F-H LANDS 811 PR ACCOUNT.

Fleishman-Hillard beat an initial field of 26 firms to guide a national PR campaign for the energy industry to prevent pipeline damage by consumers.

Under the umbrella of the Common Ground Alliance, entities like ExxonMobil, Shell, and the American Gas Assn. are developing a national 811 phone system for consumers to call before digging or excavating in order to curb millions of dollars in damage sustained each year to underground pipes and cables.

The 811 system is expected to be fully operational by next April.

F-H’s Washington, D.C.-based team emerged with a unanimous decision by the CGA’s education, marketing and communications committee from among eight finalists following an RFP in May.

The firm is charged with developing a nationwide education campaign slated to kickoff early next year. Do-it-yourselfers are a key target demographic.

The FCC designated 811 as a national “call before you dig” hotline to unify disparate 800 numbers across the U.S.

MATTHEWS CHECKS IN AT MARRIOTT.

Kathleen Matthews, an anchor/reporter at ABC News 7 (WJLA-TV) in Washington, D.C., becomes executive VP-global communications & PA at Marriott International on Dec. 1. She reports to CEO J.W. Marriott, Jr.

Matthews anchored the evening news at ABC-7 for 15 years. She co-hosted “Capital Sunday,” a half-hour program on current events, and hosted “Working Women,” a magazine talk show viewed in 75 markets.

Marriott, in a statement, called Matthews “an award-winning, respected and highly visible journalist.” He praised her as a “committed citizen” who is dedicated to improving the quality of life in D.C.

She is president of the National Council for the Shakespeare Theatre, Mount Vernon National Advisory Board and serves on the board of Catholic Charities Foundation, Black Student Fund and Suited for Change.

Matthews succeeds Charlotte Sterling, who is retiring at yearend. She joined Marriott in `96.

Howard Paster has stepped down from WPP Group’s board of directors and plans to relinquish his executive VP/PR position by the end of the year.

President Clinton’s former lobbyist wants to either work part-time at WPP or serve as a consultant. Paster also has been serving as chairman of Burson-Marsteller, teaching new CEO Mark Penn the ropes.

DIMARIA EXITS MOTOROLA.

Valerie DiMaria, who joined Motorola as VP-communications and public affairs in December ’04, exited the $39B electronics giant in May. “I am still in Chicago, but am looking for opportunities back from where I am from,” the Bronx native told O’Dwyer’s.

DiMaria, who kept her house in Connecticut, enjoyed her time at Motorola and feels that she did a good job positioning CEO Ed Zander, who joined the company at the beginning of ’04, in the marketplace. She plans to take the rest of the summer off before scouting for a job in the tri-state New York metro area.

The 49-year-old PR pro had held the VP-corporate PR post at GE Capital and was president of GCI Group before shifting to Motorola, where she had reported to chief marketing officer Geoffrey Frost who died suddenly last November.

ACLU USES WATTS FOR VRA.

The American Civil Liberties Union has hired the Republican lobbying shop, J.C. Watts Cos., to win reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act that was signed into law in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson.

That push took a big step forward on July 13 as the House voted by a big margin to renew various provisions of the Act that would have expired next year. Conservatives wanted to dump parts of the Act, such as the requirement of bilingual ballots and the stationing of federal election observers at polls where there is evidence of efforts to intimidate minority voters.

J.C. Watts, the former Republican Congressman from Oklahoma, spearheads the lobbying drive. He is assisted by Jon Vandenheuval, who was executive director of the House Republican Conference, and Tripp Baird, ex-aide to Florida Senator Mel Martinez.

The VRA reauthorization now goes to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

OESTREICHER JUMPS TO ZENO.

Paul Oestreicher, head of Hill & Knowlton’s U.S. healthcare practice, has joined Zeno Group in that same capacity as managing director of the Edelman unit’s New York office. He takes over for Charlotte Wray, who left the firm last month for Omnicom’s Mosaic Health Communications.

Earlier in his career, Oestreicher was GM of Edelman’s Chicago-based health unit.

He joined H&K from DeVries, where he was managing director of that firm’s healthcare practice. Oestreicher previously worked at Wyeth Laboratories and Hoffman-LaRoche.

WAL-MART BURNISHES ‘GREEN’ IMAGE.

Wal-Mart Stores hosted Al Gore at its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters on July 12 to highlight its new found commitment to improving the environment.

The former Vice President screened his movie about the threat from global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” for Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott and executives from supplier companies.

Suppliers were summoned to Bentonville to participate in Wal-Mart’s quarterly “sustainable value network” meeting to show how their companies are increasing energy efficiency and curbing greenhouse gas.

Gore was joined by Jim Ball, executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, the group behind the “What Would Jesus Drive” campaign.

Wal-Mart also burnished its “green” credentials in June by hiring environmentalists Amory and Hunter Lovins’ Rocky Mountain Institute.

RMI is helping Wal-Mart develop a plan to double the fuel efficiency of its delivery truck fleet by 2015 and to make its large retail stores more environmentally friendly.

Edelman handles Wal-Mart’s makeover.

WATSON TAKES KEY NIELSEN PR POST.

Karen Watson, a veteran government and public affairs communicator, has taken a SVP/communications post with Nielsen Media Research and parent VNU’s Media Measurement and Information Group in New York.

She takes over responsibility for press relations, external communications, marketing support and communication to clients, reporting to chief communications officer Jack Loftus.

Watson had served on an independent task force on television measurement that reported to Nielsen in 2005 on measuring minority audiences. Nielsen took considerable heat from critics last year. Organized by News Corp. and the PR firm Glover Park Group under the “Don’t Count Us Out Coalition” moniker in 2005, that group said the company was undercounting minorities in its TV metrics.

Susan Whiting, Nielsen’s president and CEO, said in a press release announcing Watson’s hire that the monitoring industry is in an “important transitional period” when it’s “important that we communicate extensively with clients, the media and the public.”

The company recently announced it would begin tracking commercials, raising some eyebrows in the ad industry.

Watson was VP of government relations for Echostar Satellite from 1996-05, opening the company’s Washington, D.C., office and lobbying the White House and Congress on its behalf.

For two years prior, she served as director of the office of public affairs at the Federal Communications Commission, directing media relations, public outreach and responses to public inquiries.

Watson earlier held several posts at PBS and NPR, including deputy project director for the production of the PBS series “Africans in America.” She was also press secretary for the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control.

IPRA HONORS GLOBAL PR EFFORTS.

Edelman and Weber Shandwick were the top winners of the International PR Association’s Golden Awards for Excellence in PR, announced last week.

Edelman won four while WS took home three awards and two honorable mentions in the annual competition, which saw 323 entries across 41 countries for 21 awards this year.

Edelman earned nods for the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign in the traditional media relations category, and for an advocacy and lobbying effort called “Free Them Now” for the Moroccan American Center for Policy. That effort created a “groundswell” of international pressure and led to the release of 408 Moroccans, recognized as the world’s longest held prisoners of war, who were held in camps in north Africa, according to IPRA.

A WS-created internal communications campaign for American Airlines called “Fuel Smart” and a pro-bono effort for the group War Child about the effects of war on children were among the firm’s winners.

Hill & Knowlton won two awards for London’s 2012 Olympic bid and for a campaign in Germany about natural gas from Russia.

London-based Kaizo also earned two awards from IPRA for hotel/tourism work for DLR and in the fast moving consumer goods category for Accantia.

SORRELL SHINES IN SUN.

WPP Group CEO Martin Sorrell is bullish on online advertising, predicting that Internet-related revenues will account for 30 percent of the ad/PR conglom’s revenues in ten years.

The Internet currently generates 15 percent of WPP’s total $10B revenues, Sorrell told the New York Sun. The paper featured the interview and put a photo of the British CEO on its July 13 front page.

Sorrell said though Google threatens to compete with WPP by “setting up electronic platforms to buy and sell media,” the biggest threat from the search company comes from its wealth.

He noted that Google with $5B in revenues has a market cap of $130B, while WPP’s cap is $15B. Of Google, he said: “They are not stupid. They have firepower.”

WPP is not betting on technologies. “We provide advertising content for whatever platform people are reading, watching or listening to,” Sorrell told Diane Francis during an interview in WPP’s New York office.

EDELMAN GUIDES ESMARK

Edelman is guiding Esmark, the Chicago-based steel distributor which plans to launch a proxy fight for control of Wheeling-Pittsburgh.

Esmark calls W-P an “under-capitalized entity with a history of earnings disappointments.” The steel company, which emerged from Chapter 11 in ’03, posted a $33M loss last year on $1.6B revenues.

Esmark faults W-P’s board and wants to shut down W-P’s integrated blast furnace and invest in facilities that can compete with lower cost mini-steel mills. Esmark claims to have the support of the United Steel Workers.

Since its formation in ’03, Esmark has acquired nine steelmakers.

TRIBUNE AXES ANOTHER 120.

The Tribune Co., which launched a $2.5B stock buyback plan in March, is cutting another 120 people from its 3,000 member work force. The Chicago-based media combine ended ’05 by cutting 90 staffers.

The company says it will decide by Labor Day what staffers will get the boot. The cutbacks are part of CEO Dennis FitzSimons’ plan to pare expenses by $200M.

Tribune, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and Newsday, reported July 13 that second quarter net dropped 62 percent to $85.7M.

CALIFORNIAN HELPS AL-QAEDA VIDEO PUSH.

A 27-year-old Californian is the creative brain behind Al-Qaeda's propaganda pieces, according to NBC News.

Adam Gadahn, a former heavy metal music fanatic who grew up on a goat farm, is credited with crafting highly polished and professional videos for the terror group.

He converted to Islam in ’96 after spending many hours surfing the ’Net to learn about the religion.

Gadahn, who is now known as “Assam the American,” was recruited to Al-Qaeda by a Palestinian-American, whom he followed on a “religious pilgrimage” to Pakistan.

It is suspected that Gadahn played a role in producing the videos dealing with the attack on the U.S.S. Cole destroyer in 2000 and the Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

Gadahn’s voice is first heard on a video praising the "heroic" hijackers and urging Muslims to “follow the footsteps of these heroes and destroy the remnants of this idol America.”

The FBI declared Gadahn a “person of interest” on Sept. 11, 2004. In his first ’05 video appearance, he was wrapped in a kaffiyeh and held an automatic weapon while threatening the next attack will make America forget all about 9/11. He appeared unmasked for the first time on an Al-Qaeda video released last week.

NBC News believes Gadahn is the “clearest indication of Al-Qaeda’s effort to reach out beyond the typical profile of a terrorist recruit and make contact with a new breed of operators: native-born Europeans and Americans.”

APPLE BACKS OFF LEGAL LEAK HUNT.

Apple has aborted its legal pursuit of an individual who leaked product information to a website that covers the company.

Despite an earlier pledge by CEO Steve Jobs to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, the company has backed off the fight after a California state appeals court denied Apple’s request to subpoena records from PowerPage.org and AppleInsider.com in order to identify the Apple employee who provided the information.

The case was closely watched by bloggers for its implications in potentially affording press protection to so-called citizen journalist websites. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which argued the case on behalf of the two websites, called the ruling a “huge win” for online journalists, although the appeals court didn’t comment on whether the sites are “legitimate” press operations. Apple can still appeal and/or conduct a more thorough internal investigation, as the state appeals court judges suggested.

CHENEY, LIBBY, ROVE CHARGED.

Former CIA agent Valerie Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, filed a federal lawsuit last week against Vice President Dick Cheney, his former chief of staff Scooter Libby and White House advisor Karl Rove for their alleged roles in outing her as a secret agent.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleges a conspiracy to “discredit, punish and seek revenge” against Wilson for his role in disputing the White House tale of Saddam Hussein seeking uranium in Niger. It alleges that Plame and Wilson have suffered an invasion of privacy and lost career opportunities because of the disclosure. They also fear for the safety of their children.

The suit does not ask for a specific dollar amount, but seeks compensatory/punitive damages as well as attorney’s fees.

In conjunction with the lawsuit, the Joseph and Valerie Wilson Legal Support Trust has been established to help pay for the lawsuit.

TIME WARNER RAPS ‘LEAKS.’

Time Warner has issued a statement blasting “recent media reports” that “appear to be based on unauthorized disclosure, including incomplete and largely erroneous financial information” about the fate of its AOL unit.

The troubled publishing conglom is apparently referring to the July 10 article in the New York Times and a July 11 Wall Street Journal piece about plans to offer AOL free-of-charge in an effort to boost long-term advertising revenues.

The Times labeled the plan “draconian,” and a radical departure of the current strategy of trying to milk every dime from AOL’s quickly diminishing dial-up subscriber base.

The Journal noted that TW is going to sacrifice nearly $1B in operating profit through ’09, and plans to fire thousands of staffers under the restructuring scenario.

Jonathan Miller, AOL’s CEO, is the architect of the plan. He put it together at the urging of Jeff Bewkes, the likely successor to TW chief Dick Parsons. TW says it will release its plan on Aug. 2 with the announcement of its second-quarter earnings report and warns investors not to draw conclusions regarding AOL’s future strategy until then.

The New York-based firm’s stock has tanked again. It hit a new 52-week low of $15.70 on July 17.

Ed Adler is TW’s communications chief.

The Israeli military fired upon a Fox News TV van on July 13 that was operating in the Gaza Strip. The incident was aired live. Nobody was hurt.

(Media news continued on next page)

PRESS HIT FOR NUKE GROUP COVERAGE.

The Columbia Journalism Review (July/August) has criticized media coverage of the Clean & Safe Energy Coalition, a front group forged by Hill & Knowlton for the nuclear power industry.

It is upset that the media praised the environmental credentials of the C&SEC’s co-chairs Christine Whitman (former Environmental Protection Agency head and ex-New Jersey Governor) and Patrick Moore (Greenpeace co-founder) without mentioning that they are shills of the coalition.

“Part of the thinking, surely, was that the press would peg them as dedicated environmentalists who have turned into pro-nuke cheerleaders, rather than paid spokespeople,” says the editorial.

The magazine singles out the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Baltimore Sun, Rocky Mountain News and CBS News for failing to tie Whitman and Moore to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the backer of the Coalition.

CJR says it has no position on nuclear power and admits that PR is becoming more sophisticated. But it concludes: “We just find it maddening that Hill & Knowlton, which has an $8M account with the nuclear industry, should have such an easy time working the press.”

BUSH COVERS DOLE.

The New York Sun noted on July 10 that President Bush, in taunting the New York Times, is taking a page from former Senator Bob Dole’s playbook.

The ex-Presidential candidate lashed into the Times beginning ten days before the ’96 election. “Every day for nearly a week, Mr. Dole complained of pervasive bias in the newspaper's campaign coverage and pleaded with voters to send a message to the Times and other news organizations by supporting him on Election Day,” wrote Josh Gerstein.

Like Dole in ’96, Congressional Republicans are on the political ropes, according to Gerstein.

Scott Reed, Dole’s campaign manager, calls picking on the NYT “a home run with the Republican base.” He agrees the current salvos lodged against the Times are an attempt to rally the forces, and show Republicans that the “White House is on the offense for the first time since ’04.”

Gerstein wrote that Dole’s Times trashing gained little traction. After the loss to Bill Clinton, Dole admitted that the attacks were politically motivated, and conceded that though he liked the media, “they don't like them in the South.”

Gerstein, who covered the Dole campaign for ABC News, remembers an event in Texas, where the Senator whipped the audience into an anti-media frenzy.

The crowd started to hoot and jeer reporters, leading members of the media to “double-check the path to the exit.”

Gerstein believes that Republicans could gain a political dividend if “Americans are truly outraged” over the Times coverage about the feds monitoring bank transactions.

Briefs ______________________

Advertising Age and AdWeek, in their July 17 issues, ran stories about Interpublic being a takeover target because of its plunging stock price that dropped to a 15-year low of $7.86 on July 14. AdWeek says Publicis CEO Maurice Levy, who is in the “twilight” of his career, could make the deal stand as his legacy. Levy had no comment. Ad Age notes that IPG insiders are disappointed in the performance of CEO Michael Roth. The company’s stock price is down 40 percent since former insurance executive Roth took over in Jan. `05 from ad man David Bell.

CBS is touting its fall television line-up by printing ads on 35 million eggs that will be sold in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago

Conde Nast is paying Lycos $25 million for its Wired News online unit in a bid to reunite it with Wired magazine.

Lycos purchased Wired Digital for $83M in '99. That deal came a year after Conde Nast's Advance Publications subsidiary purchased the magazine for $75M.

Business Week (July 17) features a press release from Dave Overton of Boston’s Newman Communications about the “demise” of Ken Lay. Overton wrote that CEOs often get fired because they deny reality.

He continued: “One could argue in Lay’s case that the truth he would be forced to confront (bankrupt company, displaced workers, destroyed nest eggs, prison, etc.) was so horrible and so unavoidable that his body simply shut down rather than confront a terrible reality.”

The former Enron chief’s death, according to Overton, “may be the equivalent of a child sticking their fingers in their ears to avoid hearing something bad. But a lot more final.”

Overton offers his client Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, as an interview for “some interesting thoughts on the demise of Ken Lay and how others can avoid his fate.” BW put Overton’s release in a box called “Annals of Public Relations.”

People ____________________

Lynne Johnson has joined FastCompany.com as senior editor in charge of editorial content and community “functionality.” She reports to Laura Rich, editorial director of the website.

Johnson, 38, had been general manager, new media for Vibe.com. She was responsible for business development, day-to-day marketing, production and sales for both the web and mobile properties. Prior to that, Johnson was at Spin.com.

Paramount Pictures, part of Viacom, has hired General Electric’s Fred Huntsberry for its COO post. He will be responsible for worldwide strategic planning, studio operations and human resources.

Huntsberry succeeds Rob Moore, who now focuses on Paramount Home Entertainment and digital media.

“At Colleges, Women are Leaving Men in the Academic Dust” headlined a page one New York Times story July 9 that jumped to two pages inside.

College age men took a pasting, portrayed as unfocused, unmotivated, lazy, childish (obsessed with video games), and prone to cutting up (i.e., Duke lacrosse team hiring strippers).

For every 50 women who graduate from college, only 37 men do. The imbalance is worse for minorities with women comprising more than 80% of the minority student body at many schools.

One reason there are 54 million single females is that there is a shortage of male college graduates.

“Communications” and related areas are favored by women while men lean to the “math-science axis.” It’s a rare male who is majoring in PR or communications these days.

There is no mention in the article of the 2-3 year edge in physical and emotional maturity that teenage females have over males, giving females an unfair advantage in winning places in college. One solution that may not be politically possible is a 50-50 quota for college males and females.

A college teacher wrote the NYT shortly after the article that her students who are veterans do much better than males right out of high school. They’re “responsible, respectful, diligent and engaged,” she said. Of course they are, they’re two years older. Maybe males should work two years before college, “growing up” while earning needed $$.

PR/communications majors (mostly women) must think hard about what they are studying. There are 11 million college students, according to the Census Bureau. At least one million are studying PR, communications, etc., estimates PR author Richard Weiner. Millions more are studying English, history, etc., and are also PR job candidates.

The Census Bureau reports there are only 350,000 people working in “PR,” meaning there are 3-6 times as many people studying PR as there are jobs.

Oddly, the PR Student Society of America unit of PRSA has only 9,000 members, a small fraction of one percent of potential PR job candidates. Dues are $41 yearly plus chapter dues at the 270 colleges allowed to have PRSSA chapters (out of the total of 4,000 colleges).

There’s a big unserved market here.

Students should know that the term “PR” (and possibly the function) has almost disappeared from corporations. “PR” is in only one of the titles of the 33 new members of PR Seminar (page 7). While traditional “PR” does not seem to be in demand, there is a great need for marketing communications services by millions of small and medium-sized companies. They often fail because they don’t promote enough.

PRSA will hold a “leadership” teleconference Friday Aug. 4 for board members, chapter presidents, Assembly delegates, etc. Given the debacle that took place at the last conference (May 5), in which PRSA president Cheryl Procter-Rogers hung up on both the a.m. and p.m. sessions before anyone could ask questions, we hope leaders will press for a new format.

Tradition is for at least 45 minutes of speechifying by leaders before any questions are allowed. Instead, such remarks should be e-mailed to leaders a week in advance and posted on the PRSA website. The call should open with Q&As. First questions should be why hasn’t the Central Michigan proposal for governance reform been posted on the PRSA website and what does the board think of it?

Another question is why hasn’t a COO been selected yet to replace Catherine Bolton. PRSA, which is seeking a “leader” who will be “charismatic,” “visionary,” and an “accomplished speaker,” cannot afford the salaries sought by executives who fit this description, sources tell us. Recruiters have asked us what we think of this job opening. We have directed them to our website where there are plenty of materials. PRSA leaders are now paying the price for their undemocratic, anti-New York, anti-press and other dysfunctional policies and habits including issuing misleading financial statements.

Only two viable candidates showed up in 1994 when the last COO search was conducted—Ray Gaulke and Mitch Kozikowski...a new COO must face working under 2007 president Rhoda Weiss, who spends much of her time in Hawaii working for a large healthcare chain. She won’t identify it, even to friends. Weiss, a solo practitioner who is president-elect, has refused to take over spokesperson duties for PRSA apparently abandoned by Procter-Rogers...PRSA leaders are shocked at the way the board has grasped power to itself. Twelve of the 27 committees and advisory boards are headed by directors themselves when tradition was to share this power with non-board members as a way of training and involving new leaders...PRSA’s self-auditing function is in shambles. Michigan Counselor Gabe Werba heads the audit committee but thus far won’t comment on the criticisms of PRSA’s 2005 audit by three college accounting professors (5/17 NL). Also on the audit committee are treasurer Jeff Julin (who is in the position of auditing his own report); Donna Stein; ex-BEPS head Bob Frause; Maria Russell, and Diane Salucci. Salucci is with Bear Wagner, New York, NYSE specialist firm employing 300. We offered to send her the critique of the three professors but she rejected this and said only Werba could speak.

There is also a finance committee headed by Julin but neither he nor PRSA h.q. will identify its members. Sarbanes-Oxley, followed by many nonprofits, mandates a financial expert on boards of directors, the presence of “independent” directors, and strict internal financial controls....more secrecy: the national board is meeting July 27-29 in Philadelphia but there is no mention of this on the PRSA website.

--Jack O'Dwyer