ARMY WANTS PR TO SUPPORT BIOMETRICS.
The U.S. Army has put out a feeler to find a PR firm to develop and execute a PR strategy for the Defense Department’s biometrics operations over the next five years.

Biometrics is the science of physical recognition by eye, face, hand or fingerprint scan, or voice recognition. Previously used for security, the DOD has begun implementing biometrics in its “Global War on Terrorism.”

The Army wants a firm to provide PR support, prepare press kits, support educational demonstrations, maintain the Biometrics Management Office (Alexandria, Va.) website, and brief industry and DoD officials. The DoD’s biometrics operations are run through the BMO and the Biometrics Fusion Center in Clarksburg, W. Va.

A five-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract is planned to cover PR work over five years. Estimated PR spending is from $5-10 million over that time. The Army currently wants to gauge interest in the work before releasing an RFP in January. E-mail qualifications should be submitted by January 6. Contracting officers are Gregory Roddy and Jeri Justice: [email protected]; [email protected].

MUHLBERG EXITS SPRINT NEXTEL.
Judith Muhlberg, who in July was named “designated senior VP, corporate communications,” of Sprint Nextel for a merger that was completed in August, has decided to pursue “her own interests” the company said.

Muhlberg was previously senior VP of communications at Boeing, Chicago, having joined it in 1999 after 22 years at Ford Motor Co.

She joined Ford in 1977 after two years in the President Ford White House, initially working for David Gergen, director of White House Communications, and then was an aide to chiefs of staff Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Gary Forsee, chairman and CEO of Sprint and the designated president/CEO of the combined company, had said in July, “We are delighted that she will join Sprint Nextel’s senior leadership team and believe Judith’s expertise will contribute significantly to our goal of building America’s premier communications company.”

Muhlberg could not be reached for comment. Messages were left with her assistant.

Sprint Nextel corporate PR would only say she left to pursue her own interests.

A search for a successor both from within and outside the company will take place, the company said.

SITRICK HANDLES SPIELBERG’S ‘MUNICH.’
Sitrick & Co. will handle Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” the soon-to-be controversial movie that opens Dec. 23.

The film is about the Mossad “hit squad” that assassinated the Palestinians who murdered Israeli athletes at the ’72 Olympics.

L.A. Weekly called the film a “political minefield.” LAW says it “comes down to how the film portrays its principal characters: Will the Israelis be seen as too bloodthirsty? Will the Palestinians be seen as too stereotypical?”

Hollywood is loath to portray Arabs as villains or Muslim extremists because movies make a lot of money in the Middle East, according to LAW.

Spielberg has decided to forgo a full-blown Oscar marketing campaign, preferring to let the movie speak for itself.

S&C’s Allan Mayer is repping Munich. Spielberg also is using Mike McCurry, spokesperson to former President Bill Clinton, and Dennis Ross, who negotiated Middle East peace treaties during the Clinton and first Bush Administration, as political advisors.

B-M MAKES BIG MOVE IN INDIA.
Burson-Marsteller has acquired Genesis, a PR firm in India with nearly 200 staffers.

Harold Burson, founding chairman, called the deal “one of the most significant milestones in the 53-year history of B-M.”

Burson touted Genesis, which has been affiliated with B-M for the last four years, as a world class company with “exceptional leadership.”

The WPP unit must receive approval from India’s Foreign Investment Promotion Board before sealing the deal. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The New Delhi-based acquisition will operate as Genesis/Burson-Marsteller under the leadership of founder Prema Sagar and CEO Ashwani Singla.

India, following the deal, and China now rank as B-M’s No. 2 and No. 3 PR operations.

Bill Rylance is CEO of the region for B-M.

OHIO EYES ‘BRANDING BLITZ’ FOR WINES.
The Ohio Grape Industries Committee has issued an RFP for a firm to guide a $450K marketing push for the Buckeye State’s grape and wine industries.

The committee, part of the Ohio Department of Agriculture, has set aside funds for a “branding blitz” over the next two years to boost Ohio wines and wine tourism. It wants to see a “measurable positive change” in the perception of Ohio wines by Ohio consumers and increased traffic to the state’s wineries.

A revival in the 1960s led to Ohio’s current place as a top 10 winemaking state.

The marketing push includes multimedia, publicity strategy, advertising and media buying, and campaign evaluation, all based on the Committee’s own research.

Proposals are due January 13. Michael Poliseno is the procurement officer for the RFP, which is on the state’s procure.ohio.gov website; RFP #CSP906006.

SCHWARTZ COMMS. ADVISES WIKI GROUP.
Schwartz Communications is advising Wikimedia, the collective, non-profit organization that publishes the online reference site Wikipedia.org. The site has come under fire in recent weeks after false information was posted about a veteran journalist John Seigenthaler that linked him to both Kennedy assassinations.

SC began working for the company over the summer on a pro-bono basis. [Wikimedia has one employee alongside founder Jim Wales and an operating budget of about $1M. Millions of people contribute its content.]

Emily Fisher, VP at Schwartz who heads the Wikimedia work, said the firm’s role has “gradually built” up, but it remains a pro-bono account.

DKC TAPS NBC VET FRANCIS IN D.C.
Veteran NBC correspondent Fred Francis has joined Dan Klores Communications as the New York-based firm makes its first major PR foray into Washington, D.C.

Francis, who retired in November after 30 years at NBC, will focus on crisis management, education and pre-crisis preparedness as a VP, in addition to building a D.C. presence for DKC. He starts Jan. 3.

“We’ve known Fred for some time,” said Sean Cassidy, president of DKC, which has represented the Children's Health Fund, a Columbia Unversity-affiliated charity that has Francis on its board.

Cassidy said the firm does a “fair amount” of academic, public affairs and policy work in D.C., mostly via shuttling New York staffers down to the capital. He said the firm will “look to see how it grows” in D.C. before considering future expansion inside the Beltway.

“Fred gives us crisis management capabilities as it relates to Washington, but also as it relates to industries that are relatively new to us, such as the defense industry – a place he’s very connected with from his time covering the Pentagon,” Cassidy said, adding that Francis’ ability to counsel clients about crisis management before an incident occurs is new for DKC.

The 60-year-old Virginia resident has covered wars from Beirut to the 2003 invasion of Iraq for NBC, along with national security and terrorism issues from the Pentagon. Since retiring, he has lectured and signed on as a consultant for NASA.

IRAQ PR FRUSTRATES WOLFF.
Michael Wolff, who covers media for Vanity Fair, describes in the January issue his visit to the U.S. military’s press center in Iraq and the frustrations he encountered there.

Wolff took the 45-minute ride to CentCom in Qatar, headquarters for the command of General Tommy Franks. He describes it as being in a “desert no-man’s land” that was “remote, secretive and controlled.”

Press organizations set up operations there, he says, on the promise they would have access to Franks.

Instead, he said, reporters got Jim Wilkinson, who was manager of the White House Coalition Information Center for the war against terrorism and was spokesman for President Bush during the Miami-Dade County voting recount in 2000.

Wilkinson is not named by Wolff because “his name is easy enough to find out” and because Wolff feels Wilkinson is “more useful to see as pure archetype. He’s my model for the quintessential character of the Iraq war.”

Wolff, who prefers an easy-going relationship with PR contacts, found this was not possible with Wilkinson.

“No accommodation here,” writes Wolff. “No identifying. No banter. He cultivated his own air of mystery–you can’t know who I am and what power I might have.”

Wilkinson, whose job was to coordinate the flow of information, “actually had no information,” according to Wolff.

“He could not tell you anything,” writes Wolff. “But he could frustrate your ability to find out anything. This was his job: obstruction. This became the essential strategy of the entire CentCom communications effort: limit all information, with the penalty for trying to get more being that you’d get less.”

Wilkinson was a devout believer in the war who would meet any skepticism about it with “an angry declaration...that his brother was at that very moment on the front lines.”

ARMORWORKS HIRES GT.
ArmorWorks has hired Greenberg Traurig to help pick up more Defense Dept. contracts.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based company has been a key supplier to the U.S. military in Iraq.

The firm, in August, won a $18M contract for “crew protection kits” for the Army’s M915 tactical truck. The kits provide protection against small arms fire, roadside bombs and “improvised explosive devices.”

(The Pentagon on Dec. 13 announced that Jarad Kubasak, Rocky Mount, Va., and Keith Bennett, Holtwood, Pa., were killed by IEDs).

ArmorWorks won a $6M contract in September for “light weight armor replacement systems” for the Marines’ CH-46E Helicopter.

GT’s Matt Salmons, the former Arizona Congressman who lost the ’02 governor’s race in the Grand Canyon State, and Mitch Menlove, a former Marriott Corp. PR exec, oversee the ArmorWorks account from GT’s Phoenix office.

GT was the home of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has been in the news of late.

TIME INC. AXES 100-PLUS IN LATEST REORG.
Time Inc. has axed more than 100 staffers including executive VPs Richard Atkinson (news & information group) and Jack Haire (corporate ad sales).

Ann Moore, chairwoman of Time Inc., via an e-mail sent to staffers, praised the exiting execs for being "vital to the health and growth of Time Inc."

She also cut Time president Eileen Naughton and David Kieselstein, parenting group president.

Moore named the first co-chief operating presidents of Time Inc. They are Nora McAnniff, who was in charge of the women, entertainment and luxury group, and John Squires (who headed the sports and leisure group).

Moore said the duo will help Time Inc. “better capitalize on the opportunities and more effectively meet the challenges of our rapidly changing industry, especially as we evolve beyond magazine and book publishers to a company that creates, sells and delivers premier branded content through whatever platforms consumers demand.”

USAT MERGES ONLINE, PRINT NEWSROOMS.
USA Today has merged its web and print newsrooms to reflect the growing importance of the web as a news delivery platform.

Editor Ken Paulson says Kinsey Wilson, who was editor-in-chief of the online paper, has been promoted to executive editor of USA Today. Wilson joins John Hillkirk in that capacity.

USA Today has an average daily circulation of 2.3M. Its 10-year-old web offering gets more than 10M unique visitors a month.

U.S. RANKS NO. 6 FOR JAILED JOURNALISTS.
The U.S. is tied with Myanmar, the former Burma, for the number of journalists in prison. Each nation had five reporters behind bars on Dec. 1, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The U.S. military is holding four Iraqi journalists in detention centers in Iraq and a Sudanese cameraman from Al-Jazeera in Guantanamo. Former New York Times journalist Judy Miller was not counted because she was freed from jail before Dec. 1, the annual day the CPJ does its survey.
China has the most journalists in jail: 32. Cuba was next with 24. It was followed by Eritrea (15), Ethiopia (13) and Uzbekistan (6).

CHALABI KIN COVERS CAMPAIGN FOR SLATE.
The daughter of former Iraqi exile leader and current Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi is writing about her father's campaign to be prime minister of Iraq for Slate.

Gabriel Sherman of the New York Observer reported that Dick Cheney’s former press secretary, Juleanna Glover Weiss – who works for John Ashcroft’s lobbying firm – is introducing the 30-year-old scribe to editors around D.C.

Slate’s Farhad Manjoo is skeptical of Chalabi’s work at the Internet news site. In a column last week he asks, “What if an Iraqi paper had hired Vanessa Kerry to cover the American presidential election?” He went on to note: “If you’re looking for a smart, interesting take on the race in Iraq, Tamara’s diary isn’t something I’d put at the top of my recommendation list.” Manjoo said Slate’s editor Jacob Weisberg called Chalabi's work “an exercise in subjectivity, with no pretense to anything else.”

SAUDI ROYAL GIVES MURDOCH A CALL.
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal told the “Arab and World Media” conference in Dubai last week that he phoned News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch to tell him to change a screen banner on Fox News Channel about the October riots in France, according to a report in Al-Jazeera.

The banner originally identified the news as “Muslim riots.” The Prince, who owns a five percent stake in News Corp., said he told Murdoch the riots were a result of poverty, and had nothing to do with religion. The banner was changed within a half hour to “civil riots.”

Alwaleed, during the conference, criticized U.S. policies in Iraq as a “fiasco,” and said a major problem was allowing hundreds of newspapers and TV stations to be set up. That media noise, in his view, contributes to the political chaos.

NYT PUBLISHER CALLED TO TASK.
There is a sense of “rudderlessness” in the newsroom of the New York Times, according to media watcher Ken Auletta. The paper has lost its “corporate swagger” in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal and Judy Miller’s reports of bogus weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he wrote in the New Yorker.

While much of the criticism of the Times has been directed at executive editor Bill Keller, Auletta notes that publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., “has fairly or not, become a particular source of concern.”

One Times executive told Auletta that Sulzberger is no more than a “business figurehead.” Another mused whether “Arthur is going to be fired.”

Auletta wrote that some say the 54-year-old Sulzberger “lacks the sufficient gravitas for a man in his position, which is perhaps another way to say that he is still more a prince than a mature king.”

The Times publisher is “often known as Young Arthur and behind his back, people still call him Pinch, in contrast to his father Punch,” who preceded him as publisher.

Auletta reveals that the Times paid $1.5M in legal fees for Miller, and that she had threatened to sue both Keller and the paper if they did not retract the insinuation that she had an affair with Scooter Libby.

Keller made public a letter of apology to Miller in which he regretted implying that she had an improper relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney's former aide.

Miller told Auletta that her WMD stories were wrong because her sources were wrong. She hopes her jail time will pave the way for a federal shield law, but fears her “betrayal” by the Times hurts that prospect.

(Media news continued on next page)

Briefs__________

CBS will rebrand its Infinity Broadcasting radio unit as CBS Radio when the split-off from Viacom is completed.

Fox Television Studios has hired Arnell Group to develop “branded entertainment” programming that embeds products in TV shows and online. AG has connected Ray-Ban sunglasses with “Men in Black” and Jeep with “Band of Brothers.”

The Louisville Courier-Journal is shutting state bureaus in Paducah, Elizabethtown and Hazard to focus more on metro news.

Bank of America has put a “sell” rating on Sirius Satellite Radio's stock largely due to the “hype” surrounding the debut of the Howard Stern show next month. The financial services giant has a “buy” ranking on Sirius competitor, XM Radio, which announced that Bob Dylan will have his own gig.

Custom publishing company Pace Communications said it will produce the new US Airways Magazine as the airline emerges from the merger of America West and US Airways. The in-flight publication will be headed by Andrea Alexander, a veteran of Hearst, Meredith and American Express Publishing.

Initail print run will be 375K copies per month. The first issue is expected to run 200 pages.

Phoenix-based Skyword Marketing, which previously published America West’s magazine, will be involved in the process.

Pace also puts out United’s Hemispheres and Delta Air Lines’ Sky.

America Economia, a bi-weekly regional business publication in Latin America and Miami, has added a supplement, Luxury and Style, that includes content from the New York Times’ Style section and home-grown content.

The supplement, which will feature luxury goods and services, begins with this month's edition and will be distributed twice a year in 2006, in April and November.

AE is published in Spanish and Portuguese.

AE competitor, Tiempos del Mundo, a Spanish-language weekly distributed across Latin America and in Miami, New York and Washington, D.C., said it is revamping the paper’s design and editorial under new editor-in-chief Carlos Verdecia, former editor of the English-language monthly magazine Hispanic.

Tiempos publishes five regional editions and said its recent audit revealed circulation to be over 100K in Latin America and the U.S.

Supply Chain Systems will change its name to Supply Chain Manufacturing & Logistics with its January 2006 issue. The magazine is entering its 25th year.

Publisher David Andrews said that ten or fifteen years ago, “supply chain management” was just procurement or transportation, but today it’s a more comprehensive sector, and the name change reflects that evolution.

Gemstar-TV Guide International has inked a deal with mobile media company Handmark to distribute TV listings and editorial to handhelds, smartphones and pocket PCs through monthly and yearly subscriptions.

MTV Networks has aligned with Amp’d Mobile to distribute video clips, ringtones and other mobile content from MTV units like Comedy Central, MTV, VH1 and CMT.

Under the deal, MTV will make an investment in Amp'd and MTV's chief digital officer will join the company's board of directors.

MTV has also partnered with Microsoft to start an online music service called Urge expected to be launched next year.

People________

Beth Comstock, the former NBC and General Electric PR executive, has been named president of NBC Universal’s digital media and market development unit. Her job is to figure out how to offer NBC’s content beyond TV and movie screens.

Comstock was appointed chief marketing officer at GE in ’03. She was in charge of cross-business marketing/sales and integrated communications. The conglomerate’s “imagination at work” and “ecomagination” (going “green”) image campaigns were key priorities for the 45-year-old Virginia native.

Comstock was named GE’s VP-corporate communications in ’98 after serving as VP-communications at both NBC and NBC News.

She also worked at publicity posts at Turner Broadcasting and CBS Entertainment.

Dave Reed was promoted to editor of Sailing World magazine, replacing John Burnham, who was recently named editor of sister publication Cruising World and takes the title of editorial director at SW.

Ed Sussman, managing director of Inc.com and Fastcompany.com, has been named senior VP of online operations and business development for Mansueto Ventures, publisher of Inc. and Fast Company.

Thirty-nine-year-old Sussman, 39, was formerly executive editor of Inc.

Brian Anderson, a brand development exec at CNBC, has joined Mansueto as VP of business development under Sussman.

Dr. Milos Opravil has been named editor-in-chief of the independent journal HIV Clinical Trials, effective January 1. He succeeds Dr. Maurice Staquet, founding EIC, who continues on the publication’s editorial board.

The five-year-old publication, available in print and online, is published by Thomas Land Publishers in St. Louis.

James Brady wrote his final “Brady’s Bunch” column in the Dec. 12 Advertising Age after a 28-year run. He will keep busy with a new five-year contract with Parade and a weekly column for Forbes.com.

Brady has a Hollywood deal for his book, “Warning of War,” and is writing a book for St. Martin’s Press.

Review of 2005 (continued from page 7)

After “five decades” of trying, the U.K.’s Institute of PR (IPR) was granted (Royal) Charter status by the Privy Council, a group of 500 lords, dukes, barons, earls, viscounts, etc. The newly named CIPR, with 8,000 members, feels its Chartered status will be a good sales point for member prospects. Not everyone thinks highly of the Privy Council, which advises the Queen. Member Roy Hattersley said it’s an “absurdity” that should be “abolished.”

Meanwhile, PRSA, with no such thing as a U.S. Privy Council to grant similar exalted status, is having trouble with its 40-year-old accreditation process. A new exam started 2.5 years ago, is mostly being ignored. Only 145 new PRSA APRs were created in the first 27 months vs. at least 600 that would have become APR with the old test.

Oddly, the new multiple-choice APR exam, usually passed by 65% of PRSA applicants, was suddenly passed by 97% in the third quarter of 2005 (32 of 33), raising suspicions of “grade inflation.”

PR grads who can’t locate PR jobs should look into lobbying. D.C. lobbyists have doubled to 35,000 since 2000 and “connected” new lobbyists (ex-Capitol Hill) start at $200K-$300K. Public opinion may be important but even more important is what laws are passed. Tip: start career with a legislator.

Also neglected is fund-raising (June 19 New York Times). Salaries start at $40K and the work is “not onerous.” Philanthropy.com lists 100 groups looking for fund-raisers, grant writers, event planners, etc. There are 1.8 million non-profit groups.

Journalism professors Renita Coleman and Lee Wilkins studied ad people and found them unmindful of ethical concerns (i.e., they would take a liquor account even if they were against drinking). The professors got a $10K grant from the Arthur Page Foundation to give a similar test on-site to PR pros.

PR greats Harold Burson, Daniel Edelman, Al Golin and David Finn gave their views of PR at a breakfast seminar of the O’Dwyer Co. that celebrated the 35th edition of O’Dwyer’s Directory of PR Firms.

Rising interest rates are pinching business including Omnicom, which a couple of years ago was able to float zero-interest contingent convertibles (CoCo bonds) with no interest but an expectation of a stock rise).

OMC paid $48M in “sweeteners”on such bonds in the past year (interest rate of 3.75%) to keep holders from getting their money back.

OMC’s stock has risen lately to high $80s but is still $20 below the $107 reached six years ago on Dec. 17, 1999. Its website boasts 16 straight years of record results. Why has this stock lagged?

A “potentially huge new ad medium” is “mobile marketing,” says Bear Stearns, which met with executives of WPP, OMC and IPG in December. Mobile phone users (1.4 billion) outnumber landline subscribers. Some 350 billion text messages are exchanged monthly, 15% commercial in nature.

Michael Wolff says reporters should admit when they’re snookered and not pretend everything is rosy. We think he’s right.

We were lied to flat out by PRSA on its biggest story of the year–the cancellation of its printed One Source Directory in favor of an online version.

This action, planned all year by a committee headed by treasurer Rhoda Weiss, was kept from the members and even most leaders but leaked to us Oct. 5.

Queried, PRSA told us this was being considered when the decision had actually been made. The next day, PRSA e-mailed about 600 leaders saying publication of One Source had “ceased.” How could you give us false information, we asked PRSA’s PR dept.? The answer was we couldn’t possibly let you scoop us with leaders on such a major story. In other words, lying about One Source was justifiable.

The PRSA board also pulled the rug out from under PR which had promised us the usual audiotape of the Assembly. PR now tells us the board won’t let it give out the tape. It will be a battle to get this tape which has a long debate on proxy-voting. Almost any information from PRSA involves a battle.

PRSA Assembly members were shocked when COO Catherine Bolton told them Dec. 3 she was resigning as of Dec. 31, 2006. Why would anyone resign a year in advance, they wondered? Sources say the board wanted this decision announced much later. The 2005 board was the most secretive ever and not prone to revealing the inner workings of the Society.

We wonder if such hardball tactics will continue in 2006. Incoming PRSA president is Cheryl Procter-Rogers of the HBO unit of Time Warner. TW is in the news these days trying to ward off corporate raider Carl Icahn, who says he is tired of TW’s “PR machine” saying what a good job management is doing. He wants a count of the PR pros at TW and its units and the amount spent for outside PR. Ed Adler is executive VP-CC at TW.

The weak PRSA board virtually eliminated its own self by agreeing that the five-member executive committee can serve as the “flexible extension of the full board.” PRSA/Miami complained in vain that this would make the other 12 directors “eunuchs.”

“O’Dwyer Awards” were started to recognize PR campaigns that involve interaction with the press and public (vs. one-way messaging). Public discussion, availability of CEOs and/or top execs for questioning are qualifications for this award.

– Jack O'Dwyer