APCO TACKLES LITIGATION PR FOR VIOXX.

APCO Worldwide is supporting Merck’s PR efforts for the controversial arthritis drug Vioxx, which was found to increase heart attack risk in patients.
Kent Jarrell, senior VP and director of litigation communications for APCO in Washington, D.C., is working on the Merck account.

The firm helped Merck last week with a correction on a key study that led to the withdrawal of Vioxx from the market. Merck on May 30 corrected a prior description of a statistical method used in the company-backed APPROVe study, which found heart and stroke complications in Vioxx users and led to the 2004 withdrawal of the drug. The drug maker is stressing that the statistical correction does not affect the results of the study.

The Associated Press reported that the doctors who oversaw the study are planning to release new data that question the legal strategy followed by Merck, which contends patients were found to be at risk after taking the drug for 18 months.

The doctors say the new data show risk as soon as four months after taking the drug.

Merck, which has been hit by more than 11,000 Vioxx-related lawsuits, saw its stock fall four percent on news of the correction.

Burson-Marsteller handled the PR component of a $20M image campaign for Merck in the wake of the Vioxx withdrawal in 2004.

BROWN JOINS GOOGLE.

Jamie Brown, special assistant to President Bush for legislative affairs, has been hired by Google’s Washington office to serve as federal relations counsel. Brown played a key role in prepping Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito for their Senate confirmation hearings.

Brown moved to Google to take part in the “extraordinarily exciting and important time for the Internet industry,” according to a statement.
Google is involved in the “network neutrality” fight with the phone companies concerning access to fiber optic networks and the tussle over copyright law.

Brown joins Alan Davidson, the former associate director for the Center for Democracy and Technology, in Google’s D.C. lobbying office.

WPP CEO Martin Sorrell has replaced Young & Rubicam CEO Ann Fudge, 55, with Australia/New Zealand chief Hamish McLennan, 40. Fudge remains CEO of Y&R Brands, parent of Burson-Marsteller. She called McLennan “a rising star in the organization.”

FLORIDA EYES POST-HURRICANE PR PUSH.

Florida is looking for firms interested in conducting two PR campaigns to reach residents experiencing emotional distress over Hurricane Wilma and another targeting displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina residing in the state.

The Sunshine State’s Dept. of Children and Families, which has $350K for the work, said it is especially interested in reaching children, the elderly, first responders and non-English speakers to make them aware of crisis counseling services available through a Federal Emergency Management Agency-funded program called Project H.O.P.E.

Florida has not yet issued a formal RFP, but is circulating a Request for Information document to find parties interested in the two campaigns – one for Rita victims, the other for Katrina survivors.
The efforts are to “brand” Project H.O.P.E., handle PR outreach and place articles in daily and weekly papers, develop PSAs (in Spanish, English, and Creole), and produce an overall strategic plan for the outreach efforts.

The RFI notes that in the event of a new Presidential Declaration of Disaster before the anticipated end of the project on Dec. 14, any firm working on the efforts must agree to stay on subject to additional funding.

The state has allocated $149K for the Wilma component, and $208K for the Katrina campaign.
Dwight Hood ([email protected]; 850/488-0030) is contract manager for the RFI.

PRD FIRMS ALSO ON ODWYERPR.COM.

Some 400 PR firms, including 57 of the 60 largest independents, have put their listings on odwyerpr.com as well as in the 2006 O’Dwyer’s Directory of PR Firms which will be published this month.

“The PR Firms Directory, which we’ve done for 36 years, is gradually migrating also to the web,” said publisher Jack O’Dwyer.

A printed directory is easy to work with for many purposes but a web listing also has advantages, such as being updatable and available wherever there is a computer, he said.

“Color logos and color pictures of principals and staffers are also available on the web as are immediate links to a PR firm’s own website or to individual e-mails at the PR firm,” he added.

PR firms can list on the web at any time, he noted. The 2006 printed PRD is $175. A web listing plus one-year of access to odwyerpr.com is $300.

HM GETS PR HELP WITH ATTACKS.

Houghton Mifflin, publisher of a best-selling children’s book critical of the fast-food industry, has brought in Dan Klores Communications to help rebut what it sees as “Swift Boat-Style campaign” attacks on the tome.

HM’s Chew on This (May 2006), written by Fast Food Nation’s Eric Schlosser and Charles Watson, calls out some fast-food marketing tactics directed at kids and describes, sometimes in grisly detail, how the food is produced.

HM sees a “cloud of disinformation” working against the book and orchestrated by the PR firm DCI Group at the behest of the fast-food industry. It has brought in DKC to guide PR for its defense. SVP Ed Tagliaferri heads the work at DKC.

DCI Group, meanwhile, has been working to rebut the theatrical release of “Fast Food Nation,” which hits theaters this fall.

The Wall Street Journal last month reported that the firm pulled the plug on a website, Fast Talk Nation, which attacked Schlosser for his support of lighter sentences for marijuana.

Megan Butler Communications is handling book publicity for “Chew on This,” which is expected to land among the top 5 of the New York Times Best Seller list next week. Butler told O’Dwyer’s her efforts have been strictly promoting the book, while DKC is handling the “personal attacks.”

AKIN GUMP GOES TO BAT FOR YANKEES.

The New York Yankees Partnership has signed up Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld as its Capitol Hill watchdog. The D.C.-based firm will handle sports and athletic matters for the Bronx Bombers.

Former Congressman Bill Paxon, who represented Buffalo, N.Y., is on the Yankees lobbying team. He chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee for ten years, and served as a key advisor to the George W. Bush Presidential Campaign.

Paxon is married to former Staten Island Congresswoman Susan Molinari. She now heads Ketchum’s Washington Group.

The Yankees use New York counselor Howard Rubenstein for PR.

SENDI MOVES TO GOLINHARRIS.

Greg Sendi has joined GolinHarris as executive VP and director of its corporate practice in Chicago. He had headed GCI Group’s office in that city. At GCI, Sendi served as global relationship manager for Medtronic, the $10B pacemaker company.

Earlier he led the 25-person PR team at Northlich, the Cincinnati-based integrated marketing company. He handled Procter & Gamble’s pharmaceutical unit, healthcare provider Humana Inc. and Hillenbrand Industries, the casket company.
Sendi also worked in Fleishman-Hillard’s San Francisco office, focusing on hi-tech clients, UPS and Levi Strauss (environmental issues and outsourcing strategies).

He began his career as a technical writer for Edelman.

H&K, EDELMAN ADVISE RUSSIAN STEEL CO.

Hill & Knowlton and Edelman are handling PR for Russia’s No. 1 steel company, Severstal, which is merging with the world’s biggest steel company, Arcelor of Luxembourg. H&K handles U.S. media, while Edelman is in charge of Europe.

The deal is touted as creating the most profitable steelmaker and the global “steel champion.” It also is designed to head off a bid for Arcelor by Mittal Steel, which launched its own takeover offer for Arcelor on May 19. Abernathy MacGregor and U.K.-based Maitland Consultancy are Mittal’s PR reps.

The Severstal deal, according to the May 30 New York Times, concerns some shareholders who worry about giving control of a third of Arcelor to Russian interests.

Russian billionaire and Severstal chairman Aleksei Mordashov is slated to become nonexecutive chairman of Arcelor after the deal is approved. He gets to appoint six members to the 18-member board.

Mordashov huddled with Russian president Vladimir Putin before announcing the deal. He maintains that Severstal is a private company, not a pawn of the Russian government.

Arcelor has plants in Luxembourg, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Argentina and Brazil.

LAREAU TO F-H.

Fleishman-Hillard has hired Carlos Lareau, who spent 15 years at Burson-Marsteller, to bolster its presence in Europe and expand in the Middle East and Africa markets. Lareau had served as B-M’s CEO for Continental Europe. He advised clients such as Schering AF, BASF, Danone, Pfizer, Unilever and Boeing.

Lareau did a two-year stint as executive VP-communications and EU affairs at Pharmacia & Upjohn in Paris. Working as a print and broadcast journalist for three separate Spanish media companies, Lareau reported from Peru, Columbia, Argentina and the U.S.

F-H CEO John Graham called Lareau “one of the most distinguished communications professionals in the industry,” in announcing the hire.

Based in Barcelona, Lareau will report to Dave Senay, F-H’s regional president for EMEA.

FIRM REPS RESURGENT QUATTRONE.

Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter and Associates is handling PR for Frank Quattrone, the high-profile investment banker of the 1990s tech boom who has been pursued by the SEC and NASD for alleged foul play.

CLS&A, a unit of Gavin Anderson, is based in Washington. Partner Bob Chlopak and managing associate Elizabeth Cholis are speaking for Quattrone.

The former Credit Suisse First Boston star got a boost in March when a federal appeals court overturned a federal conviction for obstruction of justice because of improper jury instructions. The SEC followed by overturning his lifetime ban from the securities industry. Last week, the National Association of Securities Dealers withdrew charges against Quattrone for “spinning” and allegedly allocating IPO shares to banking clients in violation of NASD rules. A rule was later adopted to rein in the practice.

REUTERS GOES ‘SOFT.’

Reuters is introducing “Life,” a wire service devoted to entertainment, leisure, lifestyle, food, human interest and healthcare stories.

Monique Villa, managing director of Reuters Media, said Life is designed to meet the growing demand for “soft” news.

Life, which debuts in the fall, will be edited in New York by Belinda Goldsmith. She has written for Reuters in Australia, Sweden and the U.S.

WEMPLE NAMED E-I-C OF VOICE.

Erik Wemple, who had edited the Washington City Paper, is moving to New York to edit the Village Voice.

The New York Times called Wemple an “unorthodox choice” for the alternative weekly that distributes 250K free copies.

The 41-year-old Wemple has never lived in New York and told the Times that he knows very little about the place. The Voice job “wasn’t even on my radar screen because I’ve been so deliriously happy at the Washington City Paper,” he said.

Michael Lacey, executive editor of Village Voice Media, said Wemple was hired because he is a “really smart guy” with across the board interests.

Wemple will be the Voice’s fourth editor in seven months when he starts in July.

He also wrote a political column for the WCP, served as D.C. correspondent for the defunct Inside.com and reported for Cable World Magazine.

TRIBUNE SETTLES CIRCULATION PROBE.

The Tribune Co. has hammered out an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning the probe into inflated circulation numbers at its Newsday and Hoy properties.

The SEC launched an investigation into the circulation of the Long Island daily and the Spanish-language paper from January 2002 through March 2004. It maintained that the Tribune lacked internal controls to uncover the false figures.

In the settlement, the SEC ordered the Tribune to “cease and desist” from violating laws concerning record-keeping. The Tribune is consenting to the SEC order without admitting or denying guilt. It has put aside $90M to reimburse advertisers.

Meanwhile, Tribune CEO Dennis FitzSimons has announced plans to restructure the Chicago-based media combine and borrow up to $2B to fund a stock buyback program. He plans to divest up to $500M of non-core publishing, broadcasting and real estate assets.

The additional debt diminishes Tribune Co.'s attraction as a takeover target. It also could lead to the “unwinding” of the $6.5B Times Mirror acquisition, which made the Los Angeles Times a Tribune property.

Condé Nast has named its monthly business magazine currently in development Conde Nast Portfolio.

Joanne Lipman, editor-in-chief, and David Carey, group president and publishing director for CN’s Business Media Group are overseeing the development and launch, slated for May 2007.

JONES RAPS PACKAGED CONTENT.

Alex Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize while at the New York Times, lit into abusive publishing and PR practices at the annual PR Seminar on May 25 at Half Moon Bay, outside of San Francisco.

PRS members include the top PR and communications people at nearly 200 blue chip companies and about a dozen executives from the largest PR firms.

Jones, who covered the press for the Times from 1983-92 and who is now with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard Univ., blasted both PR and publishers for feeding the public inferior information rather than helpful food for the mind.

“The subsidy is going away for high quality news that is essential to our democracy,” said Jones, who is press and public policy director of the Shorenstein Center at the Kennedy School.

He slammed Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp./Fox News as the “best example” of a TV network aiming at “ideologically targeted” markets. Newspapers, meanwhile, are covering local news “at the expense of global and complicated stories,” he said.

“People are increasingly satisfied with news they get on cell phones or via free newspapers – this business model does not pay for complex journalism,” he said.

Blogs, or “citizen journalism,” may add to the number of facts available but they are “not a replacement for journalists … citizen journalism will be incorporated into every newspaper but we need the passion of the citizen with the dispassion of the reporter,” he said.

PR Must Avoid ‘Temptation’

Jones, whose remarks were reported by Edelman CEO Richard Edelman on his blog at edelman.com, said PR people must supply “credible advocacy.”
“If PR is perceived as trying to replace traditional news, it will work against PR and there will be a serious backlash,” he said.

Jones touched on the video news release controversy and called for VNRs that include attribution.

On the Internet, he noted that while the web may offer unmediated delivery of messages, it also lacks the “credibility of the journalistic filter.”

Edelman, commenting on the remarks of Jones, said it’s serious for PR when “the man who runs the foremost center for press and public policy in the U.S. is fundamentally skeptical about PR.”

He said PR should strive to tell both sides of a story and create a “new form of press release” in which quotes from company officials and other elements are assembled for use by reporters however they see fit. A financial release, for instance, might include the previous year’s numbers, customer quotes, and links to search engines. More input should be sought from consumers so that they can participate as co-creators, he said.

Concluded Edelman: “We should try to stop making a distinction between communications and PR. Though there may be some who believe communications is a more holistic description of our modern tool kit, I believe we will be hung with our legacy issues. We need to improve the practice of PR.”

(Media news continued on next page)

MEDIA COS. SETTLE LEE CASE.

Five media companies have agreed to pay $750K to former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee to settle a Privacy Act lawsuit between Lee and the federal government.

ABC News, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post issued a joint statement saying they agreed to the payout to “protect our confidential sources, to protect our journalists from further sanction and possible imprisonment.”

Lee had subpoenaed reporters from the outlets who wrote about an FBI probe into possible espionage by Lee. He was cleared of all charges, but one of mishandling classified material.

The reporters failed to comply with the subpoenas, and a U.S. District Court in `04 found them in contempt, and fined them $500 a day until they complied. The fines were stayed pending appeal.

In ’05, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington agreed with the lower court. The Supreme Court had intended to take up the case, but put it on hold when Lee entered settlement negotiations.

The U.S. Government has agreed to pay Lee $895K to cover his legal costs.

The news organizations say the Lee case underscores the need for a federal shield law.

People _________________

James Ridgeway, a veteran journalist and columnist who was a casualty of the Village Voice’s new owners, has joined Mother Jones as its new Washington bureau chief. Ridgeway has written for The New Republic, Wall Street Journal, and Ramparts, and will be working with the independent magazine's investigative team.

Joy Sims has joined the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. as media relations director. She is exiting Porter Novelli Public Affairs for that post, and earlier worked for West Virginia Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller.

Alice Rawsthorn, former director of the design museum of London, has been tapped as lead critic for a new International Herald Tribune column called “Design.”

The online and print column will cover international developments in contemporary design and is complemented with a weekly slide show at iht.com/culture.

Roberta Baskin has resigned as executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based independent non-profit which conducts investigative journalism. Managing director Wendell Rawls Jr. takes the reins.

Baskin, who steps down June 15, said she will pursue investigative and documentary TV projects.
Rawls won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for investigative reporting while at the Philadelphia Inquirer. His career has spanned the Nashville Tennessean, New York Times (Southern bureau chief), and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (assistant managing editor).

Charles Lewis, who founded CPI in 1989, gave up the top post in 2004.

Kristin Kane, a freelance writer, has been named associate editor for Rodale’s Prevention magazine, based in New York. She works on the mag’s “News & Trends” section and reports to deputy editor John Hastings. She was formerly an assistant health editor at Self.

Briefs _________________

Tiempos del Mundo, a weekly Spanish-language paper distributed in the U.S. and 16 countries in South America by the conservative Washington Times parent News World Communications, has undergone a redesign and moved its editorial operations from Washington, D.C., to Miami.

The paper has also expanded its U.S. reach from Miami, New York and D.C. to include California and Texas.

Paris-based Fashion TV, a 24-hour fashion network, is launching a U.S. programming block on Turner Media Group’s Beauty and Fashion Channel, carried on DISH Network and Time Warner Cable.

A daily six-hour block of “haute couture” programming is planned, covering designers, interviews with models and stylists, and footage of fashion shows and parties around the globe.

Success magazine published its first issue which hit newsstands on June 6. The new pub is aimed at business people “who want to balance their professional and personal lives.”

Success, with an initial rate base of 650K (boosted by deals with business seminar companies), said it will cover entrepreneurship, money-making and finding time for family lives. The June edition is the first of three issues planned for ’06. The magazine said the average household income of readers is $136K.

Gay Bryant, a veteran of national women's titles former VP and editor of Family Circle, is editor-in-chief.

Snapple has embraced an idea called “brandcasting,” under which the beverage company bought up the entire block of commercial time on WFNX-FM Boston and two network affiliates for 40 days to give listeners commercial-free music from Memorial Day through July 4. Price tag was $2M.

Rainmaker Media was enlisted to create “branded” artist vignettes, image promos, and sampling appearances around the city to promote the media buy.

Microsoft is the sole sponsor of a Fortune “Secrets of Greatness” pull-out section that honors “six teams that made history.” Arch-rival Apple Computer is feted for the creation of its Macintosh computer. The Mac “marked a turning point in the history of the PC,” according to the piece.

XEL Media Group and Multi-Media International plan to launch a new men’s lifestyle magazine covering style, fitness, travel, sports, home entertainment, technology and destinations targeted to the “urban man.” The new pub, called LIQUID Magazine, is slated to launch nationally in the fall of 2006.

Alex Jones (page 5) has put the spotlight on pressures impacting both publishing and PR.

Media are turning away from “complexity” in order to cater to the perceived wants of target audiences, thereby depriving the public of the “high quality news that is essential to our democracy,” he says.

ABC-TV’s Ted Koppel, in the Jan. 29, 2006 New York Times, also complained about cable TV’s strategy of “programming to satisfy the market.” The networks have adopted the same strategy, he said, hurting both themselves and their audiences. “Journalists should be telling their viewers what is important, not the other way around,” he wrote.

A comment to odwyerpr.com was: “A large part of the U.S. is getting dumber and fatter.”

There’s not much that PR pros or journalists can do about CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the big newspaper chains or local newspapers if such media want to make profits their over-riding goal.

But PR people can do something about their own trade press, which has nearly collapsed in recent years because of biased purchasing policies of the five ad conglomerates that acquired 21 of the 25 largest PR firms and hundreds of others.

PR pros at Omnicom PR firms no doubt are well aware of CEO John Wren’s deep aversion to press coverage including his ongoing battle with the Wall Street Journal. The Feb. 9 WSJ, reiterating previous criticism, said $89 million in dot-com losses were improperly removed from the 2001 balance sheet.

Any OMC employee who dares put an “unfriendly” news medium on his or her expense account risks a career at the agency. In any case, one of the accountants from the parent would immediately block the purchase.

A similar atmosphere is present at PR firms owned by the other conglomerates. Because of this, five PR publications have gone under in the past several years at a time when PR is supposedly expanding. These are the 50-year-old weekly PR Reporter and two publications each owned by Ragan Comms. and Paul Holmes.

A sixth publication, PR Quarterly, has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

PRQ ($65 a year) once had upwards of 3,500 subscribers. But its USPS statement in its 50th and Golden Anniversary issue last winter showed circulation of 840. There have been no further issues although we hear one is in the works. Editor/owner is Elaine Newman, widow of founder Howard Hudson, who died in 2005. Hudson, a member of PRSA 50+ years, was former president of PRSA/National Capital, and founded Hudson’s Washington News Media Contacts, Newsletter on Newsletters and the New York Newsletter Assn.
PRQ had only one ad in its anniversary edition–a $500 ad by PR Newswire. Ad directors of PRQ told us they pitched the big shops for years without result.

PRQ has fine articles, many of them by academics who take a different view of issues. The current PRQ has an analysis of the Sago mine disaster in West Virginia by Edward Lordan, Ph.D., West Chester Univ., and a “Look Back at PR” by E.W. Brody, journalism professor, Univ. of Memphis. PRSA thought so well of PRQ’s articles that it sold at least 20,000 copies of them for its information packets in the early 1990s. PRSA admitted it did not obtain permission from Hudson or other authors. But it refused to pay them anything. It contended it was a “library” and did not “sell” the packets but only charged a “loan fee”of $20 or $55 (non-members). PRSA’s profits on 3,800 packets yearly totaled about $200K. Hudson, incensed at PRSA, joined 12 other authors in exploring a lawsuit. But lawyers advised copyright law was “too murky” and lawsuits too costly.

“Off-balance sheet” transactions is the root cause of jail sentences that are to be handed out in the Enron scandal. Plaintiffs are also charging the same thing in lawsuits against Omnicom related to the off-loading of its dot-com investments.

We have yet to hear from president Cheryl Procter- Rogers or treasurer Jeff Julin of PRSA about the $5.8M in rent obligations that three accounting professors say belong on the PRSA balance sheet (May 17 NL). This is another case of off-balance sheet shenanigans.

The CPA profs also say PRSA should put about $2 million in unearned dues on its balance sheet. These balance sheet omissions should not be ignored by PRSA. It should put its financial house in order and live up to its code which says PRSA promotes “the highest standards of accuracy and truth.”

A study of the PR trade media might be commissioned by Martin Sorrell of WPP ($40M in pay in 2004); John Wren of Omnicom ($50M+ in cash from 1998-06) or Interpublic’s John Dooner ($15.5M from 2001-02). PR Seminar might study the press of its own industry. Another candidate is the Arthur W. Page Society, the most media- friendly of all the PR groups...we criticized WPP’s purchase of IEG Sponsorship Report (May 3 NL), noting that ad agencies, based on common sense and ad agency tradition, are not supposed to own media. Up until 1970, members of the 4As were flatly banned from owning media. Three members were ousted because of such ownership. But then, after debate, the members voted by 2-1 to allow media ownership as long as it is disclosed. IEG owner Lisa Ukman told the Newsletter on Newsletters that we were “crazy” to criticize the sale. She says WPP is mainly interested in IEG’s conferences and training programs and “It’s in our contract that our publications are independent.” Even if WPP wanted to interfere, “it would hurt our credibility,” she added. The many PR firms that sold to the conglomerates were no doubt also assured of their independence. But now they can’t report fee and staff totals; announce new accounts or supply account lists, and can hardly even speak in public. Every nickel they spend is watched and especially anything spent on the trade press. They use expensive ad campaigns and award programs to promote themselves instead of PR.

--Jack O'Dwyer