CALIF. REVIEWS
ANTI-SMOKING ACCT.
The California Dept. of Health Services has put its multi-million dollar anti-smoking PR contract out for bid. The work is aimed at rallying the public around creating and preserving a "tobacco-free" state and is budgeted at $3.5 million over 3.5 years.

The DHS Tobacco Control Section has authority over the effort and wants a large firm with a significant California operation ($4 million in billings) to develop and execute the work.

A spokeswoman said Los Angeles-based Rogers & Assocs. currently has the contract and can pitch the work again.

The agency has instructed any proposing firm not to talk to the press without permission.

The DHS wants a firm to build on previous PR campaigns in the program and develop new ideas to "break down apathy and involve the public" in anti-smoking efforts.

The PR pact would begin in March 2005 and run for thirty-nine months through June 2008. There are also two option years. Proposals are due Dec. 17 (a letter of intent must be filed by Nov. 30).

DART TOSSED AT PMK/HBG.
Leslee Dart, the legendary celebrity publicist at PMK/HBG, has been canned by Pat Kingsley after more than 20 years at the Interpublic Group-owned operation.

Dart, who represents Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein, was told by Kingsley on Nov. 17 that her contract was not going to be renewed in January, and that it was best for her to leave.

Kingsley said Dart was ousted because she had a different opinion about the direction of the company. Corporate work is a growing part of the PMK/HBG revenue base, and Dart is not involved in that area. American Express, Motorola and Reebok are PMK/HBG clients.

KFC has plucked Weber Shandwick to handle its PR account that had been at Edelman PR Worldwide for 28 years. The firm's Chicago and New York offices will handle the Yum Brands property, which counts 11,000 restaurants in 80 countries. That relationship begins Dec. 1. Edelman declined to pitch in the competitive review.

LEVICK REPS 'KUWAITI 12'
IN GITMO.
Levick Strategic Communications is handling PR for a dozen Kuwaitis who are imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Washington, D.C.-based firm represents the families of the captives and receives a $40K a-month fee for its efforts.

Gene Grabowski, who heads the account, likened the jailed Kuwaitis to Mormon missionaries and said his clients heeded the call of Islamic authorities to rebuild Afghanistan following the U.S. route of the Taliban.

They planned to build houses in Afghanistan, but were rounded up by Pakistani military officials and handed over to the U.S. as alleged terrorists.
Grabowski, who was VP communications/ marketing for the Grocery Manufacturers of America, claims the U.S. military forces and CIA agents paid bounties ranging from $10 to $200 for the men, who range in age from 20-to-45. He says the captives were handed over with their "hands tied behind their backs."

He said the families just want the detainees to get fair trials. The PR firm's role is to "humanize" the prisoners, said Grabowski.

A U.S. District Court judge ruled this month that Osama bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, could not be tried in secret and deserves the right to prove that he is a prisoner of war which would protect him under the Geneva Convention.

F-H HITS AUDIT REPORT,
ADMITS MISTAKES.
Fleishman-Hillard has blasted a critical audit report from the Los Angeles Controller released Nov. 17 that says the firm overbilled the city by $4.2 million since 1998. F-H has acknowledged for the first time, however, that it cannot back up some billing claims regarding its work for the city's Dept. of Water and Power.

"Most of the assertions in the document cannot be supported by the facts," senior partner and L.A. office head Richard Kline said in a statement. "The report presents preliminary questions and erroneous assertions to arrive at an inflated overall estimate of questioned costs."

But the firm said it did make billing mistakes. "It appears time was added to LADWP billing that cannot be supported," Kline said, noting the discrepancies amounted to $652K over six years.

Following the audit report's release, Fleishman-Hillard has offered to have the dispute submitted to neutral mediation.

The report, conducted by Thompson, Cobb, Bazilio & Assocs., Torrance, Calif., claims to have found $1.1 million in unsupported labor costs, $488K in unallowable charges, $1.2M in billings not complying with F-H's contract, and $314K in questionable markups by subcontractors.

'Broke Principles of PR'

"Fleishman-Hillard not only violated the public trust, they broke the time honored principles of the public relations profession," Controller Laura Chick wrote in submitting the final report to Mayor James Hahn, City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and the City Council.

"[The firm] can begin restoring the public's trust by responding favorably and expeditiously to my audit's findings and repay the people of Los Angeles the $4.2 million rightly owed them."

The L.A. DWP has paid over $24 million for three contracts with F-H since 1998, when the firm was originally brought on as the city considered opening its services up to competition.

Kline told O'Dwyer's morale at the Los Angeles office is high and several new clients have come on board in the last six months.

INFACT BECOMES CAI.
Infact has changed its name to Corporate Accountability International for "clearer messaging to better describe what we do," said Patti Lynn, director of the Boston-based group that has waged campaigns against Nestle, General Electric and Philip Morris.

The 27-year-old organization has identified Coca-Cola as its next target. CAI maintains that Coke is draining much-needed water to make soda, creating shortages and health problems in countries such as India. Coke rebuts that charge as evidenced by its "water resources" policy statement that is posted on its website.

CAI's new site is at www.stopcorporateabuse.org .

EDELMAN FACES OFF
VS. NHL OWNERS.
Edelman PR Worldwide has been counseling the National Hockey League Players Assn., which has been "locked out" by the team owners over the "salary cap" issue since Sept. 15, according to Peter Land, who heads the firm's sports and sponsorship group.

Bernadette Mansur, group VP-communications at the NHL, said the league has used Howard Rubenstein's Rubenstein Assocs. for "strategic consulting," but added that the lockout is being handled by in-house staffers in New York and Toronto.

She said players need to deal with the NHL's precarious financial condition as 75 percent of revenues are earmarked for salaries.

The NHLPA contends that it has offered proposals designed to save the owners $200 million annually, but demands that owners "open up the books" to prove their financial duress.

Mansur said the current stalemate is "not a good situation" for either side, and especially bad for "hockey's very passionate and loyal fans."

Asked about coverage of the lockout, Mansur said it is has received a "tremendous amount of press in Canada, but not as much in the U.S."

Minimizes Lockout News

The NHL has made a "conscious decision" to minimize lockout information on its website, offering instead news of the junior leagues that would interest fans of the sport, according to Mansur. There is a link to "CBA News," at which Bill Daly, executive VP and chief legal officer, provides updates on the collective bargaining agreement.

The NHLPA, which also has a CBA link, focuses on its players who are keeping in shape by playing in the European leagues.

Mansur questions that PR strategy, "If you go on strike at McDonald's , you don't walk down the street and take somebody's job at Burger King," she said.

FIRMS BROKER
SEARS/KMART MARRIAGE.
Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Kmart Holding Corp. announced an $11 billion merger on Nov. 16 to form Sears Holdings Corp., a $55 billion annual revenues entity designed to better compete with Wal-Mart, which had $68 billion sales in its third-quarter.

Citigate Sard Verbinnen's George Sard is working for Sears, while Brunswick Group's Steve Lipin and Cindy Flynn represent Kmart.

Edward Lambert, CEO of Kmart, is the kingpin of the deal. His ESL Investments controls a 15 percent stake in Sears and he is to become chairman of Sears Holdings.

Sears posted a third-quarter loss of $61 million (following a $141 million write-off) on $8.3 billion revenues. Kmart earned $553 million on $4.4 billion in sales.

Wal-Mart, which surpassed Sears as the No. 1 retailer in 1991, earned $2.3 billion during the third-quarter.

PANELISTS DISCUSS
BIZ NEWS PITCHES.
Hank Gilman, deputy managing editor of Fortune, has come to the conclusion after 28 years of reporting that getting stories placed is "just a matter of building up long term relationships with writers and editors."

"Don't expect fast results," Gilman told attendees at the Publicity Club of New York's luncheon meeting on Nov. 12, where he was on a panel with Neal Lipschutz, senior editor for the Americas at Dow Jones Newswires; Gloria McDonough-Taub, chief booker at CNBC-TV; Larry Ingrassia, business/financial editor of The New York Times, and Fred Wiegold, New York bureau chief at Bloomberg News.

Gilman cited as an example his longtime relationship with Richard Anderson, a publicist, who was in the audience.

"The great thing about Rick is he's just not an intense PR guy, he's very patient, he builds up relationships with reporters and writers and editors over a long period of time," said Gilman.

"One thing he's really smart about is he gets you hooked up with CEOs and the really important people in the companies that he represents," said Gilman, who noted Anderson had just turned 60 years old.

New Coverage Areas

Lipschutz said "Getting it right and fast is the starting point not the ending point" for the 100-year-old news service, which has bureaus in 90 cities around the world.

Lipschutz pointed out that a lot of DJN's news and news work is devoted to analyzing events, breaking news, reporting on trends, reporting on personal finance topics to a degree that "we at Dow Jones Newswires never did in the past.

"So we really have a broad news agenda that includes a lot of enterprise reporting as well as what might be called spot news and real time reporting," said Lipschutz, who is based in DJN's headquarters in Jersey City, N.J., where the largest group of reporters and editors are located.

He said DJ recently purchased a German news agency that goes by the initials VMD, which is producing business and financial news.

Wants to Help PR Pros

McDonough-Taub is responsible for the hours 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. at CNBC-TV.

She said she can help PR people get in touch with the reporters to help them tell their story, and to get their stories on more than one program on the network.

The core subjects which CNBC wants to cover are the state of the economy, the financial markets, corporate America, energy, Washington, D.C., entertainment, media, leisure, technology, healthcare and consumer sectors.

McDonough-Taub is especially interested in booking top corporate executives, who can "break and enhance" the news.

Ingrassia said the "first mission among several" for the Times business section is to be highly competitive on the biggest business news stories.

"Second, we aim to set the agenda in covering important issues like the rapidly rising cost of healthcare or questions that have risen about how clinical trials for drugs are conducted, excessive corporate compensation, and the precarious funding of many public and private pension systems.

"Our third leg is to make sure we have some hard-hitting investigative projects that resonate to our readership," he said.

He said the Sunday business section, which has been redesigned, has gotten a more "magazine-y" look under its new editor Jim Impoco, who was hired away from Fortune.

Don't Call Wiegold

Wiegold said the best way to pitch a story to Bloomberg is not by "phoning up Fred Wiegold and leaving a long voice message for him."

He said Bloomberg has an Internet address, which is monitored around the clock by people who know news and can act upon it very quickly. "It is simply [email protected]," he said.

Wiegold said the information sent to the Internet address will also make its way to various teams who cover stories for Bloomberg.

Peter Himler, president of PCNY, who moderated the panel, said 180 people attended the event, which was sold out two weeks in advance.

PLACEMENT TIPS
Men's Journal, which recently hired Patti O'Brien as fashion director, is cranking up its sportswear and fashion coverage, reports Women's Wear Daily.

In coming months, MJ will increase its fashion coverage from six pages an issue to 10, and the March issue will feature a 20-page fashion section, the title's biggest ever, according to WWD.

While there will be some tailored looks in the expanded section, the emphasis will remain on casual, Michael Caruso, MJ's editor, told WWD.

Edmunds.com's senior consumer advice editor, Phil Reed, is in charge of all the consumer advice for buying, selling and leasing cars.

Reed also covers insurance issues and financing for the Santa Monica, Calif.-based website, and is the lead editor on Edmunds.com's Strategies for Smart Car Buyers, according to iCD Media, an interactive CD producer in Alpharetta, Ga.

He said incentives and rebates, hybrid cars, gas prices, proposed tire pressure indicators, sales trends, youth market bargain basement cars, the return of the station wagon, first time car buyers, leasing vs. buying, and when to buy a car are hot topics.

Amy Barnett, managing editor of Teen People, has begun reporting to Martha Nelson, People managing editor, instead of Time Inc.'s corporate editor, Isolde Motley, who was responsible for both titles.

(Media news continued on next page)

DOW JONES IS
BUYING MARKETWATCH.
Dow Jones has agreed to pay $519 million to buy MarketWatch Inc., parent of the financial news website CBS MarketWatch, in an attempt to expand its online reach into the consumer financial news business.

In the first half of this year, Dow Jones WSJ.com, a paid subscription site with some free areas, averaged 2.8 million unique visitors every months.

MarketWatch, a free site based in San Francisco, has about 7.6 million unique visitors every month.
(A unique visitor is defined as a person who visits a site's home page at least once a month.)

The deal will make Dow Jones the third largest presence in the online financial news space in terms of unique visitors, behind Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo! Finance and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Money site, according to Dow Jones.

Dow Jones is paying $18 a share for MarketWatch, which was started in 1997 by Larry Kramer, a former managing editor of The Trenton (N.J.) Times and a business reporter for The Washington Post.

Dow Jones, which is headquartered in New York, plans to keep MarketWatch as a free site, distinct from WSJ.com, which has about 700,000 paid subscribers.

YAHOO NEWS HIRES
WSJ.COM's EDITOR.
Neil Budde has resigned as editor and publisher of The Wall Street Journal Online edition, WSJ.com, to run Yahoo's news operations.

He will replace former Yahoo News general manager Chris McGill, who left.

SAFIRE: 'TIME TO
HANG UP MY HATCHET.'
William Safire will write his final op-ed column for The New York Times on Jan. 24, 2005, ending a run of weekly columns that began in 1973.

"After more than three decades of opinionated reporting on the world's first and foremost political battle page, it's time to hang up my hatchet," he said.

Safire, 74, will continue to write his Sunday column, "On Language," which has appeared in the Times Magazine since 1979.

He joined the paper in 1973 as a political columnist after spending most of his career as a publicist.

From 1955 to 1960, Safire was VP of Infoplan, a New York-based PR firm and then became president of his own firm.

He was responsible for bringing President Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev together in the 1959 Moscow "kitchen debate" to publicize his homebuilding client's kitchen. In 1968, he joined Nixon's presidential campaign, and later became Nixon's senior speechwriter.

His brother Leonard Saffir runs a PR firm in Boca Raton, Fla.

PEOPLE
Neal Boulton, formerly creative director, replaces Peter Sikowitz as editor-in-chief of Men's Fitness. Boulton will also oversee Sly, the company's new lifestyle magazine for men older than 35, which launches in February.

Celeste Perron has resigned as one of two executive editors at Bauer Publications' Life & Style Weekly. Jane Freiman, former managing editor/features at The New York Daily News, has joined L&SW as deputy editor.

Michael Oreskes, 50, who was assistant managing editor and director of electronic news since 2000 at The New York Times, moves up to deputy managing editor on Jan. 1.

Ann Marie Gardner has joined The New York Times to edit the four issues that were formerly the Sophisticated Traveler.

Nancy Stedman was named senior editor/features at Health magazine.

Brad Wieners, previously senior features editor, was promoted to executive editor at National Geographic Adventures.

BOOK PRODUCTS
TO PROMOTE BATMAN FLICK.
Meredith Books and DC Comics have teamed to develop and publish a portfolio of children's books products based on the upcoming feature film "Batman Begins."

The products will include sound storybooks, paint books, coloring books and sticker story books.

The film, slated for release in June 2005 from Warner Bros. Pictures, explores the origins of Batman.

MEDIA BRIEFS
Sun Media Investment in Hong Kong, whose chairman is Chinese TV broadcaster Yang Lan, is starting a digital edition of The Observer Star, a Chinese-language business newspaper, which was recently introduced in several West Coast cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas and San Jose.

The e-version will be delivered to 24 million global Chinese readers starting Nov. 18.

Meximerica Media, a Spain-based company whose principal shareholder is Pearson plc., has started publishing Rumbo de Austin, with Ruiz Camacho as managing editor. This is the company's fourth Spanish-language paper to roll out in Texas.

American Demographics magazine has been sold by Primedia to Crains Communications, parent of Advertising Age. The consumer-trends title will be folded into AA.

Veteran U.K. journalist Mike Magee (page one) says he rarely sees PR people anymore and complains that PR has become "too automated" and "depersonalized." It's a trend that has been obvious in the U.S. for decades.

Yet we recently went to three events where we met lots of PR pros and journalists and everyone seemed happy at these chances to "press flesh."

The "Financial Follies" of the New York Financial Writers Assn. drew a black-tie crowd of 1,000 to the Marriott Marquis Nov. 19.

The dinner of the Institute for PR Nov. 10 at the Union League Club drew 250+ and the Center for Communication lunch for Arthur Sulzberger of the New York Times Nov. 17 drew 400+ to the Plaza.

Financial PR executives we met at the "Follies" were delighted to meet so many of their peers and press in one night and bemoaned the fact that their personal interaction with reporters is at an all time low.

Asked for the reason, they think it's mainly a matter of time–billable time. They can't take two hours out of their day to lunch with a reporter. Reporters are also pressed for time. Those in both occupations are being worked to the max.

The three events were costly–$300 a ticket for the "Follies," $300 for the Institute for PR and $7,500 to $25,000 a table ($750 for single tickets) at the CenCom lunch. But the events prove that PR pros and journalists, while not having the time for individual lunches, will come out for a worthwhile reason. Two of the events were at night, meaning billable daytime hours were not lost.

Publicity Club of New York, meanwhile, is performing a similar function as the above but at a much lower admission price. Its monthly lunches featuring editors are sold-out affairs.

PRSA/New York for many years had monthly lunches that drew 350-400 to the Waldorf-Astoria. Top speakers of interest both to PR pros and journalists were the attraction. Such lunches are needed again and can be brought back if enough individuals support this. Individuals must take the reins and not wait for their associations.

The "Follies" cast is illustrative of what's happening to many associations. Only 20 members turned out to perform and several were over 80 years of age. Youth is sorely needed but few journalists and PR pros want to go through the grueling rehearsal regimen. Association executives tell us companies have been pulling back on their support of trade groups. As an example, the 12 biggest PR firms, with 17,000 employees in 2001, cut their PRSA memberships from 617 in 2001 to 316 as of 2004. Only ten members showed up to compete for seven national PRSA offices this year.

It's time for individual PR pros not only in New York but elsewhere to work with existing PR groups that will put on needed programs or form new groups that will do so. Strong professional societies benefit individuals and their employers.

The Google rankings on page 7 are as credible a source of the attention being garnered by various companies and subjects as anything these days. The Audit Bureau of Circulations for many years was the gold standard in the print world but several scandals have wracked its measurements lately. Long Island's Newsday, for instance, has been forced to cut 98,000 from its daily circulation. Google uses more than a 100 factors in measuring "hits" and works hard to stop those who want to "game" the system. PRSA, as expected, comes out on top in the "PR" category.

The top PR firm is Edelman PR Worldwide followed by Ogilvy PR Worldwide, Ketchum, National PR of Canada and Brodeur. The O'Dwyer website is No. 13 in the PR category and No. 2 in "public relations news" after Topix.net, an aggregator that does not do original reporting.

Edelman has the No. 5 position on another Google ranking called ceo blog. The opinions of Richard Edelman are carried on edelman.com/speak_up.

Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, is profiled in the Nov. 29 Fortune. WPP's impending purchase of Grey Global Group would boost revenues past $10B and put it near Omnicom. The piece is generally positive although the Y&R unit is said to be "struggling." Ad industry writer Randall Rothenberg calls Sorrell "arguably the last and only statesman in the business." The piece does not mention the $3.25 billion debt of WPP nor the $12.16B total debt of the "Big Four," which also includes OMC ($2.58B in debt), Interpublic ($2.19B) and Publicis ($4.14B). Total sales of the four are $28B.

Fortune refers to the "foundering" Havas, which owns PR firms Euro RSCG Magnet and Abernathy MacGregor. While the SEC lists debt of Havas at $1.53B, it has no figure for sales. Also unmentioned is that the congloms have stopped their ad agencies and PR firms from releasing revenue or staff figures, which is deeply harmful to them.

Fortune writer Nelson Schwartz says Sorrell is "confident, witty and a tad arrogant" and is known as being "accessible" to reporters and analysts, enjoying "the spotlight and the give-and-take." WPP and the other congloms do not allow reporters on what should be quarterly analyst/press calls. Almost all the employers of the analysts do business with the congloms and their questions are muted and mostly technical. Reporters would ask different questions and they would all be on the record.

Fortune, unlike the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, does not refer to Sorrell as "sir."

– Jack O'Dwyer