APCO PUSHES SOCSEC REVAMP
APCO Worldwide has won a competitive pitch to develop and implement communications for a multi-million dollar national push for Social Security reform. The effort is backed by blue-chip companies worried they d have to pick up part of the tab.

Companies like Boeing and Pfizer are concerned the government will raise the 12.4 percent payroll tax – which is split between employers and employees – to plug the program's funding gap. They've amassed over $5 million to back President Bush's pursuit of reform under an umbrella group called Compass, an acronym for Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America's Social Security.

Mike Tuffin, VP for APCO who is heading the account, told O'Dwyer's the firm is developing and implementing a broad-based communications effort in support of Compass work.

SYMBOL TECH SELECTS EDELMAN.
Symbol Technologies has given its "low seven-figure dollar" PR account to Edelman after a competitive pitch, according to Erin Farrell, senior director/corporate communications.

"We started out with ten agencies, and then whittled it down to four," she told O'Dwyer's.

Farrell said Euro RSCG Magnet, the incumbent shop, was among those in the final mix.

Edelman's task is to position ST beyond its bar-code scanning base. ST wants to be viewed as the leader in the corporate and enterprise mobility space.

Russell Dubner, a GM in New York, and Ethan Rasiel, VP-technology, head the account.

Curtis Linke, VP of corporate comms. for Deere & Co. in Moline, Ill., plans to retire March 4 from the $18 billion farm equipment giant, wrapping up 40-plus years in PR.

Search firm Cardwell Enterprises is conducting final interviews to succeed Linke at D&C and a decision is expected in the next few weeks.

Pete Jeffries, spokesperson for House Speaker Denny Hastert for the past eight years, has joined Hill & Knowlton as senior VP-public policy.

Jeffries also worked for Republican Representatives Jo Ann and her late husband Bill Emerson.

Hastert lost another aide, John Feehery, earlier this month. He left for the executive VP-comms. slot at the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

HHS PULLS PLUG
ON LARGE PR RFP.
The Dept. of Health and Human Services has cancelled plans for a comprehensive RFP to handle PR and communications support for the National Institutes of Mental Health.

The spiked three-year contract was for a firm with experience on "large-scale" national campaigns to work closely with the agency's office of communications to handle tasks like media relations and training, VNRs, SMTs, op-ed pieces and minority outreach campaigns, according to a pre-solicitation notice. That work echoes Ketchum's suspended contract with the Dept. of Education that led to the Armstrong William controversy, government probes of PR work, and a bevy of criticism's launched at the PR industry.

Contracting officer Suzanne Stinson cited "changing program needs" when asked by O'Dwyer's for the reason the RFP was killed. She declined to speculate whether it would be re-issued.

Proposals from firms were to be collected until Jan. 7, a day after USA Today broke the Williams story. Equals Three Comms. won a three-year pact in 2001 for NIMH.

SILVER SHIFTS TO OGILVY.
Ogilvy PR Worldwide has hired Andrew Silver as executive VP/group director-consumer marketing in its New York office.

He joins from Edelman, where he had been running Unilever's Dove account and spent three years as general manager of its Shanghai office. He also worked at Spector Assocs. and The Softness Group.

Silver succeeds Lorra Brown, who stepped down after the birth of her first child.

RESPONSE TO NYT BLAST IS WEAK.
PR's response to the lead article on PR in the Sunday Feb. 13 Business section of the New York Times has been weak and has worsened the situation, PR pros said in a teleconference Feb. 16 hosted by this Newsletter.

About a dozen PR pros, PR educators, and PR service industry principals from across the U.S. blasted the initial responses to the article from PR's institutions. (Continued on page 7)

ARMY DEFENDS
TRAINING FACILITY.
The Army believes it is getting a "bum rap" from activist groups, such as "School of the Americas Watch," that allege the U.S. military has trained Latin American officers who later have committed human rights abuses in their home countries, Lee Rials, a PA officer at Fort Benning, Ga., told O'Dwyer's.

"There have been charges that we teach methods of torture," said Rials, who reps the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation–the former U.S. Army School of the Americas. "They always say our graduates commit those acts, but never identify the specific individuals."

The SAW website, however, has a section "grads in the news," spelling out various charges against Latin American soldiers.

Rials spoke following a report in the National Catholic Reporter that the Institute had a $245K PR budget to counter negative publicity from SAW.

That PR campaign includes monitoring the media and tracking the movements of SAW founder, Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest, who has been speaking throughout the country about the torture allegations.

The Institute has trained more than 60,000 Latin American security personnel in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics operations.

TP DOES DAMAGE CONTROL
FOR FOWLER.
Tunheim Partners is handling damage control duties for client Reggie Fowler after an embellished draft copy of the millionaire's biography was distributed to reporters by the firm in his bid to buy the Minnesota Vikings.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune debunked several claims in the draft bio on Feb. 16, causing Tunheim to issue a clarification on behalf of Fowler, who said in that statement that he regretted the draft was issued.

The original bio was issued with a news release announcing Fowler's signing of a purchase agreement for the Vikings, pending NFL approval.

Among the items corrected was a statement that the businessman played in the Little League World Series (it was actually a Tucson Little League All-Star team) and played for the Cincinnati Bengals of the National Football League and the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League (he attended training camps for the teams but didn t play in games). His degree from the Univ. of Wyoming was in social work, not in business administration and finance as the original draft noted.

Firm president Kathy Tunheim, who purchased TP back from GCI Group in 2003, told the Pioneer Press in Minnesota that the process of publicizing Fowler's bio was "sloppy and wide open to charges of embellishment."

She noted the bio was produced by Fowler's company, Spiral Inc., and there was no intention to deceive the press.

WILLIAMS VOLUNTEERED
FOR PR DUTY.
Armstrong Williams said it was his own idea to seek a contract with the Dept. of Education to promote the No Child Left Behind Act last year on his TV program.

In a Feb. 17 interview with The New York Times, Williams, who was paid $240,000 to promote government policy on his TV show, said he was not lured into pushing President Bush's policies by either the administration or Ketchum, which arranged for him to comment on the law and produce ads for his syndicated TV show.

Williams, who apologized for blurring the lines between journalism and government work, told the Times that he submitted proposals early in the administration to both the Education Dept. and the Dept. of Health and Human Services offering to play a role promoting programs aimed at blacks.

"He said he had viewed the advertising on his own program as both a public service and good business, never imagining it would someday erupt in an episode that has made his name a metaphor for government efforts to pay off journalists," according to Times reporter Anne Kornblut, who interviewed Williams for the article.

"Even if the idea for the arrangement originated with Williams, that fact is unlikely to derail two government investigations into whether the administration sought to pay journalists as a way of swaying public opinion," Kornblut wrote.

According to Williams, many months passed between the time he says he submitted his ideas to the Education Dept. and the point when representatives of Ketchum contacted him.

"Williams is not sure, he said, whether Ketchum representatives called him because of his proposals or out of the blue."

Officials at Ketchum declined to comment to the Times for the Williams story.

TGI REUNITES WITH MARDIKS.
Travel Guard International has awarded its $3 million marketing communications account to MMG Worldwide and its PR unit, MMG Mardiks. Spring O Brien had the account.

The shift reunites TGI with MMG CEO Chuck Mardiks. He had worked on the account as senior VP at Karen Weiner Escalera Assocs.

Mardiks opened a New York PR outpost for Kansas City-headquartered MMG in `02 after Weiner decided to close her travel PR firm in New York, and relocate to Coral Gables, Fla.

TGI says it insures more than six million travelers each year.

Alice Leeds, who was national communications director for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, is now in charge of PR at the Ms. Foundation for Women.

The Foundation provides $4M in annual grants and is noted for its "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day" program.

CUSTOM MAGAZINES
CONTINUE TO GROW.
The U.S. Postal Service is starting a custom magazine called Deliver that will be sent to a target audience of 350,000 corporate marketers to show how direct mail can serve as a powerful media tool.

The 32-page bimonthly magazine, which will be developed and directed from USPS headquarters in Washington, D.C., will feature contributions from well-known practitioners, thought leaders and strategists, according to GolinHarris, which is handles PR for the USPS.

The first issue features articles, marketing tips and case studies from direct marketing industry leaders like Peppers & Rogers, Carlson Marketing Group and John Costello of The Home Depot.

Patrick O'Connell is editor of Deliver, which will be published by Detroit-based Campbell-Ewald Publishing.

Over 100,000 publications

The Custom Publishing Council in New York said North American companies produce 116,000 custom publications yearly.

The annual spend on this form of marketing communications is nearly $30 billion.

George Stearns, COO at custom publisher Pace Communications in Greensboro, N.C., told DM News that custom publishing in the U.S. is surging, and there is every indication the momentum will continue to build.

Stearns told DMN that custom publishing in the U.S. is in a relatively early stage of development when compared to markets in Britain and Germany.

In Britain, seven of the top 10 magazines in circulation are company-sponsored publications. In Germany, most large corporations sponsor custom publications.

For its part, Pace creates Teradata, a business-to-business title for NCR Corp. It also publishes United Airlines' Hemispheres, Delta Air Lines' Skyand Carlson Hospitality Worldwide's Voyageur.

In March, Pace will start AAA Living for the Auto Club Group, the largest AAA affiliate in the Midwest, making it one of the most targeted custom publications nationwide with 21 editions segmented by life and member stages, according to DMN.

Some of the other major custom publishers in the U.S. include McMurry, which produces The Ritz-Carlton Magazine and Arrive for Amtrak; Bloomberg LP, publisher of On Investing for broker Charles Schwab; Fluent Communications, publisher of Lexus Magazine, and Pohly & Ptrs, which has clients such as Coca-Cola, Continental Airlines, Sheraton Hotels, Verizon, Western Union, Schering-Plough and Sotheby's.

Many custom publishers are owned by ad agency holding companies such as Redwood Custom Communications, a part of Omnicom Group's AMV Group, and WPP Group, which operates three custom publishing units.

PRINT REACHES
MORE INFLUENCERS.
Print media are more effective than TV for reaching influential Americans—the critical 10% of the population who drive what the others do and buy, according to a new Mediamark Research Survey of the American Consumer by NOP World.

The study found 41% of influential Americans are the most avid newspaper readers, and a third of influential Americans are counted as the country's heaviest magazine readers. In contrast, 14% of influential Americans are heavy TV viewers.

Radio is somewhat more effective than TV for reaching influential people, with 20% of them among the most frequent radio listeners. The print media provide a far more efficient reach than either major broadcast vehicle.

SAVEUR TO DEBUT
MAG THIS SUMMER.
World Publications, the publisher of Saveur, is starting Saveur's 'Wine Country, focusing on coverage of the wine regions throughout California, Oregon and Washington.

SWC will start as an annual edition this summer, then will increase its frequency in 2006 to two issues. Initial circulation will be 150,000 distributed nationally.

The publisher is Michael Earls, who previously published Wine Country Living and other lifestyle titles based on the West Coast. Bill Marken is editor-in-chief of SWC. He is based in WP's Orlando office 407/628-4802.

"We will offer travel advice and insightful details to make a visit as rewarding as possible for the reader," said Marken, who has been with World Publications since 2001 as editor of Garden Design magazine, which he will continue to edit.

LOCAL HORSE MAGAZINE
GOES NATIONAL.
Show Circuit, which was a local Los Angeles magazine covering horse races, has been changed into a national lifestyle equestrian magazine by its new owner Jami Morse Heidegger.

Heidegger, who transformed Kiehl's Since 1851, a neighborhood pharmacy with a cult following into an international hair and skin care conglomerate that she sold to L Oreal for undisclosed millions, spent the past year transforming Show Circuit into a celebrity and lifestyle-driven publication that covers the culture, travel, fashion, and human interest stories of the equine world.

Shannon Doherty, TV and film star, is featured on the cover of the 280-page 2005 "Winter Style" issue of the magazine.

Jill Brooke, former media columnist for The New York Post, a CNN correspondent, and editor of Avenue and Hampton's magazine, is editor-in-chief of Show Circuit, which is based in Malibu, Calif.
909/392-8089.

UN CHIN MAG MAKES
NATIONAL DEBUT.
Un Chin Magazine's first nationally distributed issue of 2005 has been released.

Ramon Veras, who is editor-in-chief of Un Chin, said the magazine's coverage will accentuate the pulse of a new Latino culture by fusing arts, fashion, politics and lanuage, bringing neglected elements of popular culture into the mainstream.

The premier "Music Mayhem" issue hit newsstands on Feb. 1. The cover story profiles Oscar nominee Javier Bardem, star of Mar Adentro, which won this year's Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film.

The issue also has an array of articles and exclusive images that illuminate the lifestyle of the growing Latino population in the U.S., who are emerging as trendsetters and opinion makers.

Veras and Jenny Rodriquez, who is managing editor, are located at 3769 10th ave. in New York, and can be reached at 212/304-8188; fax: 304-8288.

(Media news continued on next page)

FORTUNE EDITOR JUMPS
TO N.Y. TIMES.
Joe Nocera is resigning as editorial director of Fortune on March 18 to join The New York Times in April as a weekly columnist that will anchor a redesigned Saturday "Business Day" section.

Nocera will also write long-form stories for The Times Sunday Magazine, and big running stories for the business section.

Nocera, who has been a reporter, columnist and editor at Fortune for nearly 10 years, was close to managing editor Rik Kirkland, who has been replaced by Eric Pooley.

Bill Keller, editor of the Times, said Nocera has a "gift for making business vital and accessible to those who do not dwell in corporate suites or Wall Street analysts offices—consumers, ordinary investors, general readers."

L.A. TIMES LOOKS
FOR NEW BIZ EDITOR.
Rick Wartzman is stepping down as business editor of The Los Angeles Times to replace Drex Heikes as head of the paper's Sunday magazine section. Heikes will be assigned to a new position within the paper.

Wartzman, who joined the Times in Sept. 2002 after 15 years as an editor and reporter at The Wall Street Journal, won the paper a Pulitzer Prize for its 2003 package of stories about Wal-Mart Stores that assessed the chain's effect on Third World suppliers.

His successor is expected to be named shortly.

KIRK PROMOTED
AT CHICAGO TRIBUNE.
Jim Kirk was promoted to associate managing editor for business news at The Chicago Tribune.

Kirk joined the Tribune in June 1997 as marketing and advertising writer, and most recently wrote the "Business Beat" column. In Oct. 2004, he became business editor.

REPORTERS ORDERED TO TESTIFY.
A U.S. appeals court has ruled The New York Times Judith Miller and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper must testify about their confidential sources in an investigation into the leak that exposed the identity of a CIA officer.

Time editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine said: "We fully intend to pursue all of our legal avenues with respect to today's decision.

"The free-flow of information is central to a democracy and a free press serving in the public's best interest is one of the core principles upon which this country was founded.

"We continue to believe that the right to protect confidential sources is fundamental to journalism. Without that right, important information that should be available to the public would never see the light of day.

"In the U.S. no journalist should have to go to jail simply for doing his or her job."

PEOPLE
Wil Surratt, who is executive producer of CNN's morning show, "American Morning," was named senior producer of "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," replacing Sharon Van Zwieten.

Christopher Marquis, 43, who was a reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, died Feb. 11. He had AIDS, according to his brother.

Eva Chen, special projects editor for Elle, is joining Teen Vogue as beauty and health director, replacing Kara Jesella.

PLACEMENT TIPS
Playgirl magazine has added a travel page, called "Destinations," to its new lineup of monthly features.

Jill Sieracki, managing editor, is looking for information about "romantic and sexy getaways."

Sieracki also is handling a new product column called "Stimuli," which will feature sex toys, fashion accessories, costume jewelry, lingerie and home accents.

She wants to get pitches by e-mail at [email protected].

Make, a new quarterly magazine for tech do-it-yourselfers, was started by O'Reilly Media in Sebastool, Calif.

The first issue features 192-pages of do-it-yourself projects, including step-by-step instructions.
Mark Frauenfelder is editor-in-chief of Make, and Phil Torrone is associate editor.

Black Beat Magazine, a 33-year-old entertainment magazine for teens and college-age readers, will offer a new focus designed to appeal to the tech-savvy and fashion-forward urbanista.

Danica Daniel, who was recently named editor, said the monthly magazine, which has covered the hip-hop lifestyle and culture, will report the "cutting-edge news and views that set trends and influence its readers."

Daniel can be reached in New York at 212/780-3500, ext. 3516.

NewBeauty, a new consumer magazine devoted to cosmetic enhancement, made its debut last month with 650 pages of advertising.

Sandow Media in Boca Raton, Fla., headed by 36-year-old Adam Sandow, published a national edition, plus 13 regional editions of NewBeauty, with a total circulation of 500,000. NewBeauty will be published as a quarterly next year.

The next issue in May will feature a discussion on last year's Botox scare in Florida and breast augmentation just as the FDA hears testimony on the safety of implants.

Some of the dozen or so PR industry people who spoke on the first O'Dwyer teleconference Feb. 16 (page one) think an industry ad campaign is needed to offset the Feb. 13 New York Times article headlined: "Spinning Frenzy: PR's Bad Press."

It's too bad that only three weeks earlier, in the Jan. 24 Advertising Age, the Council of PR Firms and 11 of its member firms spent $379,000 on a 20-page insert promoting PR's role in marketing.

That princely sum would have been better spent in full page ads in the NYT and other papers answering the charge that the PR units of ad conglomerates may be crossing "ethical boundaries" to help pay off the $14 billion debt of their parents.

Ad Age only has a circulation of 70,000 while the circulation of the NYT is 1.1 million and a B&W full page only costs $158,000.

The negative impact of the NYT article far outweighs the positive impact of the AA section. One sponsor of the section was Ketchum, which has been mostly silent about its much-criticized contract with commentator Armstrong Williams.

An ad campaign in major newspapers is definitely in order although other things must be done to counterbalance the NYT blast.

The heads of the major PR groups (PRSA, CPRF, NIRI, Arthur Page, NYWICI, PCNY) should have held a press conference to show that, unlike Ketchum and Omnicom executives, PR pros do not run and hide when controversy arises. There would be no need to specifically criticize Ketchum and Omnicom. There already is enough of that.

PR pros should study the 20-page AA insert that can be found at prfirms.org on the left side under "announcements."

Copy is mostly written by Paul Holmes, editor of the Holmes Report and a columnist for PR Week. Holmes authors the lead article on PR's role in marketing, conducts a panel of marketing execs on the same topic, and interviews CPRF president Kathy Cripps on how to pick a PR firm.

The section is similar to the monthly magazine Reputation Management which Holmes published for about eight years. It had ads from the big PR firms and features about them and other topics. RM ceased publication in 2000.

A legal dispute about the $56,000 owed to Colorado printing broker Bob Bell for the last two issues of RM raged for more than three years.

Holmes refused to pay because Bell was holding onto ad mechanicals of the big PR firms until the $56K was paid. Holmes sued Bell for about $6 million, claiming Bell was keeping $40-$50K of his property. Bell contended the mechanicals were worth no more than a few hundred dollars and he had little else of Holmes. Bell wrote to the PR firms for assistance in collecting the bill but he said none ever wrote back nor would any help him by just supplying Holmes with new mechanicals.

Danner Press, Canton, Ohio, had sued the publisher of RM in 1994 for $23K in unpaid bills. These were later paid and the suit was dropped. Danner had kept ad mechanicals because of a clause in its contract. Bell neglected to have such a clause.

Frank Rich of the NYT has now mentioned Ketchum, calling it a "huge PR firm" through which money was "siphoned" to pay for the Medicare VNRs that were criticized for pretending to be "news" and the Armstrong Williams contract. Rich said Feb. 20 the Medicare and Williams contracts consumed only a "fraction" of the $97 million Ketchum got from the government and wonders "precisely where the rest of it ended up." Ketchum was mentioned twice in the Feb. 19 NYT in a full column headlined "Administration is Warned About Its Publicity Videos." Ketchum is called "a giant in the PR industry whose representatives arranged for both the Medicare videos and the contract with Williams..."

The first teleconference this NL ran was arranged a day in advance and in minutes via one of the numerous services that do this. The cost was around $225. Why PRSA can t do this or why it can t conduct a plebiscite among its 20,000 members via their e-mail addresses (which is has) is a mystery to us. Two governance committees are now studying reforms but we bet they don t touch the real problem–too many solo PR pros becoming president. They don t have the leadership skills, having headed nothing but their own firms or tiny corporate depts. They also don t have the time for the job.

Only two of the last 12 presidents (and we re counting treasurer Rhoda Weiss who is waiting to be president-elect) led much of anybody–John Beardsley of Padilla Speer Beardsley (1995 president) and Kathy Lewton (with Fleishman-Hillard when she was 2001 president).

The others are solos–Judy Phair, Del Galloway, Reed Byrum, Joann Killeen, Steve Pisinski, Sam Waltz, Mary Cusick, Debra Miller and Luis Morales.
PRSA needs presidents like Kerry King, who headed an 80-person dept. at Texaco; Joe Vecchione of Prudential, Joe Awad of Reynolds Metals, Frank Wylie of Chrysler, George Hammond of Carl Byoir and Kal Druck of Harshe-Rotman & Druck. What PRSA needs to do is seek a nationwide figure as president and not reward people whose main qualification is PRSA committee work.

–Jack O'Dwyer