GOODYEAR ROLLS OUT PR REVIEW.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber is looking for a PR firm via the Chicago office of Jones Lundin Beals. The company had used Arnold Worldwide, the Havas unit, for integrated communications. AW has decided not to pitch the account.

Goodyear, which is in the midst of a five-year restructuring plan, chalked up $137 million in first-half net vs. a $48 million loss last year. Surging North American tire sales drove the Akron-based company.

The tiremaker, however, received a bit of bad news on Aug. 16 when it got a “Wells Notice” from the Securities and Exchange Commission. It may face federal civil charges for the accounting of its restated `03 financials.

Dave Beals (312/396-4155) is handling the PR search.

ILLINOIS LOTTERY CHANGES BILLING.
The Illinois Lottery, which is reviewing its PR account, has notified pitching firms that it has switched the $300K/year account to a monthly pricing scale.

A Lottery official told O’Dwyer’s the program asked firms to submit their own models for a flat fee as a potential cost savings, but the Lottery has elected to revert back to monthly rate pricing for the three-year PR contract.

Hill & Knowlton is the eight-year incumbent for the assignment. Its latest contract was extended in July after an initial RFP failed to generate an adequate response.

Firms have been asked to submit a monthly fee figure that includes out-of-pocket expenses, along with a description of how they arrive at the figure, number of staff hours allocated and hourly rates.

CARUSO PLOTS FOR OGILVY.
Therese Caruso has joined Ogilvy PR Worldwide as executive VP for strategy and planning.

Caruso reports to Kym White, managing director, and Steve Dahllof, head of the firm’s strategy and planning group.

Caruso held the executive VP/consumer brands title at Edelman. She handled re-branding, product launch, nutrition/health education, crisis, and cause-related marketing assignments.

Caruso counts a teen-directed outreach effort for Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products’ Acuvue contact lenses and campaigns for Reach and Act promoting better oral care among career highlights.

At Ogilvy, Caruso is to focus on consumer marketing, healthcare and corporate communications.

FD IS LATEST TO REP ENRON.
Enron’s roster of PR firms since its epic downfall has grown to include Financial Dynamics.

The battered energy conglomerate has used a handful of firms since it filed the largest Chapter 11 case in history in `01, rattling markets and ushering in the Sarbanes-Oxley era.

Amy Rosenberg, senior VP and director of media relations for FD, referred a call to Harlan Loeb, who heads the firm’s litigation communications unit. He did not return a call. Loeb, earlier this year, joined FD from Hill & Knowlton, which had represented Enron in Washington.

Enron had recently worked with Brunswick Group. The company paid Hill & Knowlton $300,000 for lobbying Capitol Hill and the Bush Administration during the first-half of `03, when the company filed its Chapter 11 reorganization plan.

Enron emerged from bankruptcy in late `04 as a private entity.

DOWIE WANTS LIE DETECTOR RESULTS.
Doug Dowie, the former Fleishman-Hillard Los Angeles office head who is charged with overbilling the city’s Dept. of Water and Power, wants permission from the U.S. District Court to submit the results of a privately administered polygraph test.

Tom Holliday, Dowie’s lawyer, says the test results are reliable and prove Dowie was telling the truth when he denied any wrongdoing.

A judge will rule on Dowie’s motion on Sept. 26. The trial is set for November.

CASSIDY TOILS FOR TEXAS.
Texas has hired Cassidy & Assocs. as its Washington, D.C., lobbyist as the Lone Star State seeks to improve its “rate of return on federal tax dollars.”

The Texas Office of State-Federal Affairs, which hired the Interpublic unit, says the state received $141 billion in federal funding for fiscal year `03, putting it No. 31 among the 50 states on the rate of return list.

Texas Governor Rick Perry calls federal funding “critically important to the state budget,” and wants more dollars for health & human services, transportation, and defense/homeland security.

C&A vice chairman Gregg Hartley, a former chief of staff to Republican whip Roy Blunt (Mo.), leads the lobbying team of James Hiral, an ex-aide to Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Ten.), Todd Boulanger, an ex-staffer with Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.), and Dawn Levy, who worked as tax counsel for Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mt.).

J&D WORKS TO SECURE U.S./MEXICO BORDER.
The Mexican State of Sonora has hired J&D International Consulting Services to communicate with U.S. officials about ways to improve law enforcement on its border with Arizona with the goal of cutting criminal and terrorist activity, according to their contract.

J&D is headed by Jim Steele, a former senior counselor to Ambassador Paul Bremer who returned from Iraq in April. Steele organized SWAT teams in Baghdad, and trained security details for 300 members of Iraq’s Governing Council. He personally led a group of American and Iraqi undercover operatives to recover the remains of the Blackwater contractors who were murdered by Iraqis prior to the `04 Marine attack on Fallujah. Steele received the Pentagon’s “Medal of Valor” from Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld.

For Sonora, Steele is to coordinate activity and exchange information with U.S. Border Patrol, Justice Dept., Dept. of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration officials.

The Justice Dept., last month, issued a warning to law enforcement officials in California and Arizona to be on the lookout for “Zetas,” a band of Mexican mercenaries who receive a $50K bounty for every assassination of U.S. law enforcement officials. The Washington Times, on Aug. 1, reported that attacks along the 260-mile Mexico/Arizona border are up dramatically this year. There have been nearly 200 assaults on U.S. border officials since October.

That upswing has given a boost to the Tombstone, Ariz.-based Minuteman Civil Defense Corp., the anti-illegal immigrant group that says its goal is to secure the border from drug dealers, criminals and potential terrorists.

Some dismiss the Minutemen as vigilantes.

WASHINGTON POST DROPS SPONSORSHIP.
The Washington Post has dropped plans to co-sponsor the Pentagon-organized “Freedom Walk” on Sept. 11 because the two-mile march and ensuing concert by country music star Clint Black may be “politicized,” according to Eric Grant, a Post spokesperson.

The Newspaper Guild, which represents 1,400 Post staffers, adopted a resolution on Aug. 15 urging the paper to pull the sponsorship. The union said its members could be “subject to disciplinary action for participating in political activities that may be perceived as revelatory of personal opinions or bias.” The Guild believes the Post should be held to the “same high standard.”

The Guild determined that Freedom Walk is a political activity in support of the war in Iraq. It noted that Black is best known for his “war-glorifying song ‘I Raq and Roll.”

The Pentagon issued a statement to express disappointment that the Post has dropped its sponsorship, but is pleased that the paper will donate to the Pentagon Memorial Fund.

The Defense Dept. noted that Freedom Walk is an opportunity to remember the victims and families of 9/11 and to “reflect on the sacrifices made by our troops and to recommit to the work still ahead.”

LOUISIANA EYES FUR INDUSTRY PUSH.
Louisiana, home to fur-bearing rodents like muskrat, beaver and the semi-aquatic nutria, thinks the “time is right” to begin promoting its fur industry after an industry-wide lull that began in the mid-to-late 1980s.

The Pelican State says that many interested fur buyers contact the state to find retail sources for fur coats but retailers are not stocking and selling products. So the state has issued an RFP for a firm to create a three-year promotional campaign targeting fur manufacturers and retailers and utilizing the pre-established “Bayou Furs” label. The work includes researching potential outlets for fur products, developing in-store sample presentations and coordinating terms of placing the Bayou Furs line in retail stores.

The campaign’s major push would be in nine major Louisiana cities – New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Houma, Morgan City, Lafayette, Lake Charles, Alexandria, Shreveport/Bossier and Monroe.
Absent from the RFP is any mention of anti-fur backlash or inroads made by animal rights groups like PETA in changing the public’s perception of wearing fur coats or accessories.

The fur industry is promoted through the state’s Fur and Alligator Advisory Council under the umbrella of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries. As that agency points out, mink prices are high, leaving room for lower priced skins like nutria in a strong fur market. The state harvests 300,000 nutria each year to control wetlands damage and is eying China for its cheap manufacturing as a potential partner for producing pelts.

The state is accepting proposals through Sept. 9.

KRISPY KREME HIRES JOELE FRANK.
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, which hired Gavin Anderson in January to help deal with fallout from a Securities and Exchange Commission probe into its accounting, now uses Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher to map comeback plans.

The Winston-Salem, N.C.-based chain released the results of a 10-month probe by a special committee of the board on Aug. 10 in which the company blamed its former management team for its woes.

“In our view Scott A. Livengood, former chairman of the board and CEO, and John W. Tate, former COO, bear primary responsibility for the failure to establish the management tone, environment and controls essential for meeting the company’s responsibilities as a public company,” the committee reported.

KKD and its shareholders “have paid dearly for those failures as measured by the loss in market value of the company’s shares, a loss in confidence in the credibility and integrity of the company’s management and the considerable costs required to address those failures,” according to the release that lists JFWBK’s Andy Brimmer and Laura Smith as contacts.

KKD announced that it would adjust its income by $25.6 million for the periods from fiscal `01 through the third quarter of the current year.

The chain’s stock, which once traded at $73 a-share, now costs $7.09 each.

LOCALS FEAST ON CITIZEN JOURNALISM.
Some of the first videos, pictures and descriptions of the destruction that followed the explosions on London’s mass transit system on July 7 were not from the lenses or pens of professional journalists.

Rather, witnesses with camera phones and online blogs were the main sources of information following the blasts.

“Citizen journalism turns the traditional news model on its head,” said Clyde Bentley, associate professor in the Missouri Univ. School of Journalism, who has completed a study of MyMissourian, an experimental website that serves as the citizen journalism outlet of the Columbia Missourian, a local daily newspaper.

“The citizen is the news gatherer and writer, rather than the source, for a news story. The journalist is a `shepherd’ in the process, helping take the reported news and making sure it is dispensed in a readable format that does not violate standards of decency or libel.”

Bentley said editors of MyMissourian adhere to several rules to determine what is suitable to post—no nudity, profanity, personal attacks or attacks on race, religion, national origin, gender or sexual orientation.

Although some sections of the website have not been successful, he believes the test shows readers are “hungry for local, people-centered news.”

Bentley said the “Civic Life” section of the website is the most popular section. People have discussed everything from a proposal to ban smoking in local restaurants to the death of a local police officer.

The Civic Life section taught the editors of MyMissourian an important lesson. “Readers and potential contributors are not interested in a rehash of events and issues that are already covered by the city’s other news media,” he said “Rather, they are interested in issues that go largely ignored on the nightly news,” he said.

That interest has contributed to the success of the “Spiritual Life” section of MyMissourian. Since many religious organizations do not get mainstream media coverage, he said the Internet has become a gathering place for religious groups and individuals.

USA TODAY TO PUBLISH ANNUAL TECH MAG.
USA Today, the nation’s top-selling newspaper with an average daily circulation of 2.3 million, is expanding its magazine business with the introduction of a glossy consumer technology magazine featuring new products and trends.
Called USA Today Now Personal Technology, the annual magazine, which will hit newsstands on Oct. 17, is designed to make the overall consumer tech-buying experience more user-friendly.

The 80-page technology guide will include Q&A’s with experts, and articles on using and buying technology along with top editors’ picks on key products such as digital cameras, laptops and HDTVs from CNET.com.

Mindy Fetterman, a reporter on USA Today’s “Money” section, is editor of NPT.

There is still time for publicists to pitch stories for use in the first issue, which goes on sale the week of Oct. 17 at newsstands nationwide. A minimum of 300,000 copies will be printed.

Fetterman can be reached at 703/854-5452 or [email protected].

MEDIA BRIEFS________

Victoria’s Secret, which cancelled its $10 million televised lingerie fashion show, along with its annual catwalk show for fashion press, is returning to CBS-TV this fall.

A spokesman for the brand told Women’s Wear Daily that 25% of the decision to cancel the show had to do with the bad publicity surrounding the Janet Jackson breast-baring incident at the Super Bowl, and the FCC’s reaction.

The National Assn. of Real Estate Editors in Boca Raton, Fla., is accepting applications until Sept. 15 from real estate and home and design writers, including editors, reporters, columnists, and freelancers for the $3,500 NAREE Bivins Fellowship program.

Applications are available from NAREE’s executive director Mary Doyle-Kimball at 561/391-3599.

JWT Worldwide’s new book, “The Future of Men,” due out in Sept., will show marketers how to understand and leverage the men’s market.

The book, written by Marian Salzman, JWT’s director of strategic content; Ira Matathia, development/integrated strategy, Taxi Inc., and Ann O’Reilly, editorial director of Euro RSCG Worldwide’s strategic trendspotting and research initiative, provides the first comprehensive overview of what has taken place over the past three decades as the Women’s Lib movement has increasingly marginalized men into the “second sex,” according to JWT publicist Eric Robertson.

Salzman, Matathia and O’Reilly, also co-authored the best-selling book “Buzz.”

Publishers of daily newspapers should go back to letting editors decide what the “public needs to read,” said Michael Socolow, director of the journalism program at Brandeis Univ.

Socolow said the “reinvented newspaper,” which offers more “news you can use” and features increased coverage of medical, travel and lifestyle news, has failed to stem readership losses.

“Most newspapers are offering little more than a comfortable rehash of events that their consumers are already aware of,” he said. “Instead, newspapers should be challenging their readers by providing difficult-to-obtain firsthand reports from around the world that are unavailable anywhere else,” he said.

Norman Pearlstine, editor-in-chief of Time Inc., said the anonymous tip that nearly landed Time reporter Matthew Cooper in jail probably was not valuable enough to justify a promise of confidentiality.

“A 90-second conversation with the President’s spin doctor ... probably didn’t deserve confidential source status,” Pearlstine said during a Court TV panel discussion.

(Media news continued on next page)

MAJEWSKI TO REJOIN TEEN PEOPLE AS M.E.
Lori Majewski, currently executive editor of Wenner Media’s Us Weekly, is rejoining Time Inc.’s Teen People on Sept. 6 as managing editor.

Majewski will replace Amy Barnett, who has been managing editor for the past two years. Barnett’s new assignment at Time Inc. is to work on magazine development and an advice book for young adults.

Majewski left TP in 2003 to join the now-defunct YM as executive editor.

CHAPIN NAMED CNN’S N.Y. BUREAU CHIEF.
Edith Chapin, who is CNN’s Chicago-based Midwest regional bureau chief, was named the cable network’s New York bureau chief.

Chapin, who takes over on Aug. 29, will coordinate CNN coverage in New York and the Northeast.
She replaces Karen Curry.

TIME INC. BUYS MEXICAN PUBLISHER.
Time Inc. is buying Grupo Editorial Expansion, based in Mexico City, from Editorial Medcom, a Mexican corporation, which bought the magazine publisher from the Walt Disney Co. in 1993.

GEE has a portfolio of 15 titles, including its flagship magazine Expansion, which is Mexico’s leading business magazine, and Quien, a biweekly celebrity/personality magazine.

GEE also operates a custom publishing business whose titles include Vuelo, the in-flight magazine for Mexicana Airlines, and Audi Magazine, published for the auto manufacturer.

KATHIE LEE GIFFORD RETURNS TO TV.
Kathie Lee Gifford, the former sidekick of Regis Philbin, is returning to TV to cover Broadway and conduct interviews for Paramount’s syndicated entertainment-magazine show, “The Insider.”

Linda Blue, executive producer of both “The Insider” and “Entertainment Tonight,” expects Gifford to appear on the show twice a week.

Rehearsals for Gifford’s second Broadway play, “Hurricane Amy,” begin Sept. 6.

PEOPLE_______

Joshua Ratcliffe has resigned as editor-in-chief of The Source as a result of a disagreement over a rating given to a new album in the hip-hop publication.

Neal Pollack, Austin-based freelancer, has joined New York-based Cracked Magazine, which is re-launching in Jan. 2006 as a “humor lifestyle” publication for adults, as editor-at-large.

Timothy Gray was named editor of Variety and Daily Variety by Peter Bart, who remains editor-in-chief. Elizabeth Guider, executive editor for news, currently based in Los Angeles, will spend more time in New York, where she will oversee international coverage as well as the New York staff.

Steve Coll is leaving the Washington Post as associate editor to become a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Elizabeth Roberts, previously senior articles editor at Martha Stewart Living, has joined Budget Living magazine as deputy editor, and Allison Reynolds was named home editor.

ANCHOR SEEKS ‘TIDBITS’ FOR PODCAST.
Jessica Gottesman, formerly a reporter for Bloomberg News who recently joined 1010 Wins in New York as a news anchor, will contribute “News You Can Use” to the station’s new 1010WINS.com podcasts.

Gottesman would like PR people to provide her with “tidbits” on such topics as personal finance, health, travel, etc.

Releases and/or publications are accepted and credited if used, said Gottesman, who wants releases e-mailed to her at [email protected], and publications mailed to her at 1010 WINS, 888 7th ave., 10th fl., New York, N.Y. 101016. “No calls, please,” she said.

PLACEMENT TIPS________

Delta’s SKY Magazine has rescheduled the “Portrait of Atlanta” section, previously slated to run in the Sept. issue, in Nov. to coincide with the start of the Brand Atlanta Campaign.

Writers from Sky are working with the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, and other local organizations to develop content for the 60-page section.

Contacts for the section are Helen Tarleton of the Brand Atlanta Campaign and Bill Reihl of Ogilvy PR. Tarleton is at 404/898-1267; Reihl can be reached at 404/881-2314.

Lucy Siegel, president/CEO of Bridge Worldwide, a New York-based firm specializing in food PR, said food publicists should leave out the adjectives (“most delicious,” “heavenly tasting,” “most popular,” etc.) when pitching journalists because “they don’t like being sold with overly promotional language.”

Siegel also advises publicists to put information about the product or company in the context of industry trends. “Journalists are more likely to cover trends than products,” she said.

WORTH NOTING_________

Aswat-al-Iraq (“Voices of Iraq”), which was established last year as an Internet-based information hub by the United Nations Development Program, is being expanded into a comprehensive news agency, staffed and managed by Iraqi journalists.

More teenagers and preteens are reading celebrity magazines, whose core audience is readers in their 20s and 30s, according to Martha Irvine, a national writer for the Associated Press.

While magazines like Teen Vogue and Elle Girl still have a hold on teen fashion,” entertainment weeklies also are making their way into that arena—in large part because so many girls are interested in dressing like the stars, said Irvine, who pointed out Us Weekly and others have begun including details about where readers can buy clothing and accessories.

A surprise best-seller this year is a 67-page tome called On Bullsh– ($9.95 from Princeton) by Princeton Professor Harry Frankfurt.

Prime purveyors of B.S. are said to be politicians, academics, lawyers, insurance salespeople, the advertising industry, PR, and management execs.

Another book, Your Call is Important to Us: The Truth about B.S., by Laura Penny, says: “Most of what passes for news is B.S.”

Still another attack on misleading communications is Deeper into B.S. by G.A. Cohen of Oxford.

He says that while the B.S. in ordinary life comes from indifference to truth, the B.S. of academia comes from indifference to meaning. Such writing may be sincere but nonsensical, he says.

The essence of B.S., according to Frankfurt, is that it has no concern for the truth. It is therefore “a greater enemy of truth than lies are.”

Those who indulge in B.S. or lies have “goals” such as selling a product or getting votes, he says.

Penny believes B.S. is “every kind of trickery by which powerful, moneyed interests attempt to gull the public” and that “never before have so many people uttered statements they know to be untrue.”

B.S. artists are a threat to the “conduct of civilized life and the vitality of our institutions” since these depend on “respect for the distinctions between the true and the false,” says Frankfurt. A summary of the three books is in the Aug. 22 New Yorker.

News item: “PRSA Delays Tax Return Three Months.” (page 7).

What is going on at PRSA, supposedly the bellwether of the PR industry, involves some B.S. but mostly it’s the blockage of information flow.

Its tax return, which had been promised to us several times by Aug. 15 by PR manager Cedric Bess, has items that are not in the audit that came out in May.

This includes the salary and pension of COO Catherine Bolton, last seen in 2003 at $264K/$28K. Legal expenses, which could be significant because of the action against the “John Doe” e-mailer who criticized Bolton, are also in the tax return.

Another case of info blockage is the failure of the PRSA website to mention the new task force of board and staffers who will address staff issues. Also not on the website is the planned ombudsperson that staffers can contact anonymously without fear of being subject to legal action.

If the website mentioned these two items, members might wonder why this sudden attention to staff? PRSA might then have to reveal the legal action against “Doe” that has cost it a reported $60,000 so far and revealed serious governance flaws at PRSA.

Other blockage of key information is the refusal of president Judith Phair and treasurer Rhoda Weiss to discuss the study of the financials of 42 other groups that Weiss described on a leader call July 27, and the removal from the 2004 audit of $2.2 million in overhead expenses for categories such as awards, annual conference, Silver Anvil, etc.

This hijacking of vital financial info recalls the removal of the entire statement of functional expenses (324 statistics) in the 1991 audit. Member complaints brought it back in 1992 but ten important categories were never restored including board expenses ($177,836 in 1990 including $109,370 in travel, meals and hotels); legal, insurance and audit ($80,599); districts ($35,170 including $15,601 in travel), and “leadership” ($74,476).

We question the accuracy of some of the old and new figures. For instance, the 1990 audit shows salaries/benefits on the national conference as $121,965 while the 2004 audit says these have declined to $103,122. Supposedly, salaries/benefits for service to PRSSA in 2004 cost more ($182,199) and so did “media relations” ($130,756).

Many staffers work the better part of the year on the conference and at least 25 go to it. So we believe conference salary costs are significantly understated.

It makes us wonder about many of the other figures. PRSA should have an on-staff CPA. The lack of such a staffer is a “red flag,” CPAs tell us. Maybe no CPA will work at PRSA given its financial reporting habits. Failure to have a substantial deferred dues account, which we bet will be found in most of the 42 groups that PRSA studied, is also a red flag.

Rhoda Weiss, who is running for president-elect, has shown fatal weaknesses as treasurer.

She failed to stop the removal of the $2.2M in overhead costs; she has declined to explain to the membership the study of PRSA and 42 other groups; declined to provide any reasons for the sudden three-month delay in the PRSA income tax return; declined to say where the 2004 audit is for the PRSA Foundation (of which she is also treasurer); was unable to stop the costly and embarrassing legal action against “Doe” although she was a member of the 2004 executive board, and has refused to answer any questions by us or any reporter about her candidacy, including whether she has the needed time, as a solo practitioner (which she has been since 1986) to devote to PRSA.

She is also a UCLA faculty member, spending enough time on this to win the 2004 “Outstanding Faculty Award” of the program in journalism, PR and fund raising.

She repeatedly referred to PRSA’s “reserves” on the July 27 leader call although associations and corporations cannot have “reserves.” Only banks have reserves.

Associations have cash and investments, but these are offset by payables and deferred revenue, which must also be mentioned.

PRSA, which had $731K in payables at Dec. 31, ‘04, had postponed payment of rent of $277K, and did not acknowledge on its books $1.9M in deferred revenue. It didn’t as of Dec. 31, ‘04, have any $$ it could properly label “unrestricted assets.”

– Jack O'Dwyer