COUGHLIN EXITS IPG AS ROTH NAMED CHMN.
The 51-year-old Chris Coughlin, who joined Interpublic as COO and CFO last June, has decided to retire at the end of the year. The departure comes as IPG names board member Michael Roth, CEO of MONY Group, chairman effective July 15. That s when France s AXA Financial Services Group plans to complete the acquisition of New York-based MONY.

Coughlin, a former executive VP at Pharmacia, said, in a statement, that he enjoyed participating in the "first stage" of rebuilding IPG. He left after considering his "long-term future in a global corporate setting such as this one." IPG recruited Coughlin to replace Sean Orr. His $800K-a-year contract was sweetened with a $400K in stock "signing bonus." Coughlin was entitled to 28 vacation days, a $10K auto allowance and $10K for club fees.

IPG CEO Dave Bell, 60, praised Coughlin for bringing an "enhanced financial discipline" to the company, and for hiring "first-class professionals," such as Bob Thompson, who succeeds Coughlin as CFO.

Roth, 58, was elected an IPG director in `02. He also sits on Pitney Bowes and Gaylord Entertainment boards. Roth, who joined MONY in '89, also was EVP at Primerica Corp. and partner at Coopers & Lybrand.

Bell praised Roth s intellect and called him a "terrific operator."

MEYER PUTS 'FOR SALE SIGN ON GGG.
CEO Ed Meyer has put a "for sale" sign on Grey Global Group, owner of GCI Group and APCO Worldwide. The 77-year-old executive controls 13 percent of Grey s common shares and 59 percent of its Class B stock. That gives him control of 70 percent of GGG s voting shares.

Publicis, which shares Procter & Gamble with GGG, and WPP Group are the front-runners to forge a deal. A Grey Advertising executive told O'Dwyer s that staffers are rooting for Publicis rather than WPP because CEO Maurice Levy has a more hands-off management strategy than Martin Sorrell. The deal is expected to fetch GGG more than $1.2 billion.

Jim Allman, a former J. Walter Thompson exec who recently headed worldwide marketing at Sotheby s, has been tapped as president of Interpublic s DeVries PR in New York. Allman, who started June 21, takes the reins after the 2003 exit of Ildy Herczeg, who retired to Denver after 15 years at DVPR. Madeline de Vries remains chairman/CEO.

QORVIS SEEKS TO BOND U.S., SAUDI WOMEN.
Qorvis Communications is using The Barnett Group, Washington, D.C., to organize women-to-women exchanges between the U.S. and its client, Saudi Arabia.

The effort dubbed "The Women's Project" calls for partnering females of both countries working in business, finance, healthcare and media.

Judith Barnett s firm is to develop a list of qualified women, and woo them to visit the Kingdom.

The former Deputy Asst. Secretary for Africa and the Near East for the Dept. of Commerce also will draw up a briefing book and recommend background reading for junketeers heading for the Kingdom.

A reverse mission of Saudi women to the U.S. is slated for the fall.

Qorvis handles logistics, Saudi programming and dealing with the royal family. CEO Michael Petruzzello said the Project is "still in the concept phase."

Management Recruiters Int l has tapped Financial Dynamics after a review process to help put the company on par with competitors in the executive search arena. Finalists were Kitchen PR and Blinn PR.

FD's New York and London offices coordinate as MRI s corporate communications firm and support its network of company-owned and franchise operations, which number about 1,100 in the U.S.

WILLIAMS DEFENDS IABC REMARKS.
Chicago counselor Louis Williams, who has been sued along with IABC by former IABC CEO Elizabeth Allan for remarks he made about the staff that she headed, said he had no official IABC position when he made the remarks.

Allan is charging that his critical remarks about the governance of IABC, made Aug. 20, 2002 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Association Executives, broke her severance agreement which

(IABC continues on page seven)

PR21 HELPS PULL PLUG ON COMDEX.
PR21 is helping MediaLive International spread the word that the annual technology extravaganza, Comdex, has been cancelled this year in the wake of declining interest. ML, which took over the show last year, said the next U.S. Comdex event remains scheduled for November 2005.

While the trade show was the place to be during the 1990s tech boom, exhibitors and press attendance had shrunk from over 200,000 in the late 1990s to about 41,000 scheduled for the now-defunct November event this year. The plug was mainly pulled because of a lack of support from the computing and IT industry heavyweights.

"While we could still run a profitable Comdex this year, it does not benefit the industry to do so without broader support of the leading technology companies," said MediaLife s president, Robert Priest-Heck, in a statement distributed by PR21, an Edelman unit. He said the show's advisory board needs time to redesign the event.

PITCHERS MUST BE IN THE GAME.
Israel stipulates in its tourism contract with MWW Group and 5W Public Relations that the executives who presented the pitch for the business must be among those working on the business. MWW CEO Michael Kempner and 5W chief Ronn Torossian pitched the Israeli account.

The one-year contract is worth $592,800. In the event the Ministry decides to renew for another year, MWW and 5W may receive a raise of up to five percent based on the workload in the "Christian market." E.g., Israel has targeted the evangelicals as a key target audience, and 5W has worked for the Christian Coalition, as well as the Zionist Organization of America.

The pact forbids MWW and 5W from handling "competitive accounts" that are defined as Middle East destinations or southern European countries.

DADDI IN DEMAND.
Bill Daddi, who had headed Euro RSCG Magnet's national consumer practice, has joined Belsito & Co. to expand the medical communications firm's outreach into the consumer market.

Daddi told O'Dwyer's that while Top Ten agencies have offered a mix of Rx/consumer marketing, clients are hungry for the service and personal attention that a small specialized firm like B&C can offer. B&C counts Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, ZLB Behring and Clearant as clients.

He becomes president of B&C s new entity, "demand." Marybeth Belsito is CEO. The name was selected to emphasize the goal of building a demand for a client s good or service.

Daddi was formerly managing director at Lippe Taylor, principal at The Dilenschneider Group and PR director at Cotton Inc.

He has counseled Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Oxford Health Plans and Sara Lee.

RFP GETS TOSSED IN TRASH.
A nearly half-inch thick Request for Proposal to handle national media relations for the University of Illinois College of Business is seen as an example of how procurement people have taken over the bidding process in the PR field.

The RFP was sent to 15 major PR firms with a cover letter from T. (Tom) H. Nation, the senior purchasing officer of the Urbana-Champaign-based university, who is overseeing the bidding process for Tracy McCabe, director of external relations.

The owner of one of the firms who got the invitation, has tossed the RFP into the wastebasket after learning the proposed budget for the year-long contract, which begins Aug. 1, was for just $40,000.

The executive, who does not want to be identified, would not be surprised if the other recipients also scrapped the proposal, which had a 2 p.m., June 24 due date. Since the identification of the invitees is confidential, there is no way of knowing how many firms were submitting proposals.

"This RFP shows that what has been happening in the ad field has spread to PR firms," said the source.

Fortune said in its June 28 issue that purchasing people began to get involved in the ad selection process after the ad market crash in 2001.

Ed Meyer, CEO of Grey Global Group, said Procter & Gamble and Brown & Williamson, which were both longtime clients of the firm, brought in people from their procurement department to negotiate contracts with his company.

"They don't understand our business," Meyer told Fortune s "Madison Avenue" reporter, who added: "You hear the same lament everywhere on Madison Avenue."

Purchasing agents, noted Fortune, don't care about brand building, only price.

SARD VS. FRANK IN VEGAS DEAL.
Citigate Sard Verbinnen is advising MGM Mirage in its $8 billion takeover of Mandalay Resort Group. Joelle Frank, Wilkinson, Brimmer, Katcher counsels Mandalay.

The acquisition, according to Mirage CEO Terry Lanni, creates the world s leading gaming and leisure company.

It cements Mirage's role as the powerhouse on the Las Vegas Strip. The deal, when completed in the first-quarter of `05, will combine Mirage s MGM Grand Las Vegas, New York-New York Boardwalk Hotel and Casino, Bellagio, The Mirage, Treasure Island and Monte Carlo (50 percent owned by Mirage) properties with Mandalay s Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, Circus Circus and Slots-A-Fun holdings in the city.

The combined entity had $6.5 billion in pro forma `03 revenues and 70,000 employees.

George Sard and Stephanie Pillersdorf of CSV are contacts for Mirage, while Joelle Frank speaks for Mandalay.

SUBWAY PAPERS SEEK PUBLICITY NEWS.
Mina Hochberg, an associate editor of amNew York, said this new weekday tabloid paper for Manhattan commuters welcomes PR handouts with a "local bent" for its hard news and feature-related sections.

The same goes for Jon Barrett, features editor of Metro New York, which is also a new tabloid-size newspaper that is published on weekdays and hawked at subway stations in Manhattan and the other boroughs.

Hochberg said her paper, which is owned by Tribune Co., Chicago, which also publishes Newsday, currently has about 275,000 in circulation. The paper can use more PR input because it is "very short staffed," making it hard to cover everything that is happening in the five boroughs, she said.

Contact List

She provided the 80 attendees at the Publicity Club of New York s June 23 luncheon a list of the paper's staffers to pitch and suggest news and feature stories to, as follows:

News (local, national, international) Alex Storozynski, editor-in-chief, [email protected]; Mike Clancy, reporter, [email protected], and Chuck Bennett, reporter, [email protected]
Buzz (gossip) Marcus Baram, [email protected]
Listings Emily Hulme, [email protected]
Money Erica Pearson, [email protected]
Sports Dave Abramowicz, [email protected]

Special Sections:
Fashion (Monday) Hochberg, [email protected]
Career (Mon.) Alexandra Chang, alexandra. [email protected]
Music (Mon.) Kate George, kate.george@am-ny .com
Travel (Tuesday) Chang
Technology (Tues.) Jennifer Martin, jennifer. [email protected]
Eating Well; Health, Video Games (Wed.) Chang
Dining Out; City Living/Real Estate (Thursday) Chang
Theater; Art (Friday/Weekend) Hulme
Film (Fri./Weekend) Hochberg and Jay Car, film critic, [email protected].

How to Pitch Metro

Metro New York, which was started less than two months ago, is the latest paper in a chain of about 39 papers around the world owned by Metro International, a Swedish-based company.

Like amNew York, Metro, which is passed out on the subways and on commuter trains, is departmentalized in its coverage of news and feature subjects.

"We skew very heavily to an 18-34 demo and that s really important to us," said Barrett. "When you re calling me about a story or about an idea, that s one of the things going through my head right away," said Barrett, a former senior editor at The Advocate, who authored "Hero of Flight 93," the biography of Mark Bingham, the San Francisco publicist who died in the 9/11 plane crash in Pennsylvania.

In addition to editing the "Style" page everyday, Barrett also edits other sections, including "Travel" on Wednesdays, "Home" on Thursdays, and "Body and Soul," which covers health and fitness, on Tuesdays, and helps get stories for the "Entertainment" section, a six-page section that runs on Fridays.

Since covering fashion is "kind of new to me," Barrett said he is interested in learning more.

One of his jobs is to fill a column everyday, called "To Die For/To Lie For," which features photos of "cool items" along with a caption that describes the item, where it is sold and the price.

"The best thing you can do to try to get a story with me is to give me art," he said. "We have a pretty small staff so it s hard for us to go out and shoot everything."

He said Catherine New, who is editor of the "Stuff" page, which is more tech and gadget oriented than the Style page, is "always looking for things to fill that page."

"There s a lot of space to fill and we re always interested in hearing from you all," said Barrett, who pointed out the best way to reach editors is by e-mail to addresses listed on the top of all the pages.

N.Y. Sun Needs Stories

Ken Magill, acting business editor of The New York Sun, who joined the broadsheet weekday daily about eight months ago to cover the ad beat, has been relying on wire copy to fill the two business news pages. He said that is "going to change" soon.

Magill said the two-year-old paper, which is aimed at high-end audience, has a paid circulation of about 55,000 in Manhattan.

He said the Sun focuses on world issues, but it is also "New York City-oriented," with "very strong arts coverage," as well as local event coverage. The "Out and About" column on the back page is "very popular," he said.

As far as pitching goes, "you just gotta look at the masthead and see who s in charge of what and give us a call," said Magill, who said a "common complaint" of Sun s editors is PR people who call 50 times to ask if they got a press release.

Cover Everything

Mike Wolf, who is Time Out New York's music editor, said staffers at the weekly general interest magazine try to cover "everything under the sun that happens in New York.

As a former publicist, Wolf said he understands "what it's like to have a list of 500 names and you make 500 phone calls and leave 500 messages and not a single one calls you back."

"There are ways around that: know the people that you are contacting, and make sure your pitch is suited to the angle of the magazine," he said.

The names of the editors and their beats are listed on the masthead of the magazine.

(Media news continued on next page)

BLOGS PLAY ROLE IN NEWS PROCESS.
"Word-of-blog" may be becoming a close second to "word-of-mouth" as the best form of publicity, according to Lionel Beehner, who is the research editor of the New York Press.

"Once the province of rambling writers, the blog no longer plays a bit part in the news-making process," Beehner recently told Media Bistro.com. "Nor is it simply a digitized version of `Page Six. Blogs have emerged as a filter for the good, the bad, and the trendy."

Beehner said reporters find blogs are a "whole lot more fun than sifting through e-mails or press releases especially when you re reading the words of a colleague instead of the pushy publicist."
He said major companies PR reps are also paying attention to the power of blogs. He said Nike recently struck a deal with Gawker Media to advertise a film series titled "Art of Speed" and Harper Collins reportedly has someone on retainer to tell bloggers about its books.

He said a handful of bloggers even won press credentials to this summer s Republican Convention.

"On the surface, it looks like a win-win-win situation: Publicists get to plug their new product; journalists get scoops and bloggers get bragging rights about a surge in hit counts," he said.

However, some publicists worry about creating a "backlash" by pitching products to blogs. Another concern of publicists is that blogs create great buzz, but "they are not always a reliable barometer for a story s shelf-life. Just because bloggers anoint something as trendy doesn t mean that it warrants above-the-fold coverage," said Beehner.

BLOGGER DEFENDED FOR BREAKING EMBARGO.
Jeff Jarvis, president/creative director of Advance .net, a personal website, came to the defense of another blogger who was criticized by an unidentified "professional reporter" for breaking a news embargo.

The blogger, Rafat Ali, told the reporter he does not adhere to "PR schedules," and asked: "Did you learn your journalism from a PR school?"

"Go get 'im Rafat!," said Jarvis, a former Sunday editor of The New York Daily News and critic for TV Guide and People, who helped create Entertainment Weekly.

"If all you do is wait for the embargo to be lifted and the press release to be sent out to write your story, then we don t need you, Mr. Reporter; we, too, can read the press release. That kind of news is a commodity. It s also controlled news; by then, it s spun into cotton candy.

"We still need reporters to do real reporting, to ask questions people don t want to answer," said Jarvis, who added: "If reporters acted like Rafat, they d be breaking news instead of just retyping press releases."

Craig Knight resigned as editor-in-chief of Razor magazine.

NEWS COLUMNIST REJECTS DOOR PRIZE.
Debra Saunders, a columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, recently declined on the spot a door prize donated by Virgin Atlantic Airways, which was worth an estimated $20,000.

Her business card was pulled from a bowl filled with other cards at a reception hosted by the British Consul during a bioethics trade show.

"The British bigwig practically fainted, telling the crowd, `A journalist with ethics? Incredible," reported Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross as an item in their June 13 column.

Saunders, who describes herself as a conservative who writes an opinion column, believes the prize presented a conflict-of-interest because she tells others what she believes is right and wrong.

WRITER SAYS SCIENTIFIC CLAIMS ARE BOGUS.
Popular Science writer William Weed, who was asked to check out the science claims he heard on a typical day, said he found very few of the 100 claims "he encountered proved completely true, and a good number were patently false."

Weed said he "simply noted every claim to scientific veracity thrust upon me" through radio, TV, the Internet, product packaging, billboards and a light read of the daily paper.

"The majority of the claims came from advertisers," Weed wrote. "Advertisers probably feed more science to Americans than anyone else, which is not surprising since they are in the business of making claims...," Weed wrote in his report that ran in the May issue.

FAST PROMOTED TO EDITOR OF TWIST.
Betty Fast, formerly executive editor of Twist magazine, was promoted to editor-in-chief, replacing Janet Giovanelli, who will focus solely on J-14 as editor-in-chief.

Twist, which is published 10 times a year by Bauer Publishing in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., provides teen girls with information about celebrities and trends, and personal advice to which teens can relate.

Fast's first issue as editor will be Sept. 2004.

CBS MARKETWATCH HIRES REPORTERS.
The following reporters have joined CBS MarketWatch's bureaus:

San Francisco - Carla Mozee (Flash News Desk); Alistair Barr, (financial services), and Chris Noble.

Los Angeles - Michael Paige, (technology).

New York - Kathie O Donnell, (financial news); Brenda January, (market news team); Padraic Cassidy, (reporter).

Boston - John Spence, (reporter); Val Kennedy (biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries).

Chicago - Kate Gibson, (Chicago s trading floors).
Asia Lisa Twaronite named Asia bureau chief.

Since the Fourth of July is only a couple of days away, it's time for an ode to America, and particularly the media, which is the lifeblood of our democracy and the reason there is a PR industry.

"Americans must realize they have the best of journalism," wrote Nigerian journalist Sunday Dare in an op-ed piece in the Feb. 19, 2001 USA Today.

Describing the persecution of reporters in many countries including his own, Dare said: "Americans don't know how good they really have it."

The author, a service chief with Voice of America and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, said Nigeria and other lands need what the U.S. has: "a free media, with access to information and resources to perform its duties and to hold accountable those in power."

He recounted tales of reporters who are murdered or jailed, their news organizations closed or heavily censored

The newsroom for a group of Nigerian reporters, he recalled, had become a cellar after the soldiers of dictator General Sani Anbacha arrested 14 newspeople, smashed or seized their computers, and sealed up their three offices.

What baffles him is that U.S. media "are so often the target of so much criticism by Americans." TV network executives were accused by a House committee of bias and lack of journalistic rigor in their 2000 election night coverage, he noted.

Similar criticism appeared in Robert Samuelson's column in the June 28, 2004 Newsweek.

Quoting the Pew Research Center, Samuelson noted that as of 2002, only 40% of the public felt media usually get their facts straight, down from 56% in 1985.

Samuelson said Americans are increasingly mistrustful of what appears in the media and are picking media on the basis of political partisanship.

He worries that, "like restaurants, media may cater to their customers' (partisan) tastes" and that "news slowly becomes more selective and slanted."

What PR can and should do about this situation is try to restore any lost trust in U.S. media. It should not be knocking or avoiding the media and the reporters who work in it. The more distrust there is in the media, the less effective PR will be and the fewer PR jobs. Client executives are likely to say, if the media and reporters are so untrustworthy, why have a PR dept. or outside PR counsel at all?

PR pros have a hard time reaching reporters these days but that's because they're often carrying skin-deep "messages" cleared by the marketing dept. Reaching the press is easy if clients and CEOs are the ones who are calling. This was the technique used by counselor Reed Trencher with success for many years. Reporters got full access to his clients, including staying at their homes, attending family functions, and visiting client offices and plants. The PR pros made the introductions and disappeared.

-- Jack O'Dwyer