F-H PULLS PLUG ON L.A. PACTS.
Fleishman-Hillard has decided that it will not seek extensions or renewals of its controversial contracts with the Los Angeles Departments of Water and Power and the Port of Los Angeles when they expire within 90 days.

The U.S. attorney's office and Los Angeles county district attorney's office are investigating allegations that Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn sought campaign contributions in exchange for the contracts. L.A. controller Laura Chick has launched an audit of F-H's $3 million contract with LADWP after refusing to pay December and January invoices.

Richard Kline, F-H regional manager and GM/L.A., issued a statement to say the media focus on the contracts diverted attention from the client's work. "Ideally, public attention should be on the department's work, rather than on the provider of its communications services," he said. Kline added that F-H acted before its representation became an issue for the clients.

F-H's contract with LADWP is up June 30. The POLA business expires July 10.

The St. Louis-based firm also announced that it will end its contract with Los Angeles World Airports on May 20. The firm's contract was to expire Nov. 27, but F-H said it hadn t done any work for LAWA in two years.

VIRGIN ISLANDS
IS UP FOR GRABS.
The U.S. Virgin Islands Dept. of Tourism has placed its PR account in review. Slay PR, the nine-year incumbent, will pitch for the work, believed to be in the six-figure range.

Joe Slay, president of the PR unit, confirmed the review to this NL and said the move is routine and not the first during Slay's tenure. Senior account supervisor Luana Wheatley heads the work.

Slay broke out, essentially in name only, from The Martin Agency in 2001 to better distinguish the firm from its ad agency parent.

St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John are U.S. territories in the Virgin Islands archipelago. Tourism is 70 percent of the islands $2.4 billion GDP and two million visitors hit the beaches there each year.
J. Walter Thompson and Mindshare won advertising duties for the Islands last year.

The Dept. of Tourism is gathering proposals from PR firms for a "strategic tourism marketing plan" through May 4.

BELL RINGS UP
$1.3M BONUS AT IPG.
Interpublic paid CEO David Bell a $1.3M bonus for last year, according to the ad/PR conglom's proxy statement released April 23. The former True North chief, who succeeded John Dooner on Feb. 27, 2003, earned a $1M salary.

CFO Christopher Coughlin got a $900K bonus— $400K of that amount was a "sign-on" bonus of unrestricted shares of stock. He joined IPG on June 13, and received $433,333 in pay for the year.

Philippe Krakowsky, senior VP-corporate communications, received a 34 percent pay hike to $375,000. The former Y&R executive earned more than general counsel Nicholas Camera, who received $361,250 in pay. Krakowsky's $225K bonus topped Camera's $220K windfall. IPG also paid its spokesperson $484,250 in long-term compensation.

Dooner earned $1,250,000 in compensation, and received a $750K bonus for work as McCann-Erickson WorldGroup CEO.

Chief marketing officer Bruce Nelson received $600K in pay and $400K in bonus. Brian Brooks, former chief talent and human resources officer, got $463,750 in salary, and $160K in bonus.

IPG lost $451.7 million last year.

RENDON GROUP
ADVISES AFGHAN PREZ.
The Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group to counsel and coordinate communications for Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai. The U.S., according to The New York Times, wants to bolster the leadership of Karzai by promoting "visible signs of reconstruction." The paper reports that Karzai's government, in recent weeks, has issued "choreographed announcements about hundreds of schools and clinics to be built or rehabilitated in the next few months."

Karzai and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the country's defacto CEO, made a media splash on April 17 with a ceremony to celebrate the planting of 850,000 trees as part of the "greening of Kabul" campaign.

The U.S. has 15,500 troops in Afghanistan, and has spent $4.2 billion there since the ouster of the Taliban. It has lost 110 soldiers in "Operation Enduring Freedom," including former Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman who was killed in a firefight on April 22. The 27-year-old Tillman gave up his $3.7 million football contract, and joined the Army Rangers following the Sept. 11 attack.

PS HELPS DIEBOLD'S
VOTING MACHINE UNIT.
Public Strategies is helping Diebold Election Systems with PR efforts as it faces scrutiny for its role in helping the U.S. update its voting machines.

Mike Jacobsen, spokesman for Diebold, DES parent, told O Dwyer's that PS has been working on public affairs and media relations efforts for the election unit. While Diebold is based in North Canton, Ohio, its DES unit is headquartered in Texas, where PS has strong roots.

A voting systems advisory panel in California last week recommended DES touchscreen voting machines not be used in November, after a trial run in March primaries yielded technical and human errors in some counties.

The Maryland Board of Elections has been sued by a voters group because DES electronic voting machines do not produce a paper record, and a contractor hired by the state was able to hack the system. The MBE has certified Diebold's machines for use. DES is running a $1M outreach campaign, with ads and PR efforts, in the state to educate voters.

Diebold CEO Walden O Dell's status as a Bush "Pioneer" and questions about the security of electronic voting have brought DES to national attention in recent months.

LANDOR BRANDS SAUDI ARABIA.
Saudi Arabia's Supreme Commission for Tourism has hired WPP Group's Landor Assocs. to develop a "brand identity" to attract non-traditional travelers to the Kingdom. The Saudis want more visitors than the annual Haj pilgrims.

Landor may base its work on some of the information posted on the Commission's website. It promotes "scenic wonders," such as the serene beauty of the seemingly endless "Empty Quarter" desert. Visitors also may enjoy scuba diving, golf, tennis, ice skating or trips to the Kingdom's "world class shopping malls."

The Commission also reminds potential visitors about the importance of "appropriate attire." That means no shorts for men and an Abaya (full-length black outer garment) for women.

The Kingdom was rocked by a terror attack earlier this month.

LOUISON MOVES TO CADBURY.
Deborah Louison has left a senior VP post at APCO Worldwide to head a new public affairs shop for Cadbury Schweppes in Washington.

Louison, senior VP and director of APCO's global services, takes the title of VP of government affairs for CS's new D.C. hub. The company said she is its first in-house PA exec in North America.

The London-based food and beverage marketer recently pruned its nine operating divisions down to five, with its confectionary and beverage units in the U.S. Key U.S. brands are Dr. Pepper, Snapple, Dentyne and Cadbury chocolate.

MWW REPS CONTRACTOR
IN PHOTO FLAP.
The MWW Group's Los Angeles office was prompted to issue a response last week for client Maytag Aircraft Corp., after the Seattle Times broke word that the company fired two employees for taking photos of flag-draped caskets of U.S. soldiers in Kuwait.

Senior VP David Herbst and associate VP Larry Barrios are handling media for Colorado Springs-based Maytag, which is a unit of Mercury Air Group.

In a statement issued by MWW on behalf of Maytag president William Silva, the company confirms it terminated two employees for violating Dept. of Defense and company policies by photographing and publishing images of the caskets. Maytag says it "deeply" regrets the actions and concurs with the Pentagon policy of "respecting the remains" of fallen soldiers. Those policies date back to 1991, when the Pentagon banned media photos of caskets being returned to the U.S.

Herbst was formerly director of corporate relations for Mercury, earlier in his career.

The Times, which originally published the controversial photograph of caskets on a plane in Kuwait taken by Maytag employee Tami Silicio, broke the story of her firing. Maytag also fired her husband.

LIVINGSTON LOBBIES
FOR KENTUCKY.
Kentucky's Office of Homeland Security has hired The Livingston Group to help attract anti-terrorism dollars to the Bluegrass State. The U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security recently awarded Kentucky a $35 million "first responder" grant that will increase security at venues such as Churchill Downs, the site of the Kentucky Derby.

The state currently is on a "blue" or "guarded" terror alert condition. That's one below the national "yellow" or "elevated" threat level. As part of Kentucky's anti-terror awareness campaign, Louisville will host the "American Community Preparedness Conference and Expo" May 11-13.

Francis Taylor, the U.S. State Dept.'s coordinator for counterterrorism, is the keynote speaker.
Bob Livingston, the former House Speaker-designate Congressman; Allen Martin, his former chief of staff, and William Crosby, ex-Republican counsel on the House Rules Committee, handle the Kentucky account.

BARRETT ADDS TO RESUME.
Debra Barrett, who was VP-public policy & senior director-government affairs at the Generic Pharmaceutical Assn., has joined The Washington Group as a senior VP.

She also has Capitol Hill, non-profit, White House and media experience. Barrett handled healthcare issues for Senate Democrats Christopher Dodd, Chuck Schumer and Pat Leahy; served as policy analyst at Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation; worked at the Domestic Policy Council in the Office of First Lady Hillary Clinton, and was an assignment editor/ producer at CNN's Washington, D.C., bureau.

J-PROF PRESSURES
PRSA INTO VNR POLICY.
The Columbia Journalism Review said PRSA did the right thing in urging organizations that produce video news releases to clearly label them, disclose who paid for them, and for TV stations to identify VNRs and their sources to viewers.

CJR credited Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York Univ., with pressuring PRSA to issue its policy statement on VNRs. Rosen had criticized the PR industry for failing to publicly condemn the Bush Administration—as the American Society of Newspaper Editors had done (NL, 3/31)— for employing a PR representative to pose as a reporter on a VNR for the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

"In theory, those aren t new standards for the PR industry, but it's significant that PRSA is now on record as endorsing them," said CJR, which pointed out PRSA's statement comes on the heels of CNN's new VNR policy, which ensures that hereafter local stations will receive VNR footage separately from general news segments (NL, 4/14).

O Dwyer's asked PRSA spokesperson Cedric Bess about the more than month delay regarding taking a position about VNRs. The Society, he said, only decided to go public on VNRs after receiving "several inquiries" about whether or not it had a "positioning" paper on them.

PRSA calls VNRs the television equivalent of a press release, and notes that they have been used regularly by media outlets for more than 25 years.

HISPANICS GET NEWS
IN TWO LANGUAGES.
A new study issued by the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C., shows a growing number of Hispanics switch between English and Spanish to get the news.

Rather than two audiences sharply segmented by language, the survey shows many more Latinos get at least some of their news in both English and Spanish than in just one language or the other.

Even fluent English speakers rely on Spanish language media to get news from Latin America and about Hispanic communities in the U.S., and half of Latinos who were born abroad get at least some news in English.

However, in one key segment of the Hispanic population—likely voters in U.S. elections—the English-language media is the dominant source of news. More than half of Latino voters (53%) get all their news in English and 40% gets news from media in both languages while 6% of likely voters get all their news in Spanish.

Latinos have strong views about the roles the news media play in society. The vast majority of Latinos, including those who only get news in English, view the Spanish-language media as an important institution for the economic and political development of the Hispanic population.

NEWS WORLD
SHUTTERS TWO PUBS.
Noticias del Mundo, a daily Spanish-language newspaper printed in Long Island City, N.Y., and circulated in Manhattan, is being closed down by News World Communications, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

The closing will put about 38 people out of work.

The World & I, a Washington, D.C.-based monthly magazine, is also being closed by NWC, putting 17 staffers out of jobs.

Seventeen staffers who work for the biweekly Insight on the News have been dismissed.

The Washington Times, the UPI news service and The Washington Times National Weekly Edition were not affected by the cutbacks.

RUMBO TO START
PUBLISHING IN TEXAS.
Meximerica Media in San Antonio will launch Rumbo, a new network of Spanish-language daily newspapers throughout the U.S.

Rumbo, the Spanish word often associated with the Latin American phrase meaning "heading north for a better life," will be a daily tabloid built around local news and a core of common content.

The papers will be aimed at Hispanic men and women between the ages of 21 and 45, and will include relevant Mexican, U.S. and international news, as well as sports, entertainment and lifestyle content.

Meximerica is led by Edward Schumacher, a former managing editor of The Wall Street Americas and a correspondent in Madrid and Buenos Aires for The New York Times; and Jonathan Friedland, previously the Los Angeles bureau chief for The Journal and a former correspondent in Buenos Aires and Mexico City, who is group managing editor of Rumbo.

The first four publications will be distributed beginning at the end of the second quarter of 2004 in select Texas locations.

It plans to roll out additional versions of Rumbo outside Texas over the next two to three years.
Meximerica is owned by the Recoletos Group de Communication, based in Spain. Pearson, which owns The Financial Times, is a principal shareholder in Recoletos.

The GCI Group is handling PR for Rumbo.

THALIA MAGAZINE DEBUTS
FOR HISPANICS.
Thalia magazine, a celebrity magazine for young Hispanic women, hit newsstands across the U.S. on April 14. It is a joint venture between American Media Inc. and former Sony Music chairman Thomas Mottola and Thalia Sodi, a singer.

Thalia is AMI's third magazine focused on the Hispanic audience, joining Mira and Shape En Espanol.

The magazine will have a mixture of health, beauty, fashion and spiritual tips as well as celebrity interviews and aspirational stories.

TRUMP HIRES
PRODUCT PLACEMENT FIRM.
Buzz Bags, a New York-based company that specializes in placing products in hands of trendsetters and the media, played a behind-the-scenes role in the final episode of "The Apprentice," which aired April 15.

The producers of Donald Trump's hit show asked Buzz Bags co-founders, Debra Scott and Jane Ubell-Meyer, to get some products to put in goodie bags that contestant Bill and his team would have to assemble as gifts for Trump's friends and colleagues in the Chrysler Trump Golf Classic Tournament.

(Media news continued on next page)

PUBLIC SCHOOLS WELCOME
TEEN MAGAZINE.
The school system has become the most targeted arena to reach young consumers and build brand loyalty.

Marketing research shows teens and tweens have more buying power than ever before.

Studies show elementary school kids have an estimated $15 billion of their own money of which they spend $11 billion on toys, clothes, candy and snacks, and mall trotting teens spend over $170 billion per year on mostly expensive fashion and consumer device products.

"Smart advertisers are going after these kids in the junior and high schools, and if it is done right, the school system may actually like you more for it," said Katy Saeger, an associate VP at 5W PR in New York, who handles PR for SchoolSports, a Boston-based magazine.

The ad-supported teen magazine is welcomed by the public school system, and even more, teachers and athletic directors are distributing 650,000 copies of the magazine to students in the junior high and high schools around the U.S.

"Teens and teachers alike are in favor of the magazine," said Saeger, who said the magazine is home to such advertisers as Rocawear, Timberland, Nike, Gatorade and PlayStation.

One reason the magazine has caught on is because of "their understanding and respect in the public high school system," said Saeger, who pointed out that "the topics covered are not small teen issues that young people mock, these are real life, raw truth stories and experiences that teens address."

Some of the recent topics covered include steroid use and sports for teens and the right to go pro after high school.

The content in SchoolSports also includes articles about teammates and competitors, nationally and regionally, and some of the sections are written by teens and their peers.

Story pitches are welcomed by either Rob Bodenburg, editorial director, or Jon Segal, editor-in-chief. They can be reached at 877/776-7894.

EDITOR NAMED AT SPA FINDER MAGAZINE.
Gary Walther, a 25-year writing and editing veteran, was named editor-in-chief of Spa Finder Magazine, which targets active spa goers.

Walther is a former senior editor of Travel & Leisure and editor-in-chief of American Express Departures magazine. After he helped start Expedia Travels for Ziff Davis in May 2000, he worked as an editorial consultant for Worth magazine and Angeles Publications, a division of the Tribune Co., where he revamped Distinction magazine.

Walther said he will sharpen Spa Finder's focus as the authority on luxury spas and associated lifestyle pursuits for affluent people.

He also wants to broaden the magazine's editorial scope across the range of relaxation, fitness, wellness, beauty and fashion topics that touch the spa world and interest spa-lifestyle consumers.

PLACEMENT TIPS
National Wildlife, the flagship publication of the National Wildlife Federation, has been overhauled.

The revamped bimonthly magazine, which was started in 1962, will continue to provide a mix of top nature photography, unusual wildlife stories and practical tips for integrating nature into everyday life, along with new and regular departments including "Green Consumer" and "Your Health" that will incorporate tips and hints on leading a "greener" lifestyle.

Mark Wexler, editorial director, is based in Reston, Va., at 800/822-9919.

Business Finance magazine and Cognos are sponsoring the 2004 Vision Awards to recognize companies that excel in business performance management. The winning companies will be profiled in Business Finance. Application forms are available online at www.bfmag.com/visionawards.

The Associated Press is starting a new business news service on June 1 called AP Financial News that will be offered to online services and Internet portals, as well as to newspapers, broadcasters and their websites.

The AP said the first customer for the service will be Yahoo!, which plans to offer the expanded news primarily within its Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! News properties.

AP Financial News will include more quarterly earnings announcements, executive changes, regulatory actions, acquisitions and new product developments for major companies in many industries.

A new team of reporters, led by Ann Sommerlath, a veteran business journalist, will produce the report. Sommerlath reports to AP business editor Kevin Noblet.

N.Y. TIMES REVAMPS `SUNDAYBUSINESS.
The New York Times has changed its Sunday business section. Color pages were added to the revamped section, and additional editorial content such as personal finance and technology, plus new columnists including James Fallows of Atlantic Monthly.

The new section, which made its debut on April 18, is called "SundayBusiness."

PEOPLE
Jody Quon is joining New York Magazine on May 3 as photography director, replacing Chris Dougherty, who left. Quon had been with The New York Times Magazine photo department for 11 years, and where she was deputy photo editor since 1999.

Jeff Bercovici, a reporter for Folio, is joining Women's Wear Daily as a media reporter.

"Jersey Girl," starring Ben Affleck as a publicist whose long hours cut into his family life, is another unflattering movie about a PR pro.

It's not as hard on PR as last year's "People I Know" (in which the PR pro was described as a "professional bootlicker, a sad and regretful man" by one reviewer) and "Phone Booth" (the publicist lies to just about everyone including his wife).

Affleck for a while quits the dog-eat-dog world of music publicity but then makes another stab at trying to get a job, saying he longs for, among other things, "the chance to again lord it over magazine editors."

No one knows better than Hollywood how tough publicists are with magazines when the mag wants to feature a celeb. A few big PR firms exercise control over usage of the stars. The mags once tried to organize against the PR firms but the move disintegrated.

The Edelman PR Worldwide credible spokesperson survey (4/21) showing the low standing of "company PR rep" shocked many.

Some wanted to know how wide was the gap between the top (doctors, healthcare specialists) and the bottom (PR reps and entertainers). Doctors were rated credible by 54% of respondents in 2004 while PR reps were so rated by 10% and entertainers, 6%.

On the image of PR, the mess in the PRSA nominating process (nomcomGate) is doing neither the industry nor PRSA any good. Dave Rickey, head of the ethics board, where are you?
Sue Bohle, Michael Cherenson and Anthony D Angelo, new directors who were the benefactors of a flawed nominating process last year, should not have voted in March on recommendations for reform by the governance committee headed by Sherry Treco-Jones (who promptly resigned).
That was a conflict of interest. The three should have recused themselves from the vote and the reforms would have passed. The board also voted against investigating the 2003 nomcom.

Debra Miller, 50th anniversary president in 1997, in 2000 proposed opening the secretive nominating process in which only a few insiders knew who was on the nomcom and who was seeking office.

She wanted everything on the PRSA website including debates about issues. She wanted all PRSA members to be able to vote on the candidates, which would be easy since PRSA has the e-mails of most members and the permission to use them.
The pathology of the situation is that the rank-and-file members (like the population of Iraq) are not used to democracy. The non-APRs (80% of the membership) have not been able to vote on anything since 1974. Their opinions have not counted.

The June 4-5 leaders party in New York (costing $100K) could end the rule of the APRs but the warlords and mullahs of PRSA (including chapter presidents, half of whom are APR), fear loss of power. The sacred cow of APR keeps getting fed.

The PRSA board had a "stealth" meeting April 22-24 in Jacksonville. It was not posted on the PRSA website. President Del Galloway, who has championed the cause of corporate transparency and openness, has not responded to queries about the 8-6 board vote blocking nomcom reform... the 2004 nomcom, headed by Joann Killeen, is following the rigid rules that limit candidates to those who have either voted in the Assembly or served as chapter, section, district or national committee head. This limits the pool to several hundred, blocking out about 19,000 other members. Bear in mind that PRSA loses 5,500+ members yearly, some of them APRs and ex-leaders. Instead, the nomcom should look for most prestigious, credible member (or even non-member) and say, "Please lead us out of this morass. We ll do anything you say." Question: why are two members on the 2003 nomcom (Donna Stein and Gail Rymer) also on the 2004 nomcom?

The 75th anniversary celebration of New York Women in Communications April 20 featured a panel on "Power is not a four-letter word." Panelists mostly discussed power in abstract terms, one of them saying that women get power by doing a good job.

During the Q&A, we asked whether women did not have too much power in winning places in college. There are 166 African-American women in college, we noted, for every 100 African-American men, leading to a lack of economically viable men to marry the women, a high out-of-wedlock birth rate, and other problems. We said women in high school compile better records than men partly because they mature earlier. Panelist Karen House, SVP of Dow Jones and publisher, Wall Street Journal, said that women are not going to "slow down so men can catch up." The audience agreed...

House was in the news last week as WSJ reporters protested at the Dow Jones annual meeting. They have even held mini-work stoppages at the paper to draw attention to what they feel are unfair compensation policies. House and her husband, Peter Kann, DJ chairman and CEO, got pay hikes of 32% and 58% while reporters are getting tiny hikes and are being asked to pay more for their healthcare...

House, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her interviews with Jordan's King Hussein, was awarded a Matrix by NYWICI in 1991. Alix Freedman, WSJ senior editor, got one this year. But conservative critics of NYWICI, who say no out-and-out conservative has ever won a Matrix, say neither House nor Freedman are "noted for their conservative views."

--Jack O'Dwyer