N.C. DANGLES $7.4M
ANTI-SMOKING JOB.
North Carolina's Health and Wellness Trust Fund Commission, the state agency set up to distribute billions of dollars from the Master Settlement Agreement with tobacco companies, has issued an RFP for its $7.4 million annual account for social marketing.

That comprehensive effort includes advertising, PR, grassroots, media outreach, web work and other initiatives related to health issues like smoking cessation and obesity in the state.

CapStrat, Goddin Media and the Ruiz Agency are among the state agency's current firms.

Eighty percent of the multi-million-dollar budget will go toward its teen tobacco use prevention and cessation efforts, while 15 percent is earmarked for its "Fit Together" anti-obesity push.

Both of those allotments are for ads and PR. The remaining five percent is for other "earned media" efforts.

Meanwhile, Arkansas has $2.4 million allotted for the next two years of its anti-tobacco efforts, including a $1.8 million public outreach and education push and a $600K campaign backing its smoking cessation hotline.

Proposals are being accepted through March 17.
Cranford Johnson Robertson Woods in Little Rock has held the contract since its inception in ‘02.

HOFFMAN WINS AMAZON REVIEW.
The Hoffman Agency has won a review for Amazon.com's technology PR account, according to sources familiar with the pitch. Fleishman-Hillard had handled the work.

Lou Hoffman, president of THA, declined to comment. Amazon's VP of corporate communications, Kathy Savitt, did not return a call.
Hoffman, based in San Jose, Calif., bolstered Amazon's media push to launch its A9.com unit's local business search portal in January. That Yellow Pages-like service wants to make a run at Google and Yahoo's search supremacy on the web and includes classified listings of businesses along with 20 million digital images of storefronts.

Glenn Saxon, 81, one of the principal founders of the National Investor Relations Institute in 1970, died Feb. 20 after a long bout with Parkinson's disease. A graduate of Harvard College, he was in IR posts at Singer and General Electric. He was in the IR Assn., New York, which founded NIRI.

SSA SUED FOR ITS PR CONTRACTS.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed a complaint in U.S. District Court, demanding that the Social Security Administration comply with its Freedom of Information Act request for its PR contracts.

The non-profit group issued FOIA requests with 22 agencies on Jan. 11 requesting their PR contracts. CREW is still waiting for the documents.

Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, told O Dwyer's that she has heard back from a "bunch of agencies," and was recently contacted by a SSA official who said they are "working on her request."

Federal agencies, under FOIA, have 20 days to respond to a requester, said Sloan. They may be granted a 10-day extension under "exceptional circumstances." Sloan, however, said the "courts are very sympathetic to federal agencies that claim to be making a good faith effort to comply with FOIA." She singled out SSA for a lawsuit because of media reports that staffers are being used to pitch a doomsday future for the retirement plan unless President Bush's overhaul ideas are put into place.

CREW's complaint notes that a search of the federal database shows that Fleishman-Hillard has various contracts with SSA worth $1.8 million.

Martha Boudreau, head of F-H's D.C. office, told O'Dwyer's that the firm handles the "Ticket to Work" program designed to find jobs for disabled/blind people receiving SSA benefits.

F-H has been involved in that program since Sept. `03.

"We have absolutely nothing to do" with promoting the need for reform," stressed Boudreau.

OMC ANALYSTS SKIP
KETCHUM ISSUE.
Although Omnicom unit Ketchum is the subject of at least six government investigations (FCC, GAO, Inspector General, Congress, the Pentagon and Dept. of Education), and the probes touched off a major story on PR in the Feb. 13 New York Times, the subject was unmentioned in a 35-minute OMC analyst conference call on Feb. 22.

Six analysts raised financial questions on the call which began at 8:35 a.m. and ended at 9:10 a.m., 20 minutes before the scheduled end. A moderator said there were no more questioners in the cue. Reporters may listen but may not ask questions.
(continued on page 7)

CORZINE RIPS AARP 'SMEAR.'
Senator Jon Corzine has sent a letter to President Bush asking him to "repudiate the tactics employed by USA Next and restore civility and honor to the on-going Social Security dialogue."

The New Jersey Democrat zeros in on an Internet ad created by USA Next attacking AARP, the leading opponent of Bush's Social Security revamp plan, as being opposed to American soldiers and in favor of gay marriages.

USA Next, which is advised by members of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth – the group that smeared John Kerry – posted the ad briefly on the American Spectator site.

The ad has side-by-side images. One picture is that of an American soldier with a red X over the image, and the other is of a gay wedding with a green check mark over the image.

Corzine notes that the Associated Press has reported that AARP has neither taken a position on the U.S. military nor gay marriage.

In his letter to Bush, Corzine wrote: "The motive for USA Next's irresponsible use of such hot button issues is not difficult to decipher, if you can't attack the message, attack the messenger no matter how dishonest and off base those attacks become."

USA Next plans to spend $10 million to counter AARP. It says the gay marriage ad was a test spot.

RL&M DELIVERS
'VERDICT' FOR OGILVY.
Robinson Lerer & Montgomery is distributing a "verdict statement" on behalf of sister WPP Group company, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, following the Feb. 22 conviction of two former executives – Thomas Early and Shona Seifert – for overbilling the National Drug Control Policy office.

Walter Montgomery, CEO of RL&M, provided the statement to O Dwyer's . It says the actions of the executives are "completely inconsistent with the core values" of the ad giant. The statement notes that "while no criminal charges were brought against Ogilvy itself, and the charges against the former employees related only to a single government contract with the New York agency, Ogilvy has taken this matter very seriously."

It describes moves that Ogilvy has made to maintain "strict ethical standards." Those include creating an ethics hotline, providing employee training and revamping its accounting system.

O&M no longer handles the anti-drug account, which is now at Interpublic's Foote Cone & Belding unit. Hill and Knowlton had represented Ogilvy.

GLOVER FLIES WITH AIRBUS.
The Glover Park Group is representing European aircraft maker Airbus, which is making a pitch for the $22 billion refueling tanker deal from the Pentagon.

Congress killed a contract with Boeing last year following news that an Air Force official admitted favoring the Chicago-based aerospace company in return for a job for herself and her family.

Airbus, in its pitch, promises to build a factory in the U.S. if it wins the pact. The France-based company invited officials from 35 states to a meeting in Washington, D.C., last month to let them make their case for the facility.

The company may team with Northrop Grumman to improve its chances of landing the deal. Airbus North America CEO Ralph Crosby is a former NG executive.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), has been the leading critic of Airbus PR efforts. On her website, Murray rips Airbus for engaging in a "slick campaign to market themselves as American companies to policy makers and the general public. They are running a campaign of misinformation and half-truths to secure more U.S. business for European workers."

Boeing's commercial airline unit is based in Seattle. The company announced on Feb. 22 that it would sell its Wichita and Tulsa aircraft plants to Canada's Onex Corp. for $900 million.

Harbour Group founder Joel Johnson, who joined GPG on Jan. 10 to open its legislative affairs unit, heads the Boeing work. He is joined by former HG staffers Brett O Brien, Erin Graefe and Kim James.

KEKST GUIDES WINN-DIXIE.
Kekst & Co. is handling PR for Winn-Dixie Stores, the Jacksonville-based operator of more than 900 supermarkets in eight southern states.

The company, founded in 1925 by William Davis, cited "increased losses and reduced liquidity, coupled with subsequent credit downgrades from the major debt rating agencies," among reasons for its Chapter 11 filing.

The company reported a $552 million net loss on $5.4 billion in first-half `05 revenues.

CEO Peter Lynch expects a streamlined W-D will emerge from Chapter 11 better equipped to compete in the marketplace.

W-D's market share has been under assault by Wal-Mart Stores. Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton served on W-D's board of directors during the `80s.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based behemoth opened its first supercenter in `88 after Walton stepped down from the W-D board of directors.

W-D is asking for approval to terminate the leases on 150 stores that have been closed.

Its balance sheet shows $2.2 billion in total assets vs. $1.9 billion in total liabilities.

K&C has Michael Freitag, Caroline Gentile and Wendi Kopsick working on the Winn-Dixie account.

WPP Group reported a 15 percent surge in `04 profit, powered by spending for the Olympics and the U.S. elections. The news drove WPP's stock to a 52-week high.

CEO Martin Sorrell expects WPP to grow at a 3-4 percent clip, increasing its market share vis-a-vis Omnicom, Interpublic, Publicis Group and Havas.

PR PRO WANTS
TO STOP FAKE NEWSCASTS.
Lois Whitman, president of HWH PR in New York, wants corporate America to stop buying pre-paid TV news and feature stories.

"The government is doing something about it, and now it is time for corporate America to say, `No to sponsoring phony TV news broadcasts," Whitman said on her new blog site at hwhpr.com.

She said more and more, PR agencies and the client themselves are looking for a quick fix to their publicity programs by paying anywhere from $25,000 to $150,000 to be a part of a phony TV newscast or bogus TV feature that will provide significant exposure to their products or services.

Use big name hosts

Whitman said these productions are not done by legit editorial people, who get paid by the networks to have unbiased opinions, but rather by video production houses that know how to mimic the real thing.

"Many times the video production studios will even hire the likes of Morley Safer or Michael Douglas to act as hosts of their shows," according to Whitman, who wonders if these notables realize that appearing in one of these fake programs could mean the kiss of death to their careers.

Although these practices have been around for years, she said she gets a call every day from a video production company "telling me that one of my clients is being considered for a feature story on hot new products for a holiday gift-giving segments.

"Shame on PR agencies who try to pass this off to clients as true editorial placements, and shame on corporations who are so desperate for editorial coverage that they will pay their way to try to fool the public," said Whitman.

She noted that most of the pre-paid TV news and feature stories never see prime time no matter how much the video production companies swear they have major viewing audiences.

"Most of the programs run in the middle of the night, in cities no one has ever heard of—or in a lot of cases they do not run at all," she said.

She said "sad sack corporations or desperate PR agencies" can pretend they received quality coverage because they have DVDs of the program, which they can show to shareholders and/or clients.

MEDIA BRIEFS__________
The Deal has formed a content partnership with CNET News.com to produce a new bimonthly tech business magazine called Tech Confidential, starting in May 2005.

Suede Magazine, which was launched in Sept. 2004 by Essence Communications as an urban fashion publication, will go on hiatus after the April issue.

Time Inc. said it will make every effort to place the affected staffers at ECP, Time Inc., or at another Time Warner division.

Variety has started Vlifemag.com as a luxury consumer website with new stories posted daily, plus content created for the online version of VLife magazine, which premiered in March 2003. Tom Tapp is executive editor of VLife.

Retired Investor has been started as a monthly journal by Index Investor Inc. in Providence, R.I. The magazine will feature two articles on different post-retirement topics. Tom Coyne, who is editor, can be reached at [email protected].

PLACEMENT TIPS_________
DM News will publish a supplement April 4 that will focus on how production and printing companies are updating their services with the latest technology.

The supplement is being edited by Mickey Alam Khan, senior editor and director of editorial and business development, who can be contacted at 212/925-7300, ext. 216, or [email protected].

globalOpEd.us is a new website that will offer news and opinions plus links to points of interest.
Dennis Mullin, a former foreign correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, who is publisher and editor-in-chief of GlobalOpEd, heads a team of 10 staff writers based in Washington, D.C.

Bill Rife, who is managing editor, said "our intention is to give citizens worldwide the ability to be heard." Rife can be reached at 202/422-5828.

PEOPLE
Matthew Teague, 28, formerly writer-at-large for GQ magazine from 2000-2004, and Andrew Putz, 31, formerly a senior editor at Indianapolis Monthly have joined the staff of Philadelphia Magazine.

Scott Baradell, former senior corporate communications executive for Belo Corp., the newspaper and broadcast conglomerate in Dallas, is opening a PR firm called the Idea Grove in Dallas.
"You ll get no double talk from us because we say what we mean the first time," said Baradell, who can be reached at 972/235-3439 or e-mail: [email protected].

Jacob Bernstein, previously at New York magazine, has rejoined Fairchild Publications as associate editor of "Eye," where he will do party coverage and features for W and Women's Wear Daily.

Alessandro Vitelli was named managing editor of Platts Emissions Daily, a new newsletter based in London that will cover all the daily activities of global emissions markets.

(Media news continued on next page)

NEW MAG CATERS
TO MIDDLE EASTERNERS.
Unique Image's new magazine, ALO Hayati, will focus on the lifestyles of people from the Middle East.

While the core audience are the Americanized Middle Easterm community, ALO will also cover stories of individuals from all backgrounds.

The magazine, which is based in Beverly Hills, Calif., will cover social affairs, fashion, cuisine, health, entertainment, travel, art, heritage, business, family values, and products and services from all corners of the world.

ALO Hayati means "Hello Darling," said Michael Lloyd, editor-in-chief, who said the magazine's mission is to "help everyone discover the Middle East without focusing on the negativity often associated with this region.

"ALO is the first and only publication that allows advertisers to reach the growing Americanized Middle Easterner (7+ million strong) while delivering an upbeat lifestyle format," Lloyd said.

The full-color publication is written entirely in English, and its content is non-political and non-religious.

ALO will be published quarterly, starting with the spring issue, and distributed across the U.S., starting with a reader base of 50,000, according to the publisher, Wafa Kanan.

Lloyd can be reached at 818/727-7785; e-mail [email protected].

UN CHIN 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 language, 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 based in New York, and can be reached at 212/304-8188; fax: 304-8288.

ODE REACHES
ITS 10TH ANNIVERSARY.
The founder of Ode Magazine, the international news magazine, which marks its 10th anniversary with the March issue, remains committed to publishing stories about people, ideas and trends that are changing the world.

"The idea that `good news is no news is simply false," said editor-in-chief Jurriann Kamp, who began publishing Ode in his native Netherlands in 1995. "Although newspaper headlines and TV news continue to imply otherwise, there are many more successes than failures to report."

He started an international English edition in the U.S. in Oct. 2003.

Jay Walljasper is executive editor of the U.S. edition, which has a U.S. subscription base in excess of 50,000.

"Our March cover story is the essence of what Ode has been about for the last 10 years," said Kamp of the magazine's mission. "Thankfully, there are a lot of people in the world who do not give up hope easily—who enthusiastically join or launch initiatives that make a difference. These people are the `face of Ode."

Ode's March cover story, "Soul Messenger," highlights protest music icon Michael Franti, whose mission to communicate the importance of social justice through music has taken him on tour with the rock band U2 and, most recently, to Iraq.

Franti's sojourn in Iraq revealed a picture of resilient residents engaged in daily life behind the bombs and warfare, Ode reports.

"Houses were in ruins or on the verge of collapse, there was no electricity and hardly any water," said Franti of his experience in Baghdad. "And in the middle of all the chaos, life on the streets simply goes on: people go shopping, chat with one another on the street, children go to school."

Kamp points to Ode as a "point of light" in a mass movement toward a new kind of journalism, "Executives and politicians now are beginning to recognize they cannot ignore their constituencies.

And we are seeing journalists understand that readers, listeners and viewers have the right to hope.

"We will continue to focus on all those beautiful, hopeful initiatives that deserve our attention. There are answers and solutions to the many challenges we face—we can believe in true progress," said Kamp.

BIZ SCHOOL FOR
JOURNALISTS CLOSED.
Administrators at City Univ. of New York (CUNY) have decided to drop a graduate program for business journalists at Baruch College.

The decision comes only weeks after the hiring of Stephen Shepard, the top editor of Business Week magazine, to lead a new graduate school of journalism.

Joshua Mills, the program's director, had hoped the program would be incorporated into the new journalism school.

PR pro Howard Rubenstein, who was named to head the advisory board, recently said the new CUNY j-school, which is set to open in fall 2006, will not offer a PR curriculum.

Two stories broke last week that put the spotlight on the sad shape of investor relations.

One was the weak performance of analysts on the Omnicom conference call Feb. 22 (page one). No one dared ask about the troubles at two big OMC PR units—Ketchum and Fleishman-Hillard.

PR, after all, is 10% of OMC's gross or about $1 billion. It's not inconsequential.

The problem is that too many analysts have been co-opted by the companies they re covering.
The employers of the analysts invariably are doing business with the companies being covered and the analysts may own stock in these companies.

Aiding and abetting this abusive setup are the IR people who feed numbers to the analysts and public. Business Week says the numbers "are often incomplete, inconsistent, or just plain unclear, making it a nightmare to sort out fact from fantasy."

Four BW cover stories have covered this communications disaster, dating from May 14, 2001 when a cover said "Companies use every trick to pump earnings and fool investors." It's long since overdue for PR to take back control over IR, which it lost in the 1970s to the National Investor Relations Institute.

NIRI was founded by the Investor Relations Assn.. an elite, private group of about 30 New York blue-chip corporate IR managers who wanted a new society dominated by corporate people, not counselors (who they felt mostly ran PRSA).

The insular, corporate-oriented nature of NIRI governance is an impediment to the improved financial reporting that is needed, especially if the public starts to invest $250 billion year in stocks from its Social Security funds.

The other story was the appointment of NIRI's first staff PR person (page 7), indicating NIRI feels it needs some input in this area.

What NIRI needs on its board are top executives from the big independent PR firms like Edelman PR Worldwide and Ruder Finn. It also needs some top management and financial consultants.

PRSA, recognizing its own dysfunctional and undemocratic governance, has two committees studying changes. It also needs outsiders.

We don't expect either NIRI or PRSA to reform themselves. That would be boot-strapping.

They will only see the light if enough rank-and-file members of each group put pressure on the boards. If not, a blow-up of some type will take place at each organization.

The New York Times story by Tim O'Brien on Feb 13 was a wake-up call to PRSA and NIRI.

Compounding the situation is the weakness of the Securities & Exchange Commission and other Wall Street watchdogs.

Financial columnist Christopher Byron, writing in the N.Y. Post Feb. 7, blasted "the underpaid, under-staffed and outgunned members of the SEC and their equally ineffectual sidekicks at the National Assn. of Securities Dealers and other exchanges."

A Gallup poll, Byron noted, found the public sees stockbrokers at "very near the bottom" of 23 career categories, along with car salespeople.

At least 10 major companies collapsed in accounting scandals in the five years since the dot-com bust, Byron noted, costing the public tens of billions. How can the "retirement treasure of the entire nation" be placed in the "palsied hands" of the Wall St. enforcement system, he asked?

We fault NIRI for being too corporate-oriented to the detriment of the very companies it wants to serve. We wonder about its sense of right and wrong. For instance, NIRI and the CFA Institute have just released "guidelines" saying that analysts who do paid-for research for companies must not "trade in the securities of the subject company ahead of the release of a research report."

This misses the point, according to Gayle Essary of InvesTrend, a group of about 70 analysts who do paid-for research for investors and companies.

People who write about stocks should not personally own the stocks and this includes analysts at brokers, IR people for companies and the analysts who are in brokerage houses, Essary says. It's a "irreconcilable conflict of interest and wrong," he says with as much emphasis as he can muster.

Simply disclosing that the individual or company "may have an interest" in the stock being written about is not enough, he says.

Lou Thompson, CEO of NIRI, says NIRI has no right to tell non-members what to do and no enforcement powers. He feels that analysts need only disclose an interest when appearing on TV or writing.

NIRI could be doing a lot if it wanted to but it draws a sharp line on where its duties end. It should be campaigning for reporters to be on all "analyst" conference calls. It should be urging companies and brokerages to distribute analyst reports to reporters in the specific industries so that reporters can better understand them. There's no legal danger in doing this as long as all the reports go to the reporters, rather than selected ones.

A NYSE initiative has led analysts to refuse reporters calls, referring the reporters to legal or PR depts. for clearance. The odds of clearance are low.

NIRI, with its $4.5M in cash, should have a glossary of financial terms on its website and it should answer reporters questions on financial topics.

– Jack O'Dwyer