FIRMS PURSUE ARMY RESERVE PR PACT.

The Pentagon-based Office of the Chief Army Reserve is sorting through proposals for a strategic communications firm to help it convey its “vision of the future.”

OCAR plans policies and programs and oversees Reserve personnel, operations and construction funds. It plans to bring in a firm to advise its top brass on national outreach and media communications, and to hone its internal and external communications with soldiers, families, the public and Congressional audiences, according to a copy of the solicitation.

Nine firms have expressed interest in the account, including two PR firms – Lincoln Group in Washington, D.C., and CorpComm Group, Lima, Ohio – along with several consulting shops MyMic (Portsmouth, Va.); Polestar Applied Technology (Los Altos, Calif.), and ICOR Partners, (Alexandria, Va.), among other business consulting companies.

The work includes speechwriting, research, development of a comprehensive Army Reserve communications plan, and support for its national outreach programs. OCAR also wants to book media opportunities.

KETCHUM PITCHES KATRINA COMEBACK.

Louisiana Recovery Authority has hired Ketchum PA and its Washington Group lobbying unit to issue progress reports about the clean-up of New Orleans and Bayou areas hit by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The firm also will vouch for the accountability of funds already allocated for recovery, and advocate for more federal monies.

Former Congresswoman Susan Molinari, who heads WG, called it a “rare and noble undertaking to tell the positive story of hope.” The assignment, according to a statement, has nothing to do with the past. “It is entirely about the future, specifically helping to restore one of America’s greatest cities and the entire state of Louisiana,” said Molinari.

PENNEY EXPERIENCES BOOTH.

M Booth & Assocs. is handling J.C. Penney’s three-week stay in New York City. The Plano, Tx.-based department store chain has opened a 15,000 sq. ft. store in the heart of Times Square to give jaded New Yorkers a peek at the more fashion-focused retailer.

The “J.C. Penney Experience” is called the biggest “branding event” in the 104-year-old store’s history. Penney’s Broadway run is up March 26. Mike Ullman, Penney chairman, kicked off the event with a gala to benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

SC LOOKS TO BOOST TOURISM PR.

South Carolina’s tourism promotion entity has put a $200K PR assignment out for bid to complement ongoing advertising and marketing efforts highlighting the state as a leisure travel destination.

The SC Dept. of Parks, Recreation & Tourism, which uses the tagline “Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places,” wants a PR firm with a South Carolina office to foster ties with national and international media and garner travel features in major media and travel trade publications.

Current marketing efforts focus on domestic leisure travel, international (England, Ireland and Germany), and boosting attendance at state parks. The Palmetto State markets its beaches, resort islands and acclaimed golfing (“The Golf Capital of the South”) to travelers. The PRT, as the tourism agency is known, says 32 million people visit the state each year. A spokeswoman told O’Dwyer’s it has not recently used an outside PR firm.

Chris Manos ([email protected]) is contracting officer. Proposals are due March 29.

APCO RECRUITED FOR PORTS FIGHT.

Dubai Ports World added APCO Worldwide, the No. 4 independent PR firm, to its communications arsenal just prior to the decision to turn over the management of six U.S. ports to an American entity.

APCO senior VP Barry Schumacher and Robert Downan, a former policy and public diplomacy advisor to ex-Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, headed the account.

APCO handled homeland security and trade issues for DPW, the United Arab Emirates-owned entity that wanted to take over ports in New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans.

H&K HANDLES PROJECTS FOR OPEC.

Hill & Knowlton is doing lobbying work for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on a “project basis.”

A recent project was to line-up media interviews for OPEC’s Secretary General during a visit to New York.

The WPP Group unit's relationship with OPEC is based on neither a formal written contract nor an exchange of correspondence between the two parties. H&K is compensated for fees and out of pocket expenses on a fixed fee arrangement.

Vienna-based OPEC is made up of 11 oil countries including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Algeria, Indonesia, Nigeria and Venezuela.

PILGRIM’S PRIDE TAPS RHODES.

Pilgrim’s Pride, the No. 2 U.S. poultry supplier which withdrew its late-January profit forecast last week because of overseas consumer bird flu worries, has tapped Gary Rhodes as VP of corporate communications. He was director of corporate communications for Cincinnati-based grocery giant The Kroger Co.

Pilgrim’s Pride trails only Perdue in the $28 billion U.S poultry market. Weak exports because of bird flu concerns overseas have pushed down prices and hurt poultry companies in the U.S. in recent months.

Rhodes, 43, was at Kroger for seven years heading national media relations, issues management and labor communications, among other tasks.

He was formerly director of corporate communications for Gibson Greetings and held the same post at Omnicare, a Fortune 500 pharmacy provider.

Rhodes takes over for Sondra Fowler, who has left the company.

PP’s net sales for 2005 were $5.7 billion but the company suffered a $15M loss in the U.S. through February 2006.

RP GUIDES GE THROUGH PROBES.

Reputation Partners has been counseling General Electric as the company deals with two multimillion-dollar lawsuits from former employees of its Madisonville, Ky., plant, which is the subject of federal probes.

GE won a victory last week after a $64M federal whistle-blower suit alleging faults in the company’s construction of commercial and military aircraft was dropped.

A former inspector at GE’s aircraft engine plant withdrew the lawsuit citing fears of a nervous breakdown and saying GE was attempting to silence her.

GE, via RP, said the withdrawal shows the suit was without merit. RP partner Marta Rhyner told O’Dwyer’s that her firm has worked with GE on a variety of different issues over the last few years.

The Louisville Courier-Journal, which has closely followed the legal activity surrounding the plant, said the 827-person factory is the target of a five-year investigation by the Defense Department and other federal agencies exploring allegations that GE produced thousands of cracked engine blades for military helicopters and commercial aircraft and then tried to cover it up.

Chicago-based RP was set up in 2002 by Edelman veterans Nick Kalm and Rhyner.

GARBER TO CATO.

Bob Garber, who was director of marketing and public information at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, has joined the Cato Institute to handle its marketing communications effort.

Garber handled international marketing/advertising and directed outreach to professional groups and constituent organizations at the museum. He also was the top marketer at the Washington Speakers Bureau.

Ed Crane, president of the libertarian think tank, called Garber a “recognized leader in Washington’s marketing communications field.”

OLSON REPS MLB’S NEW TESTING LAB.

Minneapolis agency Olson is handling PR for NSF International, the not-for-profit health standards organization tapped to certify performance-enhancing supplements for Major League Baseball.

MLB and its players union announced last week that NSF would audit and test supplements for the purpose of labeling them “safe” from containing substances banned under MLB’s new steroid testing program.

Rebecca Herbst, an Olson staffer on the NSF account, said the firm has handled advertising and PR for the organization for about three years.

NSF began working with the NFL in 2004 to certify supplements and has set up a formal sports certification program on the heels of the deal with MLB. NSF said its certification work addresses concerns of athletes that many supplements may contain undeclared ingredients that could lead to positive tests for banned substances.

Reports of the deal, however, have been mixed with a Sports Illustrated expose last week on alleged steroid use and other illicit activity by acclaimed baseball slugger Barry Bonds. SI excerpted a forthcoming book by the two San Francisco Chronicle reporters – Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams – who have covered Bonds’ involvement with a Bay Area laboratory that supplied steroids to professional athletes.

COLEHOUR + COHEN LANDS $520K PR PACT.

Seattle-based PR and social marketing firm Colehour + Cohen has edged two competitors to spearhead a $520K campaign aimed to improve recycling in King County Washington.

C+C handled a recycling push for Seattle in 2000 and has worked for the federal government’s “Energy Star” program since the mid 1990s. The firm has inked a one-year deal, with two option years possible.

The Bellwether Group and The Frause Group were finalists.

The 2,000-square mile King County counts 1.7 million inhabitants including the city of Seattle. It has set a goal of zero waste after seeing thousands of tons of commercial and residential garbage which could be recycled fill its Cedar Hill Landfill every year.

The campaign will be split between residential (mostly outside of Seattle) and commercial (within the city) audiences.

BOL PLAYS UP SUDAN GENOCIDE.

Former National Basketball Assn. great and Sudan native Manute Bol will appear at a United Nations press conference on March 15 to kick off the 300-mile freedom walk from New York to Washington. The 7’6’’ Bol holds the NBA record for most shot blocks per minute.

The walk’s purpose is to spotlight the ongoing genocide and slavery in Sudan. Bol will be joined by Simon Deng, the spokesperson for the Sudan Freedom Walk. He was captured at the age of nine and sold to an Arab family. He escaped after nearly four years and now lives in New York.

Freedom Now Communications is handling PR for the walk.

BRUNSWICK, JOELE FRANK ADVISE KR DEAL.

New York firms Brunswick Group and Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher are outside PR counsel for the $4.5 billion sale of Knight Ridder to The McClatchy Co. announced March 13.

Brunswick is handling PR with TMC's corporate communications department while Joele Frank is advising KR.

Sacramento-based TMC publishes 12 daily newspapers including the Sacramento Bee and Minneapolis Star-Tribune and will add 32 daily newspapers like the Miami Herald and San Jose Mercury News with the KR acquisition.

Sixty percent of the deal is in cash with the remainder in McClatchy shares.

TMC is expected to sell or shutter some KR papers as part of cost control measures.

Reports citing industry analysts suggested the Philadelphia Daily News could be shuttered, while the Philadelphia Inquirer or St. Paul Pioneer Press could be tagged for sale.

San Jose-based KR had $3 billion in 2005 revenues, compared to $1.2 billion for TMC.

Both companies trace their roots back to the 1800s.

FITZSIMONS IS ‘MOST EMBATTLED’ EXEC.

The Columbia Journalism Review has crowned Tribune’s Dennis FitzSimons as the “media world's most embattled CEO” now that Tony Ridder has auctioned off Knight Ridder.

FitzSimons is “lauded” for an “anemic stock price, embarrassing circulation scandal and a belated $1B IRS bill).” CJR ridicules a FitzSimons speech that he made in December about the Trib’s “important journalistic mission.”

CJR noted that after the Los Angeles Times won five Pulitzers in ’04, the staff got “bupkis” from corporate on the historic achievement. “Instead, then-editor John Carroll got word that the home office was displeased with the Times’ revenues and was demanding deep cuts,” reported CJR.

NBCU BUYS iVILLAGE.

NBC Universal has agreed to purchase iVillage, which runs websites aimed at women, for $600 million.

CEO Bob Wright called iVillage a platform that gives its advertisers “new and exciting ways to reach a valuable demographic.” iVillage CEO Doug McCormick, who joined the firm from Lifetime TV four years ago, reported a $3M profit in ’05, the company’s first. He expects to ring up at least $9M in profit this year. iVillage attracts more than 15.5M visitors a month.

General Electric owns 80 percent of NBCU. France’s Vivendi Universal owns 20 percent.

CBS has signed 20 sponsors including Dell and Marriott for the live Internet broadcast of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s “March Madness” basketball tourney. First-round games begin March 16. Since some games are scheduled during the workday, CBS has incorporated a “boss button” into its software. One click and a spreadsheet will pop onto the viewer’s computer.

NEWS CORP. BEEFS UP 'NET UNIT.

News Corp. has named Mark Jung, COO of its Fox Interactive unit. He had been CEO of IGN.com, the online gaming unit that NC acquired in ’05.

Jim Heckman, founder & CEO of sports site Scout.com, another recent acquisition, becomes chief strategy officer of the Internet unit.

Jung and Heckman report to Ross Levinsohn, who is spearheading NC's `Net gameplan. Levinsohn had headed FoxSports.com.

EDELMAN CHAMPIONS NEW MEDIA.

Edelman CEO Richard Edelman told the New York Observer at an industry awards event that the media are not God anymore, but later backed off that comment after suprising some colleagues.

“It used to be I would schmooze you and I was your flack,” Edelman told the Observer. “Today, if we want to get a message into the public’s conversation, we just make a post on a blog. If the Wall Street Journal goes after a client, we don’t have to accept that anymore. Let’s post the documents we gave the Journal; lets show the interviews the newspaper decided not to show,” he told the peach-colored weekly.

Edelman backed off his comment somewhat in a post on his blog a few days later, noting his remarks had surprised colleagues at his firm. “I’ve learned my lesson – not to over-dramatize to convey a point with a journalist, particularly during cocktail hours!” he wrote. “Traditional media matters now more than ever. There is a continuum through on-line versions of traditional media into the blogosphere and that ultimately a great story can be told across all of these platforms.”

$9B VNU TAKEOVER IN DOUBT.

Kekst & Co. is handling a consortium of private equity firms that bid $9B for the buyout of VNU, the Dutch publisher and research giant.

Completion of the deal, which requires approval from 95 percent of VNU shareholders, remains in doubt. Fidelity International, owner of 15 percent of VNU, says it opposes the buyout deal.

VNU CEO Rob van den Bergh told an Amsterdam press conference that though “we got a good price, shareholders will have the last word.”

VNU put itself on the auction block following a shareholder revolt over its plan to buy IMS Health, a healthcare data provider. The IMS acquisition was scuttled.

Kekst represents Blackstone Group; Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Thomas Lee Partners, Hellman & Friedman, Carlyle Group and AlpInvest Partners. The group, known as Valcon Acquisition, says it plans to keep VNU largely intact.

VNU claims it has studied the "risk-reward" benefits of breaking up the company-a strategy pushed by some shareholders-but found it didn't make economic sense.

VNU publishes Adweek, Billboard, Hollywood Reporter and owns ACNielsen.

(Media news continued on next page)

Briefs _____________________

Relevant Media Group, which publishes Relevant Magazine, a title aimed at “spiritually hungry 20-somethings,” plans to launch a new magazine for women in April to incorporate beauty, life and faith topics.

The new bimonthly publication, Radiant, is meant to offer a “fresh perspective for women in a world full of magazines that only address the surface,” according to editor Cara Davis. Radiant will cover music, fashion, decorating, health and other topics.

Initial circulation is said to be 35K.

Women’s lifestyle publication Hallmark magazine is set to debut with a September/October issue and initial rate base of 400K. Hallmark Cards tested the concept with four issues starting in 2003 and the company said the response was strong enough to move forward. Lisa Benenson, former editor-in-chief of Working Woman and Working Mother, is EIC of the new magazine.

Pitched as going a step further than basic how-to women's magazines on home, food, decorating and other topics, Hallmark says the new pub will remind readers “why these connections are so important.”

Comedy Central has cut a deal with Apple Computer, making “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” available on iTunes for a subscription pegged at $9.99 a month.

The New York Times has shifted real estate reporter Motoko Rich to the publishing beat, replacing Ed Wyatt.

Wyatt is leaving for Los Angeles to join his wife Jennifer Steinhauer, who is the Times' L.A. bureau chief. Wyatt will cover television action.

Rolling Stone has launched a Chinese language version of the pop culture mag in a venture with One Media Group, a Hong Kong publisher of lifestyle magazines.

Half the content will come from RS’s U.S. and international editions with the rest featuring entertainment news from mainland China. OMG also puts out Chinese versions of Popular Science and Top Gear.

Showtime Networks and the Smithsonian Institution have entered into a joint venture to develop TV services under the Smithsonian brand. The initial project is Smithsonian On Demand, which includes original documentaries, events and short-subject coverage of topics in science, cultural and history. Assets are drawn from the Smithsonian Institution.

Launch of the service is slated for December 2006 and is expected to include up to 40 hours of programming, refreshed monthly.

The venture has operations in Washington, D.C., and New York. Tom Hayden, EVP of direct to home for Showtime, assumes the role of GM for the collaboration. David Royle, a veteran of National Geographic TV and Film, is EVP of programming and production. They are both in New York.

Jeanny Jim, a VP for Smithsonian Business Ventures, manages content and production assistance for the venture in Washington, D.C.

Fortune says “backshoring,” the process of returning outsourced jobs to India to the U.S., could be the next Silicon Valley buzzword. It profiles Kanna, a $60M software company, that returned programming jobs to Menlo Park.

CEO Michael Fields said the company suffered "more rewrites, performance issues and more delays," by not having designers, programmers and project managers under a single roof. He believes Kanna can deliver a better product with a quarter of the engineers if everyone is working side-by-side in the U.S.

People ___________________

Scott Brede, managing editor of Law Tribune Newspapers, has been named editor-in-chief of LTN and GC New England magazine. Both Hartford, Conn.-based titles are owned by American Lawyer Media, now known as ALM, based in New York.

Brede joined ALM in 1995 as a reporter after working for the Hartford Courant, Manchester Herald and New Britain Herald.

Judy Miller, managing editor for news and features for the Miami Herald, plans to join global risk company Kroll Inc. as managing director in its business intelligence and investigations division, based in Miami. Kroll notes that Miller is nationally recognized for achievement in computer-assisted investigations.

She oversaw the Herald's team that reported on vote-counting problems during the 2000 presidential election and previously headed investigations and urban affairs for the paper.

Miller was formerly a deputy city editor at the San Francisco Chronicle and metro editor for the Peninsula Times Tribune in Palo Alto, Calif.

Dawn Kopecki has joined BusinessWeek’s Washington bureau. She moves over from Dow Jones Newswire.

Randy Stearns, executive producer of product development and strategy for ABC.com, has joined MSNBC.com as deputy editor for the East Coast. Stearns led the ABC team that launched the first 24/7 video news channel on the Internet in 2003.

Peggy Onstad, publisher of Boston Metro Newspaper, has joined Advanstar Communications, Montvale, N.J., as general manager and group publisher of its skincare group, which includes Dermatology Times and Cosmetic Surgery Times, along with Contemporary Pediatrics.

She has worked at the Denver Post, Los Angeles Weekly and Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing.

Regan Hoffman, who has written an anonymous column at Poz for the last four years about her life with H.I.V., has been named editor in chief of the magazine for people with H.I.V. and AIDS.

The 38-year-old Hoffman, who contracted H.I.V a decade ago, believes her “coming out” will “destigmatize” the disease. Hoffman is the first heterosexual woman to edit Poz. She graces the cover of its April issue.

The First Research Consortium of independent analysts, a force for reform, won a big victory in February when an SEC committee voted to encourage company paid-for analysis.

The SEC noted that 1,200 of the 3,200 NASDAQ companies and 35% of all companies on the major exchanges have no coverage. Without research are 83% of companies with stock worth under $125M.

Tight budgets at the big investment houses and brokerages have resulted in declining coverage. Companies with no research following suffer lower capitalization and greater difficulty in raising funds.

A company paying for its own security analysis sounds like a set-up. But what the Consortium does is collect money from a company and give the assignment to an analyst not affiliated with any financial institution. Payment is made before the analysis and does not go from company to analyst.

The Consortium is a critic of brokerage research because such analysts and/or their employers own stock in the companies they’re writing about and may also do investment banking for the companies. The analysts admit to such a relationship but don’t reveal the amount of stock held nor trading records.

Analysts in the Consortium promise not to hold stock in companies they write about nor hold stock in competitors of such companies.

Consortium members support another reform – letting general and financial reporters on the quarterly “analyst” teleconferences. These are marked by powder-puff questions and avoidance of painful topics. This “Kabuki theater” deters the unmasking of wrongful practices such as occurred at Enron, Worldcom, etc. “Reporters are proxies for the public and should be on these calls,” says Gayle Essary, affiliated with the Consortium.

Fighting for open quarterly calls is an advocacy position that PRSA should take up.

Its sole “advocacy” so far in 2006 is that companies should not secretly pay journalists to write favorable things about them (charges that came out in the trial of HealthSouth’s Richard Scrushy). We don’t need PRSA to tell us that secretly paying writers is bad.

Next year is the 60th anniversary of PRSA but we see no plans for it nor even any mention of this important milestone.

In 1993, four years in advance of 1997, PRSA set up a 100-person anniversary committee headed by Jim Arnold to make plans four years in advance. A stamp with the dates 1947-97 was sought from the USPS. PRSA directories for decades referred to PRSA as being “founded in 1947.”

Rea Smith, COO in the early 1970s, did a history of PRSA which noted PRSA was the merger of two PR groups in the summer of 1947. A board was elected and offices opened in New York.

But then, an odd thing happened. Debra Miller, a professor at Florida International University, was secretary in 1994 and in line to be president in 1997. She would also be the first African-American president of PRSA. But Miller had powerful enemies. The 1994 nominating committee chose Janice Newman as treasurer, booting Miller off the board since she was in the second year of a two-year term.

Outraged supporters of Miller got up enough signatures for a contested election, the first since 1973 when Frank Wylie (representing the “populist,” non-New York, small chapter faction) ran against James Fox of New York. Fox represented the Eastern wing of PRSA that was accused of “hogging” all the top posts at PRSA.

Newman’s candidacy was flawed. Her firm was named “Newman, Newman & Jones,” the second Newman representing her “experience,” and the Jones representing her “resources.” One would think that having a firm with fake names would eliminate a contender for the PRSA presidency. But Newman debated Miller at the 1994 Assembly and lost.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end. The enemies of Miller, and we think this included academics and some of the staff, announced that 1998 and not 1997 would be celebrated since the New York State “charter” came in the mail in February of 1998.

Miller got almost no publicity as the first African-American PRSA president. We saw only one interview and that was in a minor publication. Miller proved to be an innovative president, providing a non-audited financial report in March, conducting a survey of members’ views (the last published survey PRSA has conducted), and calling for senior PR pros to be on the PRSA staff (which was ignored). All in all, PRSA did poorly by Miller.

PRSA doesn’t celebrate any of its anniversaries. The 40th anniversary of APR in 2005 was ignored. Few take the new multiple-choice test that cost $250K to create over four years. We don’t think PRSA wants to draw any attention to itself and its many problem areas.

One is the nominating process. Complaints of abuses hit both the 2003 and 2004 nominating committees. Instead of opening the process, making candidates campaign on the issues via PRSA’s website, the board named legal counsel Arthur Abelman to the nomcom.

Although PRSA does not like public exposure and its most recent legal foray (Catherine Bolton vs. “John Doe”) was unfortunate, we were surprised by a letter from Abelman last week accusing us of making “false and defamatory” remarks about PRSA. A Feb. 2 editorial on odwyerpr.com had criticized PRSA in 15 different areas. The PRSA board and Abelman seem to have forgotten what happened when the 1992 board threatened us legally, saying we had made “outlandish and libelous” charges about PRSA, that we had “insulted the integrity of this and past PRSA boards,” and we were guilty of “notorious distortion of facts.” The 1992 blast at us by Roberts, sent to 200 PRSA leaders, became a banner headline story in the New York Times ad column.

--Jack O'Dwyer