BKSH & ASSOCS. REPS IRAQ.

Burson-Marsteller’s BKSH & Assocs. lobbying unit has added the Republic of Iraq to its client roster. The Washington, D.C.-based firm had worked for the Iraqi National Congress opposition group during the reign of Saddam Hussein.

For the Embassy, B-M has helped the deputy military attaché do outreach to key media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and CNN. B-M’s contract with Iraq also calls for setting up editorial board meetings and placing op-ed pieces.

The firm has developed ties with organizations like the American Enterprise Institute, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Council of Foreign Relations and Business Council for International Understanding.

BKSH also has contacted the National Security Council and State Dept. on behalf of the Embassy.

EDELMAN LANDS BIG CSC BIZ.

Computer Sciences Corp. has selected Edelman as its agency of record in a competitive pitch that was orchestrated by Malibu-based consultant Jerry Swerling.

Fleishman-Hillard was the incumbent, but did not pitch because Peter Maneri, CSC’s VP-corporate communications & marketing, thought it was time for a change. He told O’Dwyer’s a dozen firms pitched.

GolinHarris was said to be a close second to Edelman for the multi-year account that is worth a few million dollars.

El Segundo-based CSC is a leading global information technology company with annual revenues of more than $15B. Maneri told O’Dwyer’s “there were many synergies between Edelman and CSC. They were simply the best of the class.” Pam Pollace, the former Intel PR wiz, is Edelman’s global tech leader. The CSC account will be housed in Gail Becker’s Los Angeles office.

ICAHN GETS PR HELP IN TW FIGHT.

Corporate raider Carl Icahn has retained Source Communications to handle its audacious campaign to carve Time Warner into four separate companies.

SC is the firm of Ken Frydman, the former Daily News reporter and press secretary to ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He and SC’s Richard Schwartz are handling the Icahn effort. Frydman told O’Dwyer’s he would not comment on his work for Icahn.

Icahn’s group, which owns about five percent of TW’s stock, unveiled its much anticipated “Lazard Report” Feb. 7 in New York.

The Report claims that TW under CEO Dick Parsons has cost shareholders $40B in value.

H&K EXTOLS NUKE POWER.

Hill & Knowlton is working for the Nuclear Energy Institute to extol the “benefits” of nukes and build public support for the construction of new power plants.

The NEI wants to capitalize on President Bush’s State of the Union speech in which he told of the need to break America’s addiction to oil.

Skip Bowman, NEI president, said Bush’s backing of nuclear energy is a “positive sign” that the U.S. should expand its reliance on this emission-free source of electricity.”

The H&K campaign plays up nuke power as a major player when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases. The NEI says nuclear power has “perhaps the lowest impact on the environment—including air, land, water and wildlife—of any energy source, because it does not emit harmful gases, isolates its waste from the environment, and requires less area to produce the same amount of electricity as other sources.”

The trade association also wants to cut through the federal, state and local red tape surrounding the nuke site approval process. The NEI expects up to 15 new plants will be built by `15. There are 103 plants online.

CATER EXITS KETCHUM FOR APCO.

Mark Cater, a partner and director of Ketchum’s global and New York healthcare practices, has left to head development of APCO Worldwide’s healthcare efforts in marketing and product communication.

Cater is bound from New York to London and will oversee integration of APCO’s strategic and marketing communication efforts with its established public affairs and corporate communication services.

Cater will work closely with the firm’s Washington, D.C., New York, Brussels and Shanghai offices. He reports to Brad Staples, CEO of EMEA.

PRSA DIRECTOR McCORMICK RESIGNS.

Gary McCormick, PRSA director from the Southeast district, has resigned from the board with two years to go in his term, becoming only the second national director to leave mid-term.

The only other such resignation in PRSA’s 59-year history was Sherry Treco-Jones, Decatur, Ga., counselor, whom McCormick had succeeded.

Treco-Jones quit in March 2004, the day after the national board voted 8-6 to reject governance reform proposals made by a committee of which she was a member. She said she quit because of pressure from her counseling business.

F-H, MERCURY BATTLE ASBESTOS BILL.

The Coalition for Asbestos Reform is paying Fleishman-Hillard and its Mercury Public Affairs unit nearly $600K during the current quarter to kill a bill sponsored by Sens. Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy to create a $320B trust fund for people exposed to asbestos.

The Hill obtained a copy of a memo penned by Mercury’s Kieran Mahoney that outlined strategy to torpedo the measure, and posted it on its website.

He argues that the trust fund is “severely underfunded from the start,” and will “go broke in three years—leaving many claims uncompensated.”

Mahoney recommended targeting “moderate/conservative Democrat Senators who are deemed persuadable, conservative Republicans whose current opposition needs to be turned into a ‘no’ vote, and D.C. opinion leaders who collectively make up conventional wisdom.” His Dec. 5 memo suggests running ads in the states of “politically vulnerable Senators.”

Mahoney counts on support from the Wall Street Journal. He wrote: “The leading conservative opinion-leader paper has explicitly called for delay on any vote until the numerous investigations and judicial inquiries into massive fraudulent asbestos claims uncover more facts. This opposition, and the Journal’s continued attack on the veracity of this ‘litigation crisis’ gives us solid non-economic arguments to help persuade conservatives to oppose S.852 on the floor.”

The Coalition is funded by companies such as Exxon Mobil, Allstate, American International Group, Borg Warner, Textron, and Foster Wheeler.

CLEVELAND EYES PR TO CURB LEAD.

The City of Cleveland – where one in nine kids tests positive for lead poisoning – has set aside $120K and is looking for an agency to develop a public education campaign to cut down on the “completely preventable” problem.

The city’s Dept. of Health and the St. Luke’s Foundation Grantee plan to fund the PR push through the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council with a goal of eliminating lead poisoning by 2010. GCLAC wants a comprehensive communications and marketing campaign to raise the issue and highlight steps to eradicate the problem. That effort will target parents, property owners, medical providers and contractors, especially in areas where the epidemic is more prevalent.

Cleveland’s rate of elevated lead in children is in the top five nationally – statewide, Ohio trails New York and Illinois, both of which have a greater number of old homes that may contain lead paint – but has followed a national trend of decreasing levels of lead in humans. In 2004, the rate of lead poisoning was 11 percent with 1,700 children under age six (the at-risk age for lead, according to the CDC) showing elevated levels of lead. But the overall rate in the U.S. is under two percent.

The GCLAC hopes to roll out the effort for Public Health Week in early April, with two additional phases planned through the end of the year.

Christine Medina of the Dept. of Public Health is the point of contact. Pitches are due Feb. 17.

CAPLAN, M+R, PN WIN O’DWYER AWARDS.

Caplan Communications, M+R Strategic Services and Porter Novelli are the first winners of the “O’Dwyer Award for Public Communications.”

They are honored for work in the public affairs/environmental PR categories.

O’Dwyer’s PR Report, this website’s sister publication, created an awards program to highlight PR campaigns that show a high level of creativity in increasing public understanding of a product, service or issue.

Caplan, on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council, orchestrated a grassroots campaign to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from relaxing safeguards that prohibited the dumping of largely untreated sewage into the nation’s rivers, streams and lakes.

M+R earned its O’Dwyer Award for representing the Keep Antibiotics Working Coalition. That group, which includes Environmental Defense, Union of Concerned Scientists, Sierra Club and Physicians for Social Responsibility, is fighting to keep antibiotics out of the food chain.

The misuse and overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture has been linked to human bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotics.

Porter Novelli is cited for clinching support for the Class Action Fairness Act. Working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, the Omnicom unit reframed the long-running debate over class action lawsuit reform from a business issue to primarily a consumer one.

The payoff: a surprising eighteen Democratic Senators broke from the party line and voted for the bill that was signed into law by President Bush.

The campaigns are described in the February issue of the magazine.

DKC PICKS UP HARD ROCK ASSIGNMENT.

Dan Klores Communications has emerged from a competitive RFP to guide PR and marketing for Hard Rock Café International’s hotel unit, Hard Rock Hotels, which is expanding in the U.S. and abroad.

Diane Briskin, executive VP of DKC’s hospitality practice, told O’Dwyer’s that Hard Rock hasn’t previously retained a PR agency to work solely on its hotel and casino unit.

She said DKC helped open a Hard Rock Café at client Foxwoods Resort & Casino two years ago, but hasn’t worked for the company in recent years.

DKC is also looking to differentiate Hard Rock’s urban properties in cities like Chicago from its casinos. Hard Rock plans to open its second urban property – in Madrid – this July, with a San Diego hotel slated to open early next year. The company currently owns 13 properties.

“[The new properties] are very different than what one might associate with the Hard Rock Café,” she said. “It’s really educating consumers on distinctive properties that still have the heritage of the music edge, but are definitely luxury hotel properties.”

Coyne PR represents Hard Rock’s restaurants.

CSV COUNSELS BIG MEDIA DEALS.

Citigate Sard Verbinnen served as PR counsel to two major media deals last week.

CSV counseled Citadel Broadcasting as The Walt Disney Co. announced plans to merge its 22 station ABC Radio Networks unit into Citadel to create the No. 3 radio company with 177 FM and 66 AM stations.

The Burbank-based entertainment company values the deal at $2.7B. It will control a 52 percent stake in the renamed Citadel Communications when the deal closes at the end of the year.

Farid Suleman, Citadel CEO, will lead the new company. He is the former chief of Infinity Broadcasting. He referred to the ABC stations as “top-notch.”

Those stations are in key markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco. They combined for $575M in `05 revenues and $200M profit.

The ABC radio group includes syndicated programming such as “Paul Harvey News and Comment,” “Sean Hannity Show” and "”Tom Joyner Morning Show.” Radio Disney and ESPN Radio are not included in the Citadel hook-up.

The merger follows Disney CEO Bob Iger's splashy announcement last month of plans to acquire former partner Pixar Animation in a transaction worth $7.3B.

CSV is also handling Univision, the Spanish language media company that has put itself on the auction block.

The Los Angeles-based operator of the No. 1 Spanish-language television network has hired investment banker UBS to "explore strategic alternatives to enhance shareholder value, including but not limited to the raising of capital through the sale of securities or assets of the company, a recapitalization, strategic acquisitions, and the combination, sale of merger of the company with another entity."

News Corp., Time Warner, CBS and Grupo Televisa are said to be potential suitors for Univision, which reaches 98 percent of U.S. Hispanic households. Univision owns 62 TV and 69 radio stations.

CSV’s Stephanie Pillersdorf and Brooke Morganstein are in charge of the Univision account.

EX-REPORTER: TRIB SPIKED CEO PAY STORY.

Geoff Dougherty, the former Chicago Tribune staffer who set up a citizen journalism site to cover Chicago at the end of last year after resigning from the paper, is taking the Trib to task for allegedly killing a story he wrote about executive pay at Tribune Co.

Dougherty has criticized his former employer for paying CEO Dennis FitzSimons “top dollar while laying off employees and offering investors terrible returns.”

He printed a story in his new online publication, ChiTown Daily News, on Feb. 7 about Tribune Co. executive pay which, he says, began last April while he was a Trib reporter. “It started as an assignment to analyze some executive compensation data for the paper's annual CEO pay section,” he wrote in introducing the article. “As I crunched the numbers, it became apparent that FitzSimons’ pay would figure prominently in the article. …So I wrote it. My editor signed off on it. The copy desk cleared it and slated it for publication last May. And then, 36 hours before the article was to appear, it was killed.”

Dougherty said editors ducked questions about the article and declined to schedule it for publication, so he resigned.

In the article published on his website, Dougherty notes that FitzSimons raked in an $11.3M compensation package while Tribune Co. posted a negative 17 percent return to investors and profits fell 38 percent.

Jim Kirk, associate managing editor for business at the Trib, called Dougherty’s characterization of the story and circumstances surrounding his departure “completely false.”

In a letter to Jim Romanesko, Kirk said the paper never shied away from covering news about itself or its corporate parent or executives.

He also noted that the article Dougherty published was updated and fact-checked, and not the same one he wrote for the Tribune. Kirk declined to comment on Dougherty's resignation, but said: “After looking into his complaint, and finding it lacked merit, editors decided to accept his resignation.”

BRIEFS ____________________

Contribute, the magazine of philanthropy, is set to debut in New York in April.

The every-other-month publication will be distributed free to 65,000 households.

Publisher Lisa Gyselen plans to launch editions in San Francisco and London.

PrintMedia has changed its name to Publishing Executive as part of an expansion of its editorial coverage and circulation base from the publication production industry to also include magazine managers and interactive/online publication.

PE, published by North American Publishing Company, claims 17,500 subscribers. It continues to produce the PrintMedia Conference tradeshow, slated for March in New York.

Michigan business publication Corp! Magazine has been sold to two executives from the Michigan Food and Beverage Assn. and Michigan Business and Professional Assn.

Edward Deeb, president of both groups, will serve as editor-in-chief of the publication and Kluge, COO of both groups, is publisher. Previous EIC/co-owner Oliver Moore continues with a consulting role.

The new owners plan to offer free subscriptions to association members. Current circulation is about 52,000, and the new owners, under Corp Publishing LLC, Warren, Mich., said the association members could boost circulation by 20,000.

Hooters Magazine, which had been available only at its restaurants, is now sold on newsstands and at book retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Borders. The bi-monthly is priced at $4.99.

(Media news continued on next page)

LINK CLIENTS TO NEWS, PCNY EXECS TOLD.

“Think about the whole story, not just your client's element,” said Bianca Struhl, associate producer for “CBS News Sunday Morning.”

The event, hosted by the Publicity Club of New York, brought in more than 170 PR pros who showed up to hear some of the nation's top radio and TV news journalists speak.

According to Rob Flynn, director of communications for PBS’s “The Newshour with Jim Lehrer,” while TV and radio press still look to publicists for stories, they often must turn to other sources simply because many PR pros fail to pitch items that are pertinent to current events.

“We go into a lot of depth in our program, but because we’re only on for an hour, we are limited,” he said. “But we’re just as interested in finding out about your clients as you are in pitching us.”

Mike Pesca, correspondent for NPR, said publicists can increase their chances of getting air time by adopting a pitching technique that marries their clients’ product with a current event. “The best stories are an event, not an issue,” Pesca said. “Pitch me something current that I can get a seed out of. And watch out for blatant product placement, even if it’s an interesting product.”

Even if a client’s product isn’t itself groundbreaking, a simple re-pitch can make an item newsworthy.

A company that specializes in transportable building structures, for example, could have made an interesting news item during Hurricane Katrina, when the need for temporary housing was at an all-time high.

“No idea is a bad idea, because in two hours we can figure out how to do it in a different way. It's a huge palate,” said Jamie Kraft, senior producer for CNN's “Anderson Cooper 360.”

Because the news is constantly in a rush against time, understanding how to pitch radio and TV press involves a great deal of finesse. Often, it involves a knack for predicting tomorrow’s news items today.

The panel suggested that PR pros can cut down on much of their guess work of what newsrooms are planning by staying up-to-date on hot topics in the news, as well as understanding growing trends.

Kraft noted that adding “texture” to a pitch – highlighting not only the newsworthiness of a story but also its power and immediacy – is a good way to make a client's presence known in an otherwise fickle industry.

“We try to do things every night to see how the audience reacts. We ask tough questions, and we’re not afraid to shoot from the hip sometimes,” he said. “We want stories that people will stand around the water cooler and talk about the next day. We’re looking for anything that can give us a lot of texture to work with and make the story interesting.”

Pesca, on the other hand, offered a simpler tip for success in the media machine works: stay informed. “Read the New York Times every morning. They really set the agenda for us,” he said.

The event was moderated by Peter Himler, PCNY president; and Lisa Kovitz, managing director of Burson-Marsteller’s brand marketing practice.

People _________________

Robert Hertzberg, editorial director for Source Media’s Financial Planning and On Wall Street, has joined Crain’s Communications' upcoming business title FinancialWeek as editor. The 20-year news veteran has served as a news editor for Bloomberg News, editor of Baseline Magazine and Internet World, among others.

FW is slated for a June 5 debut and will publish every other Monday starting in September.

Joel Topcik, has been named deputy editor of Broadcasting & Cable. He is a veteran of the New York Times, Harpers and GQ.

David Leckey has been named executive VP-consumer marketing at American Media. He had held a similar post at Hachette Filipacchi Media

Andreas Lazar, who was at Allen & Co., has taken a senior VP-business development job at Sirius Satellite Radio.

Laurie David, an environmental activist and wife of comedy writer/actor Larry David, has been named guest editor for Elle’s April 18 issue, coinciding with Earth Day.

Aveda, a natural cosmetics company, has underwritten printing of the issue on recycled paper.

Ann Moore, CEO of Time Inc., believes it’s okay if editor-in-chief John Huey says he reads some of the company's women's titles only because he has to.

It's all right that Huey doesn’t completely understand the shoes in InStyle, Moore told the Wall Street Journal. Huey is surrounded by women, she noted. “In fact, John’s outnumbered a little bit on the 34th floor,” she said.

Dr. Dean Ornish, founder of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, Calif., will pen a weekly column on Newsweek.com.

Called “The Spectrum,” Ornish will focus on dieting and healthy living. His column will run on the site's “Healthbeat” section every Tuesday.

Oprah Winfrey and XM Satellite Radio reached a three-year agreement to launch a Chicago-based “Oprah & Friends” channel in September. Regular segments hosted by personalities from “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and O, The Oprah Magazine, in addition to a weekly reality radio show with Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King.

Topics include nutrition, fitness, health, self improvement, home, and current events from “Oprah personalities” like Bob Greene, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Robin Smith, Marianne Williamson, and Nate Berkus.

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who has earned the “most successful blogger” title from The Times of London for the runaway popularity of DailyKos.com, is trying to raise $1M in angel funding to kick off SB Nation, a network of 200 sports blogs. Zuniga says it will cover every team in every major league in the U.S., noting the frustration of smaller-team fans when the media giants skip their results.

The No. 1 topic among PR firm owners is how to find new accounts.

We know this not only from long experience but from the large number of hits generated by recent stories on the O’Dwyer website about new business.

Two consulting firms (RSW and Shock PR International) are offering to help firms with new biz and other elements.

The fee of the former is $4,000 monthly for six months while the latter provides advice indefinitely for $25,000.

Firms need to “brand” themselves, step back and decide just what they’re offering, says RSW.

An executive at a major New York PR firm once told us, when we asked for some information about a client: “Look, we work 100% for our clients, and no percent for you.”

The reverse of this is firms that tell us, “We work mostly if not entirely for the media because they will always be there while clients come and go.”

Quite a few firms fall in between.

There’s no accepted definition of PR these days but we think firms could define themselves by what they do or don’t do, and by what they believe in or don’t believe in.

Here’s some litmus tests.

• Are we in favor of press conferences in almost all instances when a hot topic about a client arises?

• Do we insist on being present when a client is interviewed by a reporter?

• Do we ask prospects if they have any good stories to tell and anyone to tell them, or do we want six months of breaking in while on retainer?

• Do we believe in working through the media or do we believe in speaking directly to target audiences?

• Do we deliver “messages” to the media or stories?

• Is the burden for a good PR program on the client or on the agency?

• Do we believe that the job of advertising is to sell consumers while the job of PR is to sell the press?

• Is our job educating consumers or selling them?

• Do we believe that getting third party endorsement is the goal of PR since what others say about you is more important than what you say about yourself?

• Do we believe that providing press access to the CEO is crucial for any PR program?

• Would we favor an “open mike” one afternoon a week during which reporters could call client CEOs and other executives with no screening whatever?

• Do we favor reporters also being allowed to ask questions on quarterly “analyst” calls?

• Is our main product strategy or execution?

• Do we consider ourselves closer to being a management consultant than a PR firm?

• Do clients need protection from the press?

• On a scale of one to ten, where ten is 100% dedication to media and one is 100% dedication to clients, what number would best describe our firm?

Because there’s no definition of PR, firms have a hard time marketing themselves.

Not too many are going to say they are 100% media-oriented, fearing that prospects will think they will be disloyal and won’t care about them.

Oddly, however, these are the very firms capable of getting clients the most notice (if that’s what the clients want).

The press is loaded with complaints about stonewalling by PR. Latest is a column Feb. 9 headlined “The Art of Stonewalling” by Financial Times writer Sathnam Sanghera. He says corporate execs show “widespread reticence” with reporters and too much corporate PR involves “saying no.”

We’re not usually a fan of Bill O’Reilly, but he skewered the New York Times Feb. 9. He finds it inconsistent that the NYT won’t print the Danish cartoons of Mohammed because they “assault religious symbols” but has no qualms about showing dung on the Virgin Mary, the Crucifix dunked in urine and Christ portrayed as having sex with his Apostles. ...another case of NYT inconsistency is its lack of coverage of Omnicom, the biggest owner of PR. NYT runs about ten times as many stories on Interpublic as it does on OMC. It has never covered in any depth the shift of OMC dotcoms to an off-balance sheet entity in 2001, a move that resulted in numerous lawsuits. The Wall Street Journal on Feb. 8 again did battle with OMC on the transfers, quoting accounting professors who said OMC should have taken an $89M charge against earnings. OMC again rejected the claims, saying neither KPMG, Arthur Andersen, nor the SEC have complained. ...we’re disappointed with the student compromise on “at large” PRSSA memberships (page 7) which would give second-class memberships to students at the 3,700 colleges that don’t have enough “PR” courses to satisfy PRSA.

Ivy League colleges have no PR courses and the same is true of many if not most other colleges. Who is to say that an English Lit major at Yale is less qualified for PR than a PR major at one of the 270 PRSA colleges? ...what students are learning under the auspices of PRSA is blocking competition and ducking the press.

No sitting PRSSA president has ever returned a call from us, including current president Scott Iwata.

He’s no shrinking violet since he was the “Mariner Moose” of the Seattle Mariners during a three-year break from college and then played “Wellington the Wildcat” for Central Washington University. He graduated in 2004 from CWU, a four-year college, so we wonder how he can be president of PRSSA in 2006 when he should have been out of school long ago.

The Internet “portfolio” of 2004-05 PRSSA president Sarah Yeaney of Penn State (who also would not talk to us), says: “By enthralling myself in the PR-world, I will enjoy the environment I love—an ‘unwritten realm’ that results in amazing societal changes.”

--Jack O'Dwyer