U.S. MULLS PR PLAN FOR ’10 CENSUS.

The U.S. Census Bureau has set up an “industry day” for ad and PR pros on Feb. 17 at the Dept. of Commerce auditorium in Washington, D.C. The event will serve as a kickoff to the acquisition process to award what are expected to be lucrative contracts to market the 2010 count.

The bureau, part of the Dept. of Commerce, has also launched a website to serve as the main portal for its solicitation and operation of marketing comms.

The website will also include the presentation from the February event and the government plans to post a draft of any RFP for comment.

Young & Rubicam, part of WPP Group, guided the 2000 effort, with Cohn & Wolfe as the main PR firm. Budget for that three-year effort topped $160M, with about 64 percent going to media buys.

Burson-Marsteller, also part of WPP, in 2003 won a $1.2M contract with the census to help devise a way to count private citizens living overseas.

EATON TAPS MCGRATH.

Don McGrath, who held top PR posts in the U.S. Army for more than 20 years, has been named VP-communications at Eaton Corp., the $11B diversified industrial based in Cleveland.

He joins from BASF Corp. North America, where he was VP-corporate communications since ’02. Previously, McGrath was VP-global communications at Rockwell Automation and corporate communications director at Textron.

McGrath retired from the military in `96 as a lieutenant colonel. He had served as spokesperson for the Army chief of staff, and PA director at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated with a degree in civil engineering.

GASPER EXITS FORD MOTOR.

Barbara Gasper, 51, is leaving her VP-investor relations slot at Ford Motor to pursue other interests as CEO Bill Ford revamps ranks at the No. 2 automaker.

Tim O’Brien, VP-corporate relations, has been shuffled in the reorg. He is now deputy chief of staff/executive operations & sustainability. In that non-officer role, O’Brien, 53, is to direct operation of Ford’s office of the chairman & CEO.

Ford is laying off 30,000 workers and shuttering 14 factories as part of its program to “retake the American roadway.” Its North American auto operations suffered a $1.6B pre-tax loss in ’05 as sales dropped to $81.4B from $83B.

WS REPLACES B-M ON OLYMPICS BID.

Sochi 2014 has switched its Winter Olympics bid to Weber Shandwick from Burson-Marsteller. The Russian city on the Black Sea used B-M when it officially launched its effort to grab the Games last year. B-M had handled Moscow’s failed effort to win the ’12 Summer Games, which were awarded to London.

B-M released a statement to O’Dwyer’s to say the “Sochi bid has new management and has chosen a different agency.”

Andrey Braginski is the new marketing communications director for Sochi’s bid to host the Games. Braginski told this NL that B-M “was employed initially until submission of the questionnaire to the International Olympic Committee due Feb. 1.”

Sochi has a population of 350,000 living in a subtropical climate with alpine ski slopes less than an hour away. Russia has never hosted the Winter Games.

Rolf Olsen, CEO of WS/Europe, handles Sochi.

KLORES ACES USTA PITCH.

Dan Klores Communications has edged Edelman and Alan Taylor Communications to guide PR for the U.S. Tennis Association, professional tennis’ national governing body. DKC spearheaded a media campaign for the USTA for last year’s U.S. Open.

Five staffers led by EVP Scott Miranda will handle the account. On the PR slate is an image campaign aimed to revamp the way people view the USTA, tennis and its events, along with National Tennis Month in May.

Miranda told O’Dwyer’s DKC would “help people find a court, find a partner, and promote the fact that tennis is ‘your game.’”

PEPPER SPICES UP WS.

Jeremy Pepper, an Arizona PR pro and one of the industry’s top bloggers, has put his Scottsdale-based firm on “hiatus” to join Weber Shandwick as a group manager in San Francisco.

Pepper founded POP! PR in May 2003, handling national PR and blogging programs for a roster of technology and consumer clients. Earlier, he was PR manager for Eastman Kodak’s Ofoto unit and worked on Kodak for WS predecessor Shandwick International, where he began his PR career as an intern. He left prior to the merger of Shandwick and Weber Group.

“We are in exciting times in PR, and I look forward to coming back ‘home’ to my first agency,”he told O’Dwyer’s. Pepper will continue to write the POP! PR Jots blog and work on online communications strategies for Agilent, BEA Systems, Cisco and Hitachi at WS.

U.S. SUBJECT TO PROPAGANDA ‘BLOWBACK.’

Americans are increasingly exposed to Pentagon propaganda used in psychological operations overseas, according to a just declassified Dept. of Defense report.

That could mean that the Defense Dept. is violating the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which prohibits the U.S. government from propagandizing the American public with information and psychological operations directed at foreign audiences.

The 74-page “Information Operations Roadmap” contends that the rise of the Internet and 24-hour news cycle makes it difficult to wall off the U.S. from international PSYOP. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved the Roadmap’s recommendations on Oct. 30, `03. In a forward to the Report, Rumsfeld wrote that the document provides the DoD with a “plan to advance the goal of information operations as a core military competency.”

The report was released Jan. 26 upon a Freedom of Information Act request by the non-profit National Security Archives. It notes the rise of the “global village.” The “increasing ability of people in most parts of the globe to access international information sources makes targeting particular audiences more difficult. Today the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of U.S. Government intent rather than information dissemination practices.”

The Pentagon document says PSYOP is restricted by both DoD policy and executive order from targeting American audiences, military personnel and news agencies or outlets.

“However, information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa. PSYOP messages disseminated to any audience except individual decision-makers (and perhaps even then) will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public.”

FIRMS RESPOND FOR ARMY BIOMETRICS PR.

Lincoln Group, Hill & Knowlton, Fleishman-Hillard, Charles Ryan Assocs. and Trevelino/Keller Comms. Group are among a dozen firms to respond to Army’s request for interest in guiding PR for its biometrics operations.

Biometrics encompasses technology like iris, face and hand scanning, and voice recognition, along with traditional fingerprint identification, usually for security applications. The science has been implemented in the “Global War on Terrorism” by the Pentagon, which is building a large database of known and suspected terrorists.

Additional firms identified by the Pentagon as potential bidders include CRT/tanaka, Public Strategies Inc., APCO Worldwide and Strat@comm.

An RFP is expected to be issued any day now for firms to compete for a five-year deal worth from $5-$10 million, depending on the need for services over time.

The Army wants a firm to provide PR support for biometrics programs and its two main facilities in Virginia and West Virginia.

TRUMP FILES DEFAMATION SUIT.

Donald Trump has filed a $5B defamation lawsuit against Warner Books and Timothy O’Brien, author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.”

He claims that O’Brien’s contention that the real estate mogul’s net worth is “somewhere between $150M and $250M” is false. [O’Brien penned the Feb. 13, 2005 New York Times feature headlined, “Spinning Frenzy: PR’s Bad Press.”]

Trump’s law firm Kasowitz, Benson Torres & Friedman posted a release on Business Wire on Jan. 24 to say that Trump provided “voluminous and comprehensive financial information” to the author before the book was published.

“Forbes magazine rigorously analyzed the very same books and records and other financial data that O’Brien and Warner chose to ignore, and concluded that Trump’s net worth conservatively is at least $2.7B,” said the release.

Trump, who last month launched a luxury travel venture with Travelocity, charges that both Warner and O’Brien “knew full well that their statements were false and malicious, but in hopes of generating book sales, they did not care.

A Warner Books spokesperson, Rob Nissen said Trump helped in the research of the book and that O’Brien was willing to meet with him at any time.

His statement calls O’Brien an “award winning, veteran business writer for the New York Times and his work, as does his book TrumpNation, speak for themselves.”

TrumpNation was published in October.

GOOGLE’S ‘CHINA CAVE-IN’ RAPPED.

New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith plans hearings on Feb. 16 to examine the operating policies of U.S. Internet companies in China.

He is incensed with Google’s decision to self-censor its Chinese search engine. “It is astounding that Google, whose corporate philosophy is ‘don’t be evil,’ would enable evil by cooperating with China’s censorship policies to make a buck,” said Smith in a statement.

Smith, who chairs a House subcommittee on global human rights, said China’s policy of cutting the free flow on information is prohibitive for the growth of democracy and the rule of law. On behalf of the Chinese Government, Google has blocked sites from Friends of Falun Gong (spiritual group that the Chinese Government calls a cult), Tibet House, Tibet Government-in Exile, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, news of the Tiananmen Square massacre and Playboy.

The Republican said “many Chinese have been imprisoned and tortured in the search of truth, and now Google is collaborating with their persecutors.”

Smith has invited Google and executives from fellow China self-censors Yahoo! and Microsoft to testify. Google’s Chinese service does not include e-mail, chat and blog publishing services because People’s Republic of China officials fear those tools could be used to incite unrest.

CBS, WARNER BROS. TEAM UP FOR CW.

CBS Corp. and Warner Bros. plan to launch a new network, The CW, in the fall of ’06, at the same time pulling the plug on their struggling, respective networks The WB and UPN.

Each company will have a 50-percent stake.

Tribune Broadcasting and CBS’ UPN affiliates have entered into separate 10-year deals to air the network. Combined with The WB and UPN’s reach, the companies said CW will be in 98 percent of the country.

The new venture will be run by executives of the two networks. UPN president Dawn Ostroff will become president of entertainment for the new network, and John Maatta, COO of The WB, takes that title at CW.

Les Moonves, president and CEO of CBS, said CW will air “high-quality programming and maintain our ongoing commitment to our diverse audience.”

The new network will follow The WB's scheduling model and include programs from both networks while targeting a coveted younger demographic.

UPN and The WB will live on until the merger is completed in August.

KERGER NAMED PBS PRESIDENT.

The Public Broadcasting Service has named Paula Kerger, the COO of New York’s Educational Broadcasting Corp., president to replace Pat Mitchell. EBC is the license holder of Thirteen/WNET and WLIW, two of the biggest public TV stations.

Kerger officially takes over on March 13. Mary Bitterman, chair of PBS’ board, praised her as an “irrepressible champion of public television.”

Since `04, Kerger managed EBC’s editorial content, educational outreach, government affairs and communications. At Thirteen/WNET, she handled the launch of four digital channels: "ThirteenHD, Kids Thirteen, World and Create.

Kerger is vice chairman of American Public TV and the Assn. of Public Broadcasting Stations of New York.

Before PBS, Kerger worked as director of principal gifts at the Metropolitan Opera, director of development and alumni affairs for International House and program development for the U.S. Committee of UNICEF.

Mitchell calls for truce at PBS

Mitchell said public broadcasting suffered the most “egregious” political infighting under the management of ousted chairman Ken Tomlinson.

He is somebody who “doesn’t accept the fact that you check your partisanship at the door,” she told Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

Mitchell believes the best way for PBS to insure its future is for Uncle Sam to auction off the broadcast spectrum, and use some of the proceeds to set up a trust fund for public broadcasting.

She doesn't think that is going to happen very soon because of the current political reality in Congress.

Mitchell joins the Museum of Television & Radio in March as president.

She is the recipient of an ’06 “Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award” from B&C.

Search firm Spencer Stuart handled the search for Mitchell’s replacement.

BLOGS THREATEN MEDIA, PR.

The press is in a race against bloggers to deliver breaking news, said editors and producers for New York CBS and FOX news affiliates at a Jan 25th panel hosted by the Entertainment Publicists Professional Society at Dillon’s Lounge.

Blogs and web-only news sites pose a threat to both TV media and the PR firms that pitch them, the panel said. Both industries have now found themselves competing against cyberspace to deliver information to the public in a timely manner.

“The web is having a tremendous effect on crisis communications,” said Audrey Pass, director of communications for WCBS-TV. “The use of blogs and the ‘Net are having an impact on the PR industry and its ability to deliver stories to us, so to dismiss them is foolish.”

According to Rich Bamberger, assignment manager for WCBS-TV, Internet-only news sites have made such an impact on the nightly news that WCBS has begun to change its scope. Bamberger said many stories WCBS airs now center on local “neighborhood and people” profiles – items you usually won’t find on the Internet.

“The Internet has influenced our focus on the kind of original stories that we can deliver. By the time we air (the story), people already know about it,” he said. “What we’re looking for now are neighborhood stories and people stories. I can’t stress this enough. That’s what we’re fighting for right now.”

Mio Abe, assignment editor for Fox5 News, said she speaks with PR pros “less and less” because she sees many of the same news items over the Internet.

However, the panel noted that the publicity industry shouldn’t view today’s media climate as moving toward PR obsolescence. Rather, PR pros should use it as a model for how to begin pitching the local news in the future. Instead of battling bloggers for time, experts should now deliver news items with a “personable face” that television journalists can use to their advantage.

“It’s really about the people. People at home are going to connect with other people, not with your client,” said Deborah Dorf, planning editor and entertainment producer at Fox5 News.

“If you’re doing an entertainment-type story, put a personable face on it,” she said.

PR holds validity advantage

Bamberger said PR isn’t usually his first source for information, primarily because many of the tips he receives from publicists don’t “relate your event or client to the day’s events.”

“We get a lot of news tips from scanners. Police scanners, fire scanners, ambulances … then from tips, then from PR. We get very little from the papers. Hopefully we’ll see what we do in the papers the next day,” he said.

While the Internet has vastly changed the information landscape, the panel said that traditional media pitches from PR firms still house an advantage over cyberspace: validity. “In terms of blogs, you don’t know who wrote it,” Bamberger said. “You have to check to see if those things are real or fake.”

(Media news continued on next page)

DISNEY LAUNCHES PARENTING MAG.

Walt Disney Co. is launching Wondertime, a parenting magazine aimed at mothers with children under age six, next month.

The quarterly offers insights into the physical, social, emotional and intellectual development of children. It wants to showcase the "simple joys of raising a child" and allow mothers to "view the world as their children do."

Lisa Stiepock is editor of Wondertime. She was director of creative development at FamilyFun.

The premier issue has articles about how children mimic their parents and gain understanding of the concept of time. It has advertising from Hasbro, Johnson & Johnson, Quaker Oats and Kimberly-Clark.

Heather Johnson, Disney Publications, 244 Main Street, Northampton, MA 01060, will consider contributions from parents interested in submitting stories for Wondertime, which is Disney's first mag launch since ’91.

FamilyFun revamped

Disney has redesigned 15-year-old magazine FamilyFun and boosted its rate base to two million, the company said. Disney bought the publication, which targets parents with kids from ages three to 12, in 1992.

The magazine has also added a “family traditions” department and a “creative solutions” column.

CARVILLE PLAYS BALL.

James Carville, the 'Ragin' Cajun, is to rag about sports in March on XM Satellite Radio. He will co-host a one-hour talk with Luke Russert, the son of NBC TV commentator Tim.

The duo will mostly talk about baseball, basketball and football.

XM also will give NASCAR's Dale Earnhardt, Jr., a one-hour show next month, featuring the latest tidbits from the racing ciruit.

The show will debut on XM's Nascar Radio during the week of Feb. 13, which is Daytona Speedweek.

Earnhardt will also talk about music, video games and other topics.

People __________________

Glenn Kramon, associate managing editor for the New York Times, has been named assistant ME for enterprise, a post charged with stimulating and managing original reporting ventures for the paper.

Metropolitan editor Susan Edgerley was promoted to assistant managing editor for career development, taking over Kramon's previous duties.

Joe Sexton, deputy Metro editor, was promoted and drops the “deputy” title, taking over for Edgerley.

Richard Berke, associate ME, was named assistant managing editor for news.

Andreas Laar, an investment banker at Allen & Co., was named senior VP of business development for SIRIUS Satellite Radio. He is charged with fostering partnerships with media, communications and tech companies to grow the companies reach.

Longtime Philadelphia news anchor Larry Kane has signed on to host “Larry Kane: Voice of Reason,” a 30-minute weekly public affairs show on CN8, The Comcast Network.

The program airs on Sundays at 6:30 p.m.

Al Gore has signed a deal with Rodale Books to write a book on climate change. The tome is titled "An Inconvenient Truth" and shares that name with a documentary about Gore's travels lecturing about global warming that was shown at the Sundance Film Festival this year.

Briefs _____________________

Dow Jones has re-launched Barron’s Online as a separate, premium product from the Wall Street Journal Online. DJ claims 45K paid subscribers.

TheStreet.com has added four blogs covering market activity to its RealMoney.com portal. Jim Cramer and Jim DePorre write about equities markets, Steve Smith covers options and Tony Crescenzi, bond activity.

Penthouse Magazine has launched a digital edition with its February '06 edition. Readers can buy a digital subscription or single issue on the magazine's website. The company said the deal, with Zinio Systems, allows it to give advertisers a new venue and add to the publication's ABC rate base.

Starz Entertainment Group, The Hollywood Reporter and production company Sandra Carter Global have banded together to produce a weekly half-hour entertainment news show to focus on the business of making movies.

The show, "Starz The Hollwood Reporter," premiered on Jan. 26 on the Starz network and will air on Thursdays.

Regular segments include "Top Stories," "Cover Story," and "In Production," which includes on-set interviews with filmmakers and actors.

National Lampoon, which runs the largest campus TV network, has inked a deal to stream its content online via Akimbo Systems. NL says it reaches more than 600 schools and 4.8 million students at colleges and universities. Akimbo, which charges subscribers $9.99/month, streams content like concerts, Major League Baseball games and other video media.

The Economist Group has acquired EuroFinance Conferences Ltd., which produces about 20 events a year for senior finance professionals, for $9.5M in cash. A $2.5M payment was deferred based on performance.

TEG will fold the company into its CFO Publishing unit, which includes CFO magazine.

Google News has moved out of beta after more than three years and personalized its news-tracking features. The company said it received a lot of feedback from editors and readers ( one complaint was that people didn't want press releases viewable on the homepage, but Google noted they are useful in search results).

A new feature has been added to automatically recommend stories based on earlier stories users had viewed.

Waggener Edstrom’s opening of a “PA and lobbying” office in Brussels (12/5/05 NL) has caught the attention of Daniel Edelman, who does not think the two functions should be mixed.

Edelman, the world’s largest independent with $230 million in fees in 2004, has an office in Brussels that does PA but no lobbying.

The same is true for the firm’s Washington, D.C., office. It may supply information to law firms that do lobbying and sometimes supply material directly to lobbyists, but it does not “go into the Senate or House to represent clients,” says Edelman.

Michael Deaver, top Reagan aide, agreed to do no lobbying when he joined the firm in 1992.

“Lobbying is a different business from PR,” Edelman added, without going into many details.

The “details” of what lobbyists do in the U.S. are only too apparent, especially with the Jack Abramoff scandal unraveling. Lobbying involves a lot of personal interaction with legislators outside the view of the public that may cross the line of propriety. Fund-raising for lawmakers is a common activity among lobbyists. Attempts to cut this back have had little success.

The public never gets to pass judgment on what is said by lobbyists nor what deals they might make. This is the opposite of what PR is supposed to do—deliver public debate and discussion leading to improved public understanding of an issue.

Trust in U.S. companies plummeted 19% from 2004 to 2005, according to study among 20,000 people in 20 countries by the World Economic Forum. It was unveiled in the Jan. 30 Time mag in conjunction with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The only country with a steeper drop in corporate trust was Spain with a 36% drop.

This is no doubt a blow to the 19 PR organizations that met Jan. 14-15, 2003 in Madison, N.J., to discuss ways to restore trust in companies after the Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing and other scandals. It was the biggest gathering ever of PR groups and was chaired by James Murphy of Accenture, 2002 president, Arthur W. Page Society.

Participants urged “transparency” for corporations but also cautioned they must be clean before they can “go public.” Some skeptics wanted to know what proof is there that an open policy accomplishes corporate goals. Page published a collection of essays by corporate leaders on how to develop trust.

A thorny problem, said Time, is “the huge paychecks” that CEOs are getting when “ordinary people the world over” feel they are “locked out of the party.” Protest groups, helped by the Internet, are multiplying, says Time.

New business is what’s on the minds of PR counselors, as indicated by the story that drew the most hits on the O’Dwyer website in January. The story described the six-month, $24,000 program of RSW of Cincinnati that helps firms win new clients. ...also related to the PR agency business was a full-page ad in the Jan. 24 Wall Street Journal that demanded an end to the “sweatshop conditions at advertising and PR agencies.” A side motive for the ad was bringing in business for the MGH ad agency of Owings Mills., Md. Supposedly, the better working conditions at MGH foster team spirit (helped by a staff bowling night) and more creativity. CEO Andy Malis said he has heard numerous stories about New Yorkers working far into the night at big ad agencies and PR firms. Several of his staffers once worked at those shops. ...a comment we got from a PR exec a couple of years ago was that given the $20K cost of family health insurance, about the only people New York firms can afford are “young singles.” ...we hope PR and related majors get to read these stories so they won’t have delusions about PR careers. Only the most highly motivated are going to succeed. Their unmarried state (medical insurance is only $5K for singles) gives them an edge in the job market. ...PR students need all the help they can get but the vast majority are barred from joining PRSA or its student society, PRSSA. Only 270 of the 4,000 colleges have an approved PR sequence.

This “elitist,” anti-competitive policy is a violation of the 1977 consent decree PRSA signed after the FTC charged PRSA with “unfair methods of competition and unfair acts or practices that violate Section 5(a) of the FTC Act.” ...an unholy alliance of the Educators Academy of PRSA and most of the 25 living ex-presidents of PRSA is blocking so-called “at large” student membership. Onerous PRSA rules are also a factor. A student chapter must first be “endorsed” by the president and four members of a local PRSA chapter and guidance obtained from two professors. Students should avoid this political and bureaucratic gauntlet and set up their own PR or communications clubs using the name of their schools. Founding and holding office in such groups are great resume enhancers. The O’Dwyer Co. will donate to any such student group a set of our directories and provide website, newsletter and magazine subscription to its members without charge. The O’Dwyer NL and magazine are the only PR publications ever put on Lexis-Nexis (in full text since 1989). PRSA has abandoned its “PR Body of Knowledge” but there is a new one in the form of five years of searchable stories on odwyerpr.com.

PRSA, commenting on the American Society of Newspaper Editors criticism of NewsUSA’s policy of offering gifts to editors who return clips of NewsUSA’s articles, said the activity is “outside the PRSA Code” because NewsUSA isn’t “inserting information into channels of communication.” That happens to be exactly what the company does. The opinion came from PRSA staffer Judy Voss rather than ethics chair David Rickey of Alfa Insurance. Editors who send 100 clips can receive such rewards as a bike or a three-room Coleman tent, and sending in 2,000 clips can be worth a diamond bracelet or John Deer lawn tractor.

--Jack O'Dwyer