N.J. ISSUES ‘CLEAN ENERGY’ RFP.
New Jersey’s Dept. of the Treasury has issued an RFP for the Garden State’s Board of Public Utilities to handle that entity’s $4.5M a year marketing communications account.

The work includes advertising, public relations and web production for two years for the BPU’s Office of Clean Energy and its New Jersey Clean Energy Program, which promotes the use of energy efficient and renewable energy technologies.

The OCE says many New Jersey residents don’t know about education, technical assistance and financing help offered through the state to homeowners, businesses and schools.

Proposals are being accepted through June 9, but a May 31 pre-bid conference is mandatory for interested agencies. Ken Dietel ([email protected]) is contracting officer for the RFP.

SENOR GOES TO GOOGLE.
Dan Senor, former top spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and senior advisor to Paul Bremer there, has joined Internet search dynamo Google as its VP of global communications.

Senor was a legislative aide, press secretary and communications director for former Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.), who became Secretary of Energy.

Google brought in veteran Cisco spokesman Steve Langdon last July to bolster its internal PR staff.

Cindy McCaffrey, Google’s top marketing exec who built its marketing and PR team, left the company at the end of last year.

KEKST HANDLES MAYTAG TAKEOVER.
Kekst & Co. is handling the $1.1 billion takeover of Maytag by a private investment group led by Ripplewood Holdings. The group will also assume $975 million in debt.

The No. 3 U.S. appliance maker has blamed high-manufacturing as costs one of the factors in its 80 percent decline in first-quarter earnings to $7.7 million.

Ripplewood CEO Tim Collins says Maytag must be more global in order to compete with General Electric and Whirlpool, which manufacture many of their products overseas.

Maytag CEO Ralph Hake, who will remain in his post, has told 1,300 workers at its Newton, Iowa, flagship plant that their jobs are in jeopardy unless the company gets contract givebacks. Maytag shut a Galesburg, Ill., refrigerator plant last year, shifting production to Mexico.

H&K, B-M ADVISE ON AIRLINE MERGER.
Hill & Knowlton is advising America West Holdings Corporation as the No. 8 airline and an investor group move to buy Chapter 11 carrier U.S. Airways. Burson-Marsteller is working with No. 7 carrier U.S. Airways.

The deal, financed with $1.5 billion in capital from several sources, would create the No. 6 airline under the U.S. Airways brand with 44,100 employees.

The new company would be based in America West's home city of Tempe, Ariz. U.S. Airways, which posted a $282 million first quarter loss, is based in Arlington, Va.

The carriers, which are moving to compete with the low-fare airlines, said the combined company will have revenues of over $10 billion (with $2 billion in cash) and be positioned for profitability even with oil prices above $50 per barrel.

Sitrick & Co., Los Angeles, had advised U.S. Airways through its Chapter 11 filing, initiated in 2002.
The merger is subject to the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court overseeing U.S. Airways' filing.
Both airlines would operate separately through a transition period of two to three years.

‘GREATEST GENERATION’ SPEAKS.
“It’s the best of times and, in some cases, the worst of times,” said Harold Burson, the octogenarian chairman and co-founder of WPP Group’s Burson-Marsteller who was part of the O’Dwyer Company’s “Greatest Generation in PR” event on May 17 at the Yale Club in New York.

Burson said that at industry gatherings in previous years, the PR industry would lament its fight for respect within an organization. “People would say, ‘Management doesn’t appreciate us’” said Burson. “I don’t think that’s happening anymore.”

Burson was among featured panelists including Al Golin, chairman/co-founder of GolinHarris, Margery Kraus, founder/president/CEO, APCO Worldwide, Daniel Edelman, founder/chairman Daniel J. Edelman Inc., and David Finn, chairman/co-founder of the Ruder Finn Group. A second panel included prominent members of the PR services industry.

The panelists regaled the audience with stories of their beginnings, some accidental, into the PR field and discussed past, present and future issues in PR.

Edelman acknowledged recent controversies surrounding the industry while calling on PR to fill the void left by the diminishing importance of 30-second ad spots.

(continued on page 7)

ADL COMMENDS WAL-MART.
The Anti-Defamation League says it welcomes the prompt apology of Wal-Mart over its use of Nazi imagery asking voters to reject a proposed zoning rule law in Flagstaff.

The offending full-page ad ran in the May 8 Arizona Daily Sun, showing a 1933 photo of Germans throwing books on a pyre at Berlin’s Opernplatz.

The text read: “Should we let government tell us what we can read? Of course, not. So why should we allow local government to limit where we shop?”

The cited ballot proposal would restrict Wal-Mart from expanding a local store to include a supermarket.

The ad copy said it was “paid for by Protect Flagstaff’s Future – major funding by Wal-Mart (Bentonville, Ark.).”

Bill Straus, Arizona regional director of the ADL, received a May 13 letter from Jay Allen, Wal-Mart’s senior VP-corporate communications, in which he apologized for the “inappropriate photo” and to “anyone who was offended with this image.” Allen copied Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL.

The ADL issued a May 16 release that quoted Allen’s letter, “While we did not know of the photo’s historical context until after the fact, there is still no excuse for associating this photo with the upcoming election on the proposed retail ordinance.”

Allen promised that Wal-Mart has “taken corrective action to make sure this does not happen again.”
The ADL, in its statement, commends Wal-Mart for quickly recognizing that the “use of Nazi imagery as part of this campaign was inappropriate and insensitive, particularly for Holocaust survivors and their families.”

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which is attempting to organize Wal-Mart, also throttled the discounter. It highlighted the ad via a petition drive demanding that company CEO Lee Scott apologize for the Nazi ad and never use it again.

Hill & Knowlton and Fleishman-Hillard handle national PR for Wal-Mart.

C&A TAPS SITRICK.
Collins & Aikman, the $4 billion auto parts supplier, is using Sitrick & Co. to handle its Chapter 11 reorganization. C&A made the May 17 bankruptcy filing to “de-leverage its balance sheet and restore profitability.”

The Troy, Mich.-based company has been rattled by the declining fortunes of the Big Three automakers. C&A expects to operate with $15 million in daily liquidity, and faces a $27 million June 30 interest payment.

C&A was also hit by this month’s resignation of CEO David Stockman, who was President Reagan’s budget director, and news of accounting problems that will delay the release of its `04 financials.

C&A’s acting CEO Charles Becker has retained turnaround firm Kroll Zolfo Cooper as its financial advisor, and has installed KZC’s John Boken as its chief restructuring officer.

Sandi Sternberg in S&C’s New York office is handling C&A. David Youngman is C&A’s director of corporate communications.

BUDGET CUTS HELP NIRI.
Revenues of NIRI in 2004 were about even at $4.9 million but a gain of $265,830 in net assets was recorded vs. a loss of $156,395 in 2003 because of cuts in PR, chapter and member development, the NIRI members’ directory, and NIRI website.

Biggest cut of all came in PR and marketing, spending on which fell to $11,182 from $123,143. This category cost $93,657 in 2002 and $90,173 in 2001.

Membership declined 4% to 4,326. Dues were boosted from $425 to $475 and web spending fell to $38,770 from $78,845.

Louis Thompson, president and CEO, said there were “certain non-recurring expenses” in PR/marketing in 2003 that were not in 2004.

This included a membership drive; the retainer for Doug Parillo, outside PR counsel who retired; a special award for Arthur Levitt presented at the IR Magazine awards dinner, and an interview with 2003 chair Mark Aaron and Thompson that aired over American Airlines and United Airlines for a month each.

Catherine Mathis, VP-CC of the New York Times Co., joined the board for a four-year term.

SCHRODERS BANKS ON BRUNSWICK.
Schroders, the U.K.-based financial giant with $205B in assets, has hired London-headquartered Brunswick Group to expand its recognition in the U.S.

Schroders Investment Management North America (New York) has $28 billion in assets from clients, but is largely viewed as an international equity-only specialist.

It has recently launched a bevy of new products, including muni bond portfolios, and opened an office in Philadelphia.

Martin Luz, spokesperson for Schroders, would neither confirm nor deny the Brunswick hire.

Steve Lipin, the former Wall Street Journal reporter who heads BG’s New York office, did not return a call for comment.

Brunswick, most notably, worked for Martha Stewart during her legal ordeal. It was replaced by Citigate Sard Verbinnen.

CHRISTMAS TIME AT EVINS.
Michael Christmas, who spent a decade at the high-end Nike Communications firm in New York, has jumped ship for a senior VP/managing director position at Evins Communications.

He had been responsible for some of Nike’s “iconic luxury” brands including Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Rolls-Royce, TAG Heuer, Christian Dior Watches and Montblanc.

Evins counts Neiman Marcus, Baccarat, Architectural Digest, Joseph Abboud, Vera Wang, Bath & Body Works and JC Penney among its stable of clients.

Mathew Evins says his firm’s goal is “building affluent, aspirational and inspirational brand market share by optimizing brand mind share.”

Nina Kaminer, who graduated Amherst College with a degree in “classics,” founded Nike in `84 to “reinvent” classic brands to appeal to modern audiences.

NEWSPAPERS OVERHAUL BUSINESS PAGES.
The New York Times, Barron’s and the Wall Street Journal’s European and Asian editions are getting facelifts.

The Times is expanding its coverage of consumer gadgets, blogs and venture capital, which are viewed as the hottest topics in financial news, in its redesigned weekday “Business Day” section that debuted May 16.

The Times is also widening its coverage of consumer technology, the legal profession, Wall Street, personal consumer electronics, and making space for more columns and features.

The revamped Saturday business section has added coverage of finance and a new column by Joseph Nocera, who recently joined the paper from Fortune magazine.

Barron’s redesign, its first in 11 years, is based on a year of research with readers and advertisers.

New Features Appear

The new Barron’s will continue to feature in-depth articles that readers have relied on for more than 84 years, but also will include “The Bottom Line,” a new box at the bottom of each feature containing Barron’s outlook for the stock or stocks being written.

Other new features:

“They Said What?” – Interviews with Wall Streeters on a specific question relating to market and policy issues facing the financial community.

“Gadget of the Week” – Editors pick an electronic device and provide a short review, and Barron’s examines how much it will help or hurt the financial performance of the company that makes it.

“The Trader” – Column now contains a chart of the week showing whether the stock market is overvalued or undervalued.

“Mutual Funds Week” – Front now contains an added feature, “Four Questions for the Fund Manager,” which conveys the manager’s investing strategy to readers.

Tabloid Format

Editions of the Wall Street Journal in Europe and Asia are changing to a tabloid size, rather than a broadsheet. DJ believes the tabloid format will provide advertisers with a better way to reach readers, including new color front page ads.

DJ plans to link the European and Asian editions more closely with the online edition of the newspaper.

The changes are set for Oct. 17.

The move will result in the repositioning of a number of new jobs from Europe and Asia to the U.S.

Raju Narisetti, currently managing editor of WSJ Europe, will replace Frederick Kempe as editor. Kempe, who is also associate publisher of WSJ Europe, is returning to New York on Aug. 1, in the new position of assistant managing editor/international.

In Sept., Dow Jones plans to publish a weekend edition of the Journal, adding more lifestyle coverage in areas like travel, consumer electronics and luxury goods.

The paper will be delivered on Saturday mornings to all U.S. subscribers. In Europe and Asia, weekend coverage will appear in Friday editions.

USDA PAID WRITER FOR POSITIVE STORIES.
Dave Smith, a freelance writer, was paid $9,375 in 2003 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to “research and write” articles for hunting and fishing magazines describing the benefits of National Resources Conservation Service programs.

Smith’s contract came to light in response to Freedom of Information Act requests by USA Today and other media. The department posted the contract on its website, www.usda.gov.

Smith, a biologist, who currently works for the NRCS, wrote three articles that were published last year in Outdoor Oklahoma, published by that state’s Dept. of Wildlife Conservation, and Washington-Oregon Game & Fish, published by Primedia.

Neither publication revealed Smith as having been paid by the government to write the articles, which focused on how money from a 2002 agricultural subsidy bill had been used to help preserve wetlands that hunting and fishing enthusiasts use in Oklahoma and the Northwest.

Smith told Today that the magazines knew he was paid by USDA, whose PR was handled by Widmeyer Comm., in Washington, D.C., in 2003.

David Gagner, chief of staff at the conservation service, said his agency has hired freelance writers because it gets requests from publications for help in writing stories.

LANSNER TAKES OVER AS SABEW HEAD.
Jonathan Lansner, business columnist for the Orange County (Calif.) Register, is the new president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, which has 3,400 members.

Dave Kansas, a veteran of Money and the Wall Street Journal, was moved up to VP, and Gail DeGeorge, business editor of The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, becomes the new secretary-treasurer.

The three officers assumed their new jobs at the group’s 42nd annual conference in Seattle.

Lansner succeeds Rex Seline, managing editor/news at the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, who completed his yearlong term at the conference.

Carrie Paden is executive director of SABEW, which is headquartered in Columbia, Mo. at the Univ. of Missouri’s school of journalism. She can be reached at 573/882-8985.

‘FRONTLINE’ SEEKS TOP EDITOR FOR WEB.
“Frontline,” the PBS documentary series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, is seeking a managing editor for its website with a minimum of 10 years of editing and writing experience.

The managing editor will be responsible for developing and editing content for the site, produce companion sites for select programs, and collaborate with editors and producers on content, features and new initiatives.

Kirsti Potter can be contacted for additional information by fax at 617/300-1001.

(Media news continued on next page)

DO REPORTERS READ E-MAIL RELEASES?
More than half (52%) of the 50 reporters, who responded to a recent survey, said they look at some of the press releases they get by e-mail.

Only 8% of the reporters said they actually open and read between 90% to 100% of the releases, while the largest number (26%) look at less than half of the releases they get.

The poll was conducted by Ben Silverman, who is director of development and contributing editor for FindProfit.com. He said all of the respondents are beat reporters at daily papers, with circulations ranging from under 100,000 to over 500,000. The reporters polled cover business, politics, sports, local affairs, crime, travel, technology, and the arts.

Twenty-two percent of the reporters said they get releases via snail mail, but only 2% of the reporters said they read them.

Thirty-six percent get releases via fax, which are not read by 64% of the respondents.

When releases arrived via an eFax number, 56% of the journalists said they read them; 44% do not.
Silverman said faxing appears to be the best way to get someone to read a press release.

Seventy percent of the journalists said they monitor press release wires such as Business Wire and PR Newswire, and 76% find information contained in press releases on the wire are useful.

Sixty-two percent feel the majority of press releases incorrectly target their beat.

STARTUPS ADVISED TO DITCH PR FIRMS.
Alarm:clock, an online magazine/blog, that covers technology start-ups has advised startup entrepreneurs to fire their PR firm because they would be better off doing the PR themselves, and save a lot of money in the process.

Among their points at www.thealarmclock.com are:

– Journalists prefer direct contact with the startup.
– One thing bloggers love most is when startups run blogs and eschew pap press releases.
– The best start-ups do not use PR firms.

Sarah Lacy, who writes “Deal Flow,” a Business Week online column, agreed that it makes more sense for startups to hire someone in house instead of an outside PR firm.

“Yes, there are good PR folks and bad PR folks. But the vast, vast majority of bad PR folks I’ve run across were from agencies,” Lacy said in her May 10 column.

“No matter what an agency says, a junior person will be handling your account,” said Lacy. While some juniors are brilliant, there are also hundreds, who have not “quite mastered the ‘check-the-reporter’s-name-berfore-you-call-them’ trick,” said Lacy, who answers to Stacy and Lucy, in addition to her actual name, Sarah. “And you know what? Stacy and Lucy are much crankier when they call you back,” she said.

Lacy also said she could count on one hand the number of PR firms who have figured out what blogs are and how to include them in the media strategy.

HOY LAUNCHES NEW SECTIONS.
Hoy, a Spanish-language daily newspaper for Hispanics in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, is introducing a new daily Vida Hoy section, plus two news sections, Al Frente and America Latina, and a daily finance/business page.

Vida Hoy, which was a Friday feature, is now included in each daily edition of the paper, providing celebrity gossip as well as local event and entertainment listings specific to N.Y., Chicago and L.A.

Vida Hoy also features a daily lifestyle feature for Hispanics that provides news, information and tips on technology, family, youth and cultural and lifestyle trends produced by Escripto.

Al Frente, a five page section, will offer local, national and world news of interest. America Latina, a three to four page section, delivers news and information of interest from the home nations of Hoy’s readers.

The new business page, Negoicios, will focus on consumer and personal finance topics, and developments about the buying power of Hispanics in the U.S. and their impact on the U.S. economy.

The section will also have success stories of small Hispanic businesses and business people.

Javier Aldape, who is Hoy editor, said a recent study of more than 3,000 Hispanics in the three cities found family and lifestyle information ranked among the top three topics most wanted by readers of Hoy.

Alejandro Riera is Hoy’s national entertainment editor, based in Chicago.

PLACEMENT TIPS_______
Radar magazine’s new online version will have a weekly column by Adam Hanft, an ad/marketing pro who created the “Flick Your Bic” campaign.

The column, called “The Sell,” which debuted on May 18, will look at the myriad of ways in which consumers are “sold” everything from media and entertainment properties, to political arguments and sports.

Hanft, who currently writes a monthly column for Inc. magazine, is looking for ideas, pitches and suggestions for column material. ([email protected])

Made in USA Magazine will make its debut in time for Independence Day.

Publicists can find more information on the magazine’s website at www.madeinusamag.com.

Julie Reiser, publisher and editor of the magazine, is at [email protected]; 561/279-2855.

MEDIA BRIEFS________
XM Satellite Radio said it has exceeded four million subscribers.

The Ecomomist magazine has launched Intelligent Life, a new annual magazine aimed at “decision-makers who want to be the first to know about the latest trends and ideas that will help make them healthier, wealthier, and smarter.”

“Topic A,” a CNBC talk show hosted by Tina Brown, goes off the air after its last show on May 29.

The “Greatest Generation in PR” leaders (page one) expressed their views on many topics May 17 and took questions from the audience.

The five PR figures have contributed hugely to PR. But where are similar leaders who will replace them?

The fashion in the past 15-20 years, the same period in which the ad conglomerates bought out 21 of the 25 largest PR operations, is to have administrators as the heads of these PR firm subsidiaries.

The administrators don’t speak in public or if they do, they don’t supply texts to the press.

They don’t present themselves for questioning at press conferences or other public forums.

Their sole concern seems to be the bottom line.

Harold Burson said the obsession of companies with quarterly results has led to shortsightedness.

The pressure on public companies is so great that even a penny difference in predicted earnings can drop 10% off a stock price, he noted.

Among the companies obsessed with profits are the five ad/PR conglomerates that own hundreds of PR firms and have $14 billion in debt plus hundreds of millions more owed in payouts for acquired firms.

The New York Times feature Feb. 13 by Timothy O’Brien suggested that financial pressure from the holding companies may be causing their PR firms to flirt with ethical violations such as the contract Ketchum had with Armstrong Williams.

The five PR leaders discussed the evolution of PR over the past five decades.

Burson said that many PR pros operate at the highest levels of organizations, helping companies to make decisions as well as to communicate them.
Reporters dealing with PR pros also find dramatic changes in the past several decades.

One of them is the increasing withdrawal of companies and institutions from public discussion. For reporters, the PR dept. has become the “Dept. of No.”

Here are some quotes corporate PR veterans gave us when we asked them to characterize current attitudes corporate PR has towards the press.

There is a “new economy, new corporate culture and new attitudes in the business world,” they said.

– “Either you agree with me or you are my adversary.”
– “If you write something I don’t like, I won’t talk to you.”
– “I don’t have to talk to you...don’t have to engage in dialogue with you.”
– “We’ll get third parties to speak for us and tell the truth.”
– “Journalists never get it right, and therefore we won’t work with them, show them where they might be wrong, or even share facts with them.”
– “We can hire a hardball PR firm to take on aggressive reporters...you have to be able to fight back and give the media a bloody nose.”
– “We’ll hire some PR luminary who knows everyone at the Wall Street Journal or whatever and get the story killed.”

Corporate executives admit there is widespread refusal to dialogue with the press. Tim Cost, former chair of NIRI, told its national conference several years ago: “Corporate PR experiences a press call as a drive-by shooting.”

The four communications trade groups (PRSA, IABC, NIRI and the American Assn. of Adv. Agencies) have highly restrictive press policies.

For instance, a month ago we asked Ron Berger, CEO of Euro RSCG Worldwide and the elected chair of the 4As, to comment on a study by two college professors that found there is a short supply of ethical reasoning in the ad business (4/27 NL). The study is part of a book, “The Moral Media,” by Lee Wilkins, Missouri School of Journalism, and Renita Coleman, Louisiana State.

Wilkins and Coleman support their claims with all sorts of scholarly citations.

They deserve a hearing from the 4As and not a snub. But no reply has come back from Berger. Also not replying is paid 4As president Burtch Drake and VP-PA Kipp Cheng, who was formerly at AdWeek. They were provided with the section of the book on advertising.

PR pros are spending less and less time with reporters and more time with advertising and marketing people, who are not known for wanting to discuss client matters in the public prints.

Public broadcasting’s Bill Moyers, in a speech May 15 to the National Conference for Media Reform (freepress.net), said the journalist’s life is “has never been harder than today” because institutions fight back fiercely when subjected to “critical scrutiny.” Moyers said he came to believe that “news is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.” Much of the mainstream media, he feels, has been “corrupted by government and corporate interests” and the big fight today is to “preserve the web from corporate gatekeepers.”

He said that whether he was looking into the Watergate scandals or Bill Clinton’s fundraising scandals, he realized that “investigative journalism could not be a collaboration between the journalist and the subject.”

Moyers, who lost his “NOW” show on PBS in December after CPB chair Kenneth Tomlinson accused it of having too much of a liberal bent, urged journalists not to make “any accusations or allegations” unless the conclusions can be “nailed to the post with confirming evidence.” He will return this summer in the new show, “Wide Angle.”

Moyers, blasting Tomlinson, accused him of being another “Richard Nixon.”

freepress.net is campaigning for the resignation of Tomlinson, claiming he represents censorship of public broadcasting by the Bush Administration.

– Jack O'Dwyer