TEXAS REGION EYES DISASTER PR PUSH.

Municipalities in northern Texas, including the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, have begun a search for an agency to develop a regional disaster education plan.

Bolstered by funding from the federal Dept. of Homeland Security, Fort Worth has issued an RFP on behalf of the area referred to locally as North Central Texas. The initial four-month PR push, which includes development of PSAs, a preparedness guidebook, website and logo, is seen as the first step of a wider campaign tentatively centered on “12 months to preparedness,” which has each month focusing on a different aspect of emergency/disaster preparedness.

A budget figure was not provided because price will be a factor in making a decision to hire an agency. Fleishman-Hillard won a similar PR contract for the National Capitol Region around Washington, D.C., in May for about $100K.

Proposals are due Sept. 7. A pre-proposal conference has been scheduled for August 17 at the Fort Worth Environmental Management Dept., but attendance is not mandatory. Summer Wilhelm ([email protected]), an emergency management officer for the city, is taking questions.

EXXONMOBIL TAPS KERRY AIDE.

ExxonMobil has tapped ML Strategies to work on environmental, energy and tax lobbying issues.

David Leiter, John Kerry’s former chief of staff, has registered as a lobbyist for the energy giant. He worked in the Clinton/Gore Energy Dept. as principal deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy. At ML, Leiter is senior executive VP of government relations.

He is joined on Team ExxonMobil by Mark Buse, an ex aide to Sen. and Rep. John McCain for 18 years, and Steven Irizarry, who worked for Sen. Chuck Hagel.

Jeff Julin, president of MGA Communications in Denver, has been nominated as 2007 president-elect of PR Society of America. He is currently treasurer of PRSA and was among 11 selected for nomination in Chicago last week. He has been a PRSA national board member since 2002 and served as the board secretary in 2005. ...Weber Shandwick is handling the national re-branding campaign of the Casual Male retail chain which is retiring its “big and tall” signage for a sleeker “XL” logo. The logo is supposed to make big and tall shoppers feel “more like an athlete.” CM CEO David Levin sees a bright future as the typical American male continues to grow in size.

VOCUS PAYS $28M FOR PRWEB.

Vocus Inc., the publicly traded PR software developer and marketer, has acquired Internet press release disseminator PRWeb in a $28M deal.

The move puts PRWeb’s search engine optimization services and embrace of “social media” release tools like podcasting and tagging under the roof of Lanham, Md.-based Vocus. Its releases have an eye on bypassing traditional media and are syndicated through portals like Google News and Yahoo! News.

Vocus said PRWeb operations and staff will remain in Ferndale, Wash. Kelly Brighton, director of marketing communications for Vocus, said PRWeb’s services, many of which are free, will continue to be offered as they exist today.

Vocus, which went public with a $45M IPO in late 2005, paid $20.8M in cash and turned over more than 494K shares of stock. Quarterly revenues for the software company have been between $9M and 10M.

GCI NAMES AD EXEC PRESIDENT.

GCI Group has named adman Joel Babbit president and chief creative officer of the firm. Babbit is second in command to CEO Jeff Hunt.

Babbit continues in a top role at GCI parent Grey Worldwide’s Atlanta office.

Hunt said that Babbit has been considered a pioneer in the advertising world “for his belief in the power of public relations and true integrated marketing.”

GCI said Babbit will lead the firm’s integrated communications strategy while developing a new creative group within the agency.

Babbit’s 20-year advertising career has spanned McCann Erickson, Chiat/Day. He founded Babbit and Reiman Advertising, which was acquired by London’s GGT in 1991, and 360, which fell to Grey in 2002.

IPG EARNS $68.9M.

Interpublic Group reported $68.9M in second-quarter profit compared to $9.2M for the restated year ago period. Revenues slipped 4.8 percent to $1.5B.

Michael Roth, CEO of IPG, said the 0.5 percent rise in first-half “organic revenues” shows that IPG has replaced revenues from clients lost in `05. He noted that IPG saw “indications of stepped-down professional fees” connected to its financial restructuring. His focus for the remainder of the year is to manage cost and improve profit margins. Roth believes IPG is “on track to meet the `08 turnaround goals.”

IPG owns MWW Group, GolinHarris and Weber Shandwick.

ILLINOIS DANGLES RFP FOR EMISSION PR.

The state of Illinois, where metropolitan areas are failing to meet federal air quality standards, has issued an RFP for a firm to lead a major public education effort regarding vehicle emissions.

Exhaust and the evaporation of vehicle fuel are the top causes of ozone and harmful air particles in the state. The greater Chicago and Metro-East St. Louis areas currently do not meet federal guidelines. Recent legislative action has modified Illinois’ 20-year-old biennial vehicle emissions checks.

Public service announcements, media outreach and press kits, newsletter design, and campaigns at inspection facilities and repair facilities, are among elements of the planned campaign.

A vendor conference has been set for Aug. 22 in Chicago and proposals are due by Sept. 14. Questions go to John Donato ([email protected]; 217/524-1849) of the Illinois EPA.

PCGCAMPBELL CHARGES TESLA’S PR.

PCG Campbell, the entity resulting from the May merger of Pacific Communications Group in Los Angeles and Campbell & Co., is the PR firm behind the high-profile July launch of the electric Tesla Roadster from Tesla Motors.

The Washington Post (July 22) branded the Tesla, which goes from 0 to 60 mph acceleration in four seconds, “an electric car with juice.” CBS Evening News (July 22) called its story “Silicon Valley Takes on Detroit.” The New York Times (July 23) ran an editorial in support of TM. It was headlined “Go Speed Racer.” The Los Angeles Times ran a story on July 26 that called the Tesla a “toothsome sports car.” The headline read “Look, Ma, no gas—and yet zero to 60 in just four seconds. The Tesla, which costs $100K and can go 250 miles on a single charge, also received a plug in the Aug. 2 “Foxtrot” comic strip of Universal Press Syndicate.

The Roadster ships next summer prior to a U.S. “road show” that begins in early ’07. The company plans to have “customer care centers” in California, New York, Chicago and Miami by the end of next year. People who want to buy a Tesla outside those markets can do so for an $8K shipping fee.

The Tesla Roadster is made by Lotus Cars in the U.K.

BIEL MOVES TO B-M.

Eric Biel, who was deputy Washington director and senior counsel of Human Rights First, is now managing director for corporate responsibility for Burson-Marsteller.

At HRF—formerly known as Lawyers Committee for Human Rights—Biel dealt with international justice, refugee/asylum and business-human rights group hook-ups.

Biel also worked as senior VP at the Fontheim International, a law and consulting firm, and in the Commerce Dept. during the Clinton Administration.

The 47-year-old Biel says his job is to forge partnerships that “reposition business models” to adapt to the changing needs of society.

He reports to Pat Ford, B-M’s U.S. president.

MARION JAVITS REMEMBERED.

The talk about Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman’s wife, Hadassah, working for Hill & Knowlton recalls the 1976 storm of controversy connected with Marion Javits, the wife of then-New York Senator Jacob Javits, working for Ruder Finn. [Lieberman left H&K at the outset of her husband’s campaign, according to the firm.]

The New York Times (2/27/76) ran a story about Javits getting the RF job after steering the $500K Iran National Airlines account to it. She was paid $67,500 consultant fee for the work.

Carl Byoir & Assocs., which was the No. 2 PR firm, had the Iran Air account. It was worth an annual $50K retainer for placing stories and hosting dinners for prominent Iranian leaders. Byoir CEO Robert Wood told the Times he was surprised to learn that RF gained a “much larger contract.”

Javits, following the uproar, resigned the Iran Air account because the “affiliation threatened to be damaging to her husband’s position as a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” according to the Times. RF kept the account until March 24. That’s when Bill Ruder and David Finn sent a memo to staffers warning them about a major Wall Street Journal piece about the firm.

The Times also reported that Javits and RF pitched a PR program to the Mexican National Tourist Council aimed at ending “difficulties with American Jewish groups” that were upset with Mexico’s United Nations vote on an anti-Zionism resolution. A number of groups canceled vacation plans to Mexico following the vote.

The Mexican Government turned down the proposed RF program.

SAUDIS SPEND $5.4M AT LOEFFLER GROUP.

Saudi Arabia shelled out $5.4M to The Loeffler Group during the six-month period ended May for work regarding the “war on terrorism,” political and economic reform, the Kingdom’s boycott of Israel and reform of its educational system.

TLG, which is based in Texas, is headed by former Texas Republican Congressman Tom Loeffler. He served as national finance co-chairman for the George W. Bush for President campaign. Loeffler also raised money for Bush’s Texas governor campaign and was Texas co-chairman for the Bush/Quayle campaign.

The Saudi money spent at TLG is more than what the Kingdom is paying Qorvis Communications, its post-9/11 PR firm. Qorvis received $3.6M from the Saudis during its latest reporting period.

VERBFACTORY CONNECTS WITH PEERME.

Silicon Valley PR shop VerbFactory has picked up PR duties for mobile VoIP company PeerMe, which was established in `04 to place voice over Internet protocol calls through mobile data connections, rather than more costly voice connections.

A client referral landed the account, which bills in the “high four-figure” per month range, according to VF principal Richard Berman. Edelman had worked with the company in the past.

Berman, a telecom PR veteran of Weber Shandwick and Ruder Finn, set up VerbFactory in 2003.

FORBES FAMILY SELLS MAG STAKE.

The Forbes family is selling a minority stake in Forbes Media, which houses Forbes magazine and its website, to an investor group that includes Bono, the lead U2 singer.

Insiders say Elevation Partners, a private equity firm, is paying more than $250M for a 40 percent stake in FM.

Ad pages in the business mag have declined sharply since the dot.com bust. Steve Forbes told the New York Times that the family’s business model has been “blasted by the web.”

The Forbes website, on the other hand, has been on a roll. It attracted more than 10M viewers in June, according to comScoreMedia Metrix.

That led Times reporter David Carr to write that EP is “buying into a website with a magazine attached, as opposed to the other way around.”

HUFFINGTONPOST GETS $5M SHOT-IN-ARM.

HuffingtonPost.com, the cheeky online news/comment site, has received $5M in funding from SoftBank Capital and Greycroft Partners.

Eric Hippeau, managing partner at SoftBank, said HP attracts the “best, brightest, most knowledgeable, provocative writers and pundits.” It is “fast becoming a must read.” The site has more than 750 bloggers.

Arianna Huffington, founder and editor of the site, said the cash will take the site to “the next level.”
Ken Sunshine Consultants reps HuffingtonPost.com.

GOOGLE WANTS ITS MTV.

Google has cut a deal to distribute videos from Viacom’s MTV Networks to targeted websites and bloggers.

The online search entity will put four- or five-minute clips on sites from shows such as Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “The Fairly OddParents,” MTV’s “Laguna Beach: The Real OC” and Comedy Central’s “South Park.” The partners will split ad revenues.

Tom Freston, CEO of Viacom, says the Google connection is a “terrific opportunity to take our content and distribute it even more widely on the web in a seamless and targeted way.”

VIACOM PAYS $200M FOR ATOM.

Viacom Inc. has signed a deal to acquire San Francisco-based Atom Entertainment, which produces online games, films and videos, for $200M.

AE is comprised of Shockwave.com and AddictingGames.com that offer more than 1,500 free and downloadable games online. AtomFilms.com and AddictingClips.com have online animation, drama, comedy and user-generated content.

The company, which will be a stand-alone entity of MTV Networks, has been profitable since ’02.

The deal when completed by the end of September will position MTV as a leader in the “casual gaming” market. The Viacom unit will have more than 50M gamers playing more than 400M games a month.

YOUTH DODGE ‘OLD MEDIA.’

Nine percent of teens aged 12 to 17 and 17 percent of young adults (18 to 24) get their information about current events from newspapers, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll. Two percent of both groups rely on newsmagazines for info.

Twenty-eight percent of teens and 38 percent of young adults count on local TV news for their source of information. Ten percent of teens get news from Viacom’s MTV Networks and six percent of young adults turn to satiric shows like “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” for news.

CLEVELAND PD OFFERS BUYOUTS.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Buckeye State’s biggest paper, is offering employee buyouts to staffers 50 and older with at least 20 years of service. They are eligible for a payment equal to 2½ years of salary.

PD publisher Terry Egger said in a statement: “In order to be as efficient as possible and to continue to provide our readers and advertisers with a high quality newspaper, we need to adjust our expenses to coincide with our revenue.”

Staffers have 45 days to mull the offer.

INC. EXTENDS REACH.

Inc., the magazine for small business, has established Inc. Growth Solutions to offer consulting, branding and financial planning services to entrepreneurs.

The venture is a partnership with Growth Strategy Partners (revenue generation/ leadership development), Hanft Unlimited (marketing/branding) and Tatum (financial planning/merger & acquisitions support).

Inc is owned by Mansueto Ventures.

KUPPER EXITS BW

Bill Kupper, 61, is stepping down as president of BusinessWeek, a McGraw-Hill Cos., property.

He will help in the search for a replacement and will remain through a transition period, according to Glenn Goldberg, president of the unit.

Kupper joined BW in ’95 as head of U.S. advertising sales. He assumed his current post in `00. He has been busy of late revamping the mag, which has readership of 4.7M.

BARLETT, STEELE TO VF.

Investigative reporters Donald Barlett and James Steele, who worked together at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 35 years and were dropped earlier this year in a cost-cutting move at Time, have signed on at Vanity Fair.

As contributing editors, they will write two articles a year. The duo has won two Pulitzer Prizes and two National Magazine Awards.

AOL has acquired community networking software developer Userplane for an undisclosed amount.

Userplane develops messaging and chat tools and counts Myspace.com and Honda among its clients.
AOL plans to use it to bolster its own widely used Instant Messenger service and community.

(Media news continued on next page)

PRODUCERS: EARNINGS ARE ‘NOT NEWS.’

More than 180 PR pros met at the Three West Club in New York on July 27 for a sold-out Publicity Club of New York panel featuring TV business news producers.

Karen Toulon, producer of TV and Radio for Bloomberg News, said many publicists mistakenly believe it newsworthy when their clients boast high quarterly earnings. A raise in stock price isn't usually enough to make a feature story – why their clients made more money, on the other hand, is much better material.

“People who are much more focused on their earnings and can't see the nugget of a story typically don't get on our show,” she said.

Toulon, whose show has seen as many as 120 guests in one day, said the program “takes cues from the global financial market" and interviews with financial experts are integral. A financial client who is willing to talk about trends in the marketplace is more likely to get a spot than someone who wants to plug their profits.

“We’re interested in stories that change the way the world looks at something, or stories about something you can make money off of,” said Nick Dunn, chief booker at CNBC. “If you can't tell me the story in one sentence, (your press release) is not going to get read.”

Charlie Herman, producer for ABC-TV, said a good rule of thumb for PR pros is to always be on the lookout for trends in the marketplace.

“If you're going to tell me a story about something that's out there and happening, give me an angle. If it's something that people are talking about or is interesting, I want to hear it,” he said.

“We’re looking for trends and elements, not the CEO or spokespersons. If a story is ‘we’ve got a new TV that saves you a million dollars a year,’ we’re not going to do that. But if energy savers are becoming a trend, and the need for those appliances becomes an issue, then it may be something we'll want to talk about.” So what are trends in today’s financial market?

Paul Amin, business news producer for CNN’s “American Morning,” said “businesses going green” and other environmental steps in the financial world continues to be a hot topic.

Wall Street’s loss of many top analysts over the years who have traded in their titles to become private consultants has also changed the world of business news, adding a diverse range of information that was previously limited.

For these reasons and many others, the panel was unanimous in their opinion that the business news world is growing at unprecedented rates, and as a result, is constantly on the lookout for fresh news items.

Dunn said CNBC will go through a “major platform change” in the upcoming months, and Herman noted that ABC.com's business website is also getting a face-lift in the very near future, along with a new team of producers and staff writers.

Because of this rapidly growing news market, Herman noted that a publicist’s chances of landing a pitch are increased anytime they can aid the fast pace of the newsroom.

JOURNALIST USES SEX TO GET STORIES.

Scarlett Johansson, playing college reporter Sondra Pransky in the Woody Allen movie, “Scoop,” flirts with and almost immediately beds story subject Peter Lyman, an English aristocrat played by Hugh Jackman.

Pransky recounts how she used the same technique on a previous story subject but failed to get the material she was looking for. She takes a false name in starting up a relationship with Lyman.

While Lyman is sleeping in his mansion, she goes through his belongings in search of clues that might indicate he is a murderer.

The image of journalists in movies and other media is the object of a continuing study by journalists.
“The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture Assocs.” has a database of more than 44,000 items covering journalists in films, TV, fiction, cartoons and commercials.

Journalists and others can join the association for a $35 annual fee. New members receive DVDs on “The Image of the Broadcast Journalist in Movies and TV, 1937-2006”; “Sob Sisters: The Image of the Female Journalist, 1929-2003”; “Real-Life Journalists in Movies and TV, 1939-2003,” and “Hollywood Looks at the News: 1925-2003.”

Membership applications: [email protected]. The IJPC is a project of the Norman Lear Center, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California (www.ijpc.org).

Materials of the group were on display at the annual conference of the Assn. for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication Aug. 2-5 in San Francisco.

LATIMES.COM KICKS OFF PHOTO PORTAL.

Latimes.com has moved to embrace the “social media” craze with the launch of a photo community called “Your Scene.”

The service allows users to upload photos, create albums and e-mail the collections.

The online portal for the Los Angles Times said it is one of many upcoming web initiatives intended to create a “closer connection with its readers.”

Photos are organized by the site across several categories like “Your L.A.,” “Pets” and “House & Garden.”

Pics will be reviewed by site editors for appropriateness and latimes.com takes non-exclusive right to liecense and use the photos.

People ______________________

Conservative Comedian Dennis Miller will be a political contributor on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” program beginning Sept. 13. He will also provide commentary on the Fox News website.

Reuters has hired ESPN’s Lee Ann Daly for the executive VP and chief marketing officer post. She joins on Jan. 1.

Chris Jones, who was director of programming at Yahoo!, is joining Portfolio to run its website.
Portfolio is the business magazine that is being launched by Conde Nast.

Der Spiegel (The Mirror) described by Wikipedia as “Europe’s biggest and Germany’s most influential” weekly magazine (1M circulation), had a lengthy article Aug. 7 blasting PR.

Drawing material as far back as Edward Bernays, who is condemned as a manipulator of opinion, the magazine headlined the piece: “Master of Deception” and said PR “manipulates our perception of the world” and “even assists in staging wars.”

Bernays, author of Propaganda and Crystallizing Public Opinion in the 1920s, is damningly quoted as saying the “masses” can be controlled “without them noticing” if the proper psychological tools are used.

He also bragged that “Goebbels [Nazi propaganda chief] had all my books in his library,” an observation especially meaningful to Germans.

Hill & Knowlton’s work for the Kuwaiti government in 1990 is cited as an example of PR being used to build support for a war. The alleged killing of babies by Iraqi soldiers, featured in H&K’s campaign, turned out to be false, Der Spiegel noted.

Turning to current topics, the magazine quotes U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as saying, “The real battleground is the publicity in our country.”

The PR work of the Rendon Group and Lincoln Group in Iraq is described.

Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, is quoted as saying that what Rendon and Lincoln do “is not PR.” PR is about “openness, not hiding,” said Edelman, who provided a translation of the article on his blog on edelman.com.

Der Spiegel disapprovingly notes the close coordination of PR and lobbying. It cites such activity in Brussels and Washington, D.C.

“Scoop,” the new Woody Allen movie, features a student journalist who uses sex and lies to get her stories. Scarlett Johansson, playing the reporter, gives a false identity to a murder suspect played by Hugh Jackman; lies about Allen being her father; pretends she can’t swim when she can (causing Jackman to rescue her), and spends a night with Jackman on the second date. She gets up while he sleeps to rifle through his belongings in search of clues...the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture Assocs. (ijpc.org) has a database of 44,000 items for $35. It is a project of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and was promoted at the conference of the Assn. for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in San Francisco Aug. 2-5...a major concern of the AEJMC meeting were blogs and sites like Facebook, which reaches 8 million+. Students post pictures and comments and create interest groups, one type being unfavorable critiques of their professors. Facebook raises “ethical issues such as taste, obscenity, privacy, bias and harassment,” a panel was told. The audience of professors, asked by the moderator how it was coping with Facebook, was silent...blogs are basically the rebirth of the so-called “penny press” that helped touch off the Revolutionary War, says a lengthy article in the 8/7 New Yorker by Nicholas Lemann. This communication form, made possible by the invention of the printing press, dates back to the late 1600's. Ordinary people were able to get their opinions across when established media failed to do so. Lemann, after sampling lots of blogs, says it’s mostly filled with innocuous, “heartwarming” items and that the best journalism comes from bloggers who have some type of inside information or were present at a disaster. But true reporting requires questioning of institutions and other news sources and few bloggers are up to this, he writes...newsu.org is a popular blog for aspiring journalists (operated by Poynter with funds from Knight). The biggest citizen-journalism site is said to be ohmynews.com/english with a claimed worldwide audience of 600,000 daily. It is in many languages. Founded in South Korea, ohmynews editors pick the best postings by “reform-minded” citizens and pay the writers...when blocked by news sources, we turn to Google these days for almost instant answers. For instance, PRSA president-elect Rhoda Weiss does not talk to us about anything so we couldn’t check with her about the claim made in her bio on Bulldogreporter.com 3/24/06 that she is “acting CEO of a statewide health organization.” But a tip said she has done a lot of work with St. Francis Healthcare System of Hawaii. A search found several articles by Weiss for the system. Telephone operators at the System were not familiar with her name. Whether this is the “statewide” organization she referred to remains a mystery...Jeff Julin has the official nomination of PRSA for president-elect but he should be opposed at the Assembly by a leader who will bring back the printed Blue Book of members, cut the nearly $2 million loss on the annual conference in places like Salt Lake City, and open the PRSA website to its “citizen” members. One of the most unethical things PRSA has ever done is block mention on its website of the Central Michigan chapter proposal for governance reform (and September at PRSA is “ethics month!”)...neither Weiss nor Julin has ever expressed opinions on the Blue Book, Central Michigan, the money-losing national conference, PRSA h.q. control of the website nor any other important subject and have spent their PRSA careers dodging questions from us...a PRSA employee a couple of years ago tried to start a blog critical of management and was threatened with a defamation lawsuit and had to hire a lawyer. Is that why members are so quiet?...one of the highest paid executives in the history of PR was Fred Hill when he was EVP at JP Morgan Chase heading corporate marketing and communications worldwide. SEC filings show his total pay was $4 million to $6 million yearly for about five years of his eight years at the bank. He headed many areas of communications as do numerous other PR executives these days. They, too, are also being rewarded with salaries of $500,000 and more partly because their pay has to be commensurate with other high executives in an organization.

--Jack O'Dwyer