Relations Journal/PRSA Register Issue shows Pollino as the director.

While PRSA fiddles with internal politics, the PR field is burning. A "Credibility of Spokespersons" poll by Edelman PR Worldwide, discussed at the Arthur Page meeting April 1, found that "company PR representative" was next to the bottom in credibility (story on page 7).

The only spokespeople with less credibility are athletes and entertainers, according to the poll of 750 people including 400 in the U.S.

At the top were doctors and healthcare specialists, average people, academics and nonprofit reps.
The results track with the $150,000 PRSA/Rockefeller study of "believable sources of information. It was published in 1999 after four years of research by professors at Columbia, Duke and other universities.

"PR specialist" ranked 43rd in believability out of 45 categories of spokespeople. At the top were Supreme Court Justice, teacher, national expert, member of armed forces, local business owner and "ordinary citizen." PRSA, disappointed with the results, especially the high showing of news media reps, refused to publish the table in Tactics or Strategist. Tactics had a brief story on it that failed to report the low standing of PR pros.

The PR industry is being hurt by the failure of its trade association to conduct a "PR for PR" program.

--Jack O'Dwyer