CALIFORNIA DANGLES $4.5M SOLAR PACT.

California’s aggressive embrace of solar energy has led to a $4.5M public education RFP to urge Golden State residents and builders to build and buy homes that utilize power from the sun.

An ambitious multi-billion program spearheaded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to encourage the development and use of solar energy in the Golden State was okayed by the state’s Public Utilities Commission in January.

That nod created a $2.8 billion, 10-year incentive program administered by California Energy Commission, which has issued the lucrative PR RFP.

The state wants a firm to develop social marketing programs, PR, advertising, and a wide-reaching education effort targeting public and private entities like home builders, trade groups, financial institutions and chambers of commerce across the state.

The initial contract runs for two years and also includes two option years at $1.5M per year.

Proposals are due by Sept. 14 with the goal of hammering out a contract by January 2007.

Peg Bergmann is contract officer for the CEC ([email protected]; 916/654-7093).

WAGGED SET TO PART WITH BOEING ACCT.

Waggener Edstrom is preparing to pull the plug on its work for Connexion by Boeing, the doomed in-flight Internet service that never caught enough traction for the airplane maker.

WaggEd has worked on the account for three and a half years.

“We have appreciated the opportunity to support the innovation and passion of the company and its individuals,” Erica Beyer, northwest region GM for the firm said. “We recognize that every day businesses must make hard decisions to be responsible to employees, shareholders and customers, and we wish Boeing success with future endeavors.”

Boeing said last week that it was nixing the service because of a lack of demand. Despite strong interest in surveys of airline travelers, actual use of the service – which cost about $10 for an hour or $27 for a full flight – never met the lofty expectations of a predicted $70 billion in-flight Internet market.

Boeing said it will continue the service for several months before an “orderly phase out.”

The company expects a pre-tax charge of up to $320M in the second half of 2006.

Rival Airbus is planning a similar service through a joint venture with SITA.

CMS NAMES FOUR FIRMS TO ROSTER.

The federal bureaucracy that runs Medicare and Medicaid has tapped four firms as its primary contractors for PR and communications over the next five years.

Following an eight-month review, incumbents Ketchum and Ogilvy PR Worldwide remain on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid roster.

Weber Shandwick expands on its current duties and Porter Novelli has been added to the mix.

Under government procurement rules, CMS will choose from the four firms as projects and campaigns arise over the course of the primary year and four option years covered by the new contracts. The combined pacts have a ceiling of $300M.

Ketchum, Ogilvy, GCI Group and Academy for Educational Development had previously been the major PR contractors for the CMS. PN is a newcomer to the federal agency’s PR roster.

Weber Shandwick was one of four firms to win part of a research and communications RFP in October 2005 with the federal entity.

The new quartet will be called on to handle a swath of communications efforts, including earned media and press relations, Internet communications, grassroots outreach, press conferences, monitoring, marketing materials and paid media, among other tasks. That could include an overhaul of federal entity’s image as well.

ISRAEL TAPS WEILL FOR U.S. PR.

The Israeli Ministry of Tourism has brought back its former PR firm, New York-based Geoffrey Weill Associates, following a six-month review that began before the latest round of violence in the region.

The MoT said it has not utilized outside PR assistance in the U.S. since 2004. Its last firm was 5W PR.

Weill declined to defend the account after being one of 15 firms invited to pitch during the last review in 2004, which resulted in a $2M a year pact that went to 5W PR and MWW Group.

In announcing the return of the account, Weill referenced the Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire and noted: “We are starting work formally on a day that is full of optimism, so let’s hope it’s a good omen.”

GCI Group is supporting Dell in its costly recall of 4.1 million laptop batteries made by Sony, the largest product pull-back ever in the consumer electronics sector. Sony and Dell plan to split the cost of the recall - estimated from $200M-$400M – which was initiated because some of the batteries in the laptops burst into flames. GCI is Dell’s agency of record.

ANGUS HEADS EDELMAN’S TECH UNIT.

Edelman has placed Bob Angus, CEO of its May acquisition, A&R Partners, at the helm of a new technology leadership team for the firm.

Angus will now serve as director of U.S. technology and president of the A&R Edelman unit, as well as chair of a new unit that includes Edelman managing directors in London (Jonathan Hargreaves) and Southeast Asia (Bob Grove).

Pam Pollace, the former Intel pro, has left her Edelman post as global tech chair to serve as communications director for the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, a San Francisco-based entity focused on doling out grants for environmental and scientific causes.

Angus, a co-founder of A&R Partners, has been in PR 25 years and is based in San Mateo, Calif. Grove heads Southeast Asian tech operations from his base in Singapore.

Hargreaves, in the U.K., has been heading global communications for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and currently leads the Orange account at both group and U.K. level for Edelman.

The firm says more than 250 staffers work in its tech practice on clients like Canon, Samsung and Microsoft. The firm claimed 1,848 total employees across all disciplines in 2005, while A&R staffed about 100 at the time of the acquisition.

WPP BULLISH ON PR.

WPP reported a nearly 13 percent rise in revenue for the first six months of 2006, compared with the same period last year. Including currency movements, overall revenue rose 16% to $5.12 billion.

The No. 2 ad/PR holding company is bullish on PR and public affairs, noting the fields continue to show significant improvement over last year, following a strong year in 2005.

“It seems that the public relations and public affairs businesses, in particular, are benefiting from the growth of new technologies, where editorial publicity is very effective and probably more effective than paid for publicity,” the company said in releasing its financials. “Social networking, in particular, is offering a new form of word-of-mouth ‘advertising,’ that is very effective. These new technologies are probably boosting the growth rates of [PR and PA].”

PR and PA revenues rose 11.6 percent for the first half, compared with advertising and media investment management, which rose 10.7 percent.

Acquires Dewey Square Group

Moving on the growth it sees in PA and following its acquisition earlier this month of Public Strategies, WPP also announced that it has agreed to acquire DSG Strategies, a Washington, D.C. public affairs firm focused on grassroots advocacy, coalition building, communications and strategic marketing which was formerly known as Dewey Square Group.

DSG was set up in 1993 and based in Washington The firm has five other U.S. offices and employs 53 people. WPP said DSG’s unaudited revenues for 2005 were $12.5M with gross assets of $2.9M at the date of acquisition.

OMC, ‘PUBLICITY-SHY’ WREN ARE RAPPED.

Financial columnist Christopher Byron of the New York Post took Omnicom and CEO John Wren to the woodshed Aug. 14 for a stock-buyback program which he says borders on “outright stock manipulation” and for Wren's refusal to deal with the press.

Byron received no help from OMC PR staffer Patricia Sloan who directed him to the OMC website and demanded that he send any questions by e-mail. None were answered.

Concluded the article: “And they call this company skilled at media relations? Go figure.”

The buyback program, which has reduced OMC's outstanding shares from 187 million to 170 million with analysts predicting another ten million in buybacks, has added $3 billion+ to OMC’s “once pristine balance sheet,” said Byron.

He notes the stock was $107 at the end of 1999 and only $86 as of the close Aug. 11 in spite of the program.

Stock prices can be boosted by buybacks but if the program is “aggressive enough, the company could actually suffer, which clearly seems to have been the case with the OMC program,” says Byron.

He criticizes CEO John Wren for avoidance of press interviews, noting that Wren has only given three in the past four years which included two with a “friendly trade magazine.” AdWeek interviewed Wren twice but no financial topics were discussed. Wren stressed in both interviews that the 1,500 properties of OMC are coordinating closely with each other.

OMC Ducks New York

Byron also notes that Wren has taken the annual meeting out of New York four years in a row.

Wren previously worked at the defunct Arthur Andersen accounting firm.

Stocks of rivals like WPP, Interpublic, Havas and Publicis have also fallen from their turn of the century highs, says Byron. The conglomerates have banned all their PR and ad agencies from releasing any statistics about billing and employment for the past four years. The debt of the four largest conglomerates is about $12B.

Byron is especially concerned about OMC borrowing money to buy back stock.

This included a recent loan of nearly $1 billion which was plowed into OMC stock.

OMC in 1999 “took its first hesitant steps into the bog of financial razzle-dazzle from which few companies ever return,” said Byron, who notes OMC spent $958 million on buybacks in the first half of 2006 alone.

He reprises the 2002 dust-up of OMC with the Wall Street Journal when a story about alleged accounting irregularities cut OMC stock in half to below $40.

“OMC tried to contain the damage by unleashing a corporate flack to smear the article as a tissue of inaccuracies and improper innuendos, then calling a teleconference at which only friendly Wall Street analysts were permitted to ask questions,” writes Byron.

He says the story was “completely accurate and fairly balanced, and OMC eventually abandoned its spin effort without pointing to a single error or distortion or asking the WSJ to publish any corrections.”

Sloan was formerly New York editor of Ad Age.

BLUM TAPPED TO EDIT ‘VOICE.’

David Blum, a veteran magazine editor and writer, has been named editor-in-chief of the Village Voice.

Blum’s appointment follows the short-lived tenure of Erik Wemple, the former Washington City Paper editor who was tapped in early June as the fourth editor in seven months at the Voice.

Blum began his career as an urban affairs reporter for the Wall Street Journal in 1979 and has written for New York magazine, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine. He left the Journal for Esquire in 1983 and was at New York from ’85-92. He wrote for the Times Magazine from ’95-00 and has been an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s journalism school since 2002. Since ’02, he has been a TV critic for the New York Sun.

The Queens native officially starts at the Voice on Sept. 12.

“I believe in the limitless possibilities of weeklies, and in the power of narrative journalism to change the way people think and feel,” Blum said in a statement.

TIME CHANGES ON-SALE DAY.

Time magazine said it will shift its on-sale day from Monday to Friday as part of a plan to “reformulate” the magazine and its website, time.com, starting in January 2007.

The magazine noted the move marks a return to its original on-sale day established by founder Henry Luce in 1923.

Managing editor Richard Stengel, who joined in June, said the move will allow the magazine and website to offer content “continuously and seamlessly.”

Company research showed that pre-weekend delivery allows readers to spend more time with the magazine, which will hit newsstands on Friday with most subscribers receiving the publication by Saturday. It has not yet set the day of the week when the magazine will be printed.

HARVARD GRADS PLAN MAG.

A former Harvard student plans to launch a new bi-monthly magazine dubbed the “Vanity Fair for Harvard” with the backing of David Bradley, owner of the Atlantic Monthly.

The new publication, called 02138 after the school’s Cambridge, MA, zip code, is aimed to build a base from Harvard graduates with the anticipation of reaching beyond that narrow demographic. Bom Kim, a 2000 graduate of the Ivy League school who worked as a reporter-researcher at The New Republic, is a founder with Daniel Loss, who worked with Kim at The New Republic. Loss is a Harvard Law School grad (’04).

Meredith Kopit, former associate publisher of the Atlantic, is publisher of the new title, while Caroline Miller, former editor of New York and Seventeen, is editorial director.

The Rosen Group is promoting the magazine’s October debut with events in New york, Boston and Washington, D.C.

Initial circulation is planned at 50,000 alumni. An estimated 320K people list Harvard on their resumes, according to the new publication.

WOLFF PAINTS GRIM PICTURE AT NYT.

Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff paints a grim picture of the New York Times in the September issue of the magazine.

Headlined “Panic on 43rd Street,” the article lays much of the blame for the NYT Company’s low stock ($21.64 today vs. $52 in 2002) on publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger, who controls not only the business side but the editorial side of the paper.

Sulzberger has “consolidated executive, shareholder and editorial power – subverting the traditional autonomy of the Times newsroom,” writes Wolff. He calls executive editor Bill Keller “probably the weakest editor in the history of the paper.”

Sulzberger is said to be “attention-seeking, immature” and “verbally feckless.”

The NYT, “famously impersonal, suddenly has a flamboyant, hard-to-control, easy-to-dislike face,” Wolff adds.

The paper is controlled by about 50 family members who own the voting “B” shares while the “A” shares, which greatly outnumber the “B” shares, are held by the public.

Wolff calls the board “a passive and lackluster bunch” that only had one “corporate star,” IBM’s former CEO Lou Gerstner, who resigned several years ago.

Some holders of the “A” shares, including Morgan Stanley Asset Mgmt., with 5% of the shares, have publicly criticized the governance of the NYT.

Such charges question the “integrity” of the NYT itself, says Wolff, who notes that two “big scandals” have hurt the credibility of the paper.

One complaint is the “increasing” pay package of Sulzberger, which reached $3.2 million in 2005.

Building ‘Precursor to Calamity’

The article shows the new $850M h.q. of the NYT on 42nd St. A headline says, “The Times is also doing that one thing that is a classic precursor to calamity. It’s building a fabulous new corporate headquarters.”

While the NYT has 1.1M daily circulation, only 260K of this is now in the five boroughs, the rest being spread across the country. Both the New York Post and Daily News have circulations of more than 600K. The Sunday NYT has a circulation of 1.7M.

While the paper has created the “richest website of any newspaper in the world,” the “depth and efficiency” of the site are “undermining the paper itself,” says Wolff.

He criticizes the NYT's purchase of About.com for $410 million, saying the site "may actually establish the baseline for the lowest level of information available on the web...a multi-million-page mishmash of superficial, often out-of-date, dumb, frequently wrong info bits.”

The NYT website generates 40 million users monthly and 489 million page views, but MySpace has 50 million monthly users and generated 29 billion page views, Wolff says.

He feels the Sulzberger family is “most touchy” about “bad press.”

Calls to Catherine Mathis, VP of corporate communications of the NYT, were not returned.

(Media news continued on next page)

CBS PLANS COURIC ‘NET SIMULCAST.

CBS said “The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,” slated to debut on Sept. 5, will be the first network evening news broadcast to be simulcast live on the Internet.

Couric said the move is an example of how the program plans to use its website to complement the broadcast.

Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media, pointed to the network’s successful simulcast of the “March Madness” college basketball tournament earlier this year and said there is a “huge appetite for real time content on the Internet.”

The broadcast will be advertiser-supported.

The program also plans to produce a blog called “Couric & Co.” and a daily on-demand web feature with extended interviews of people in the news by Couric called “Eye to Eye.”

FENTON LINES UP WAR CRITIC INTERVIEWS.

Fenton Communications’ Washington, D.C., office is lining up former military and national security personnel who are critical of U.S. policy on Iraq for media interviews.

The work is on behalf of client Win Without War, an umbrella organization encompassing dozens of groups like the Sierra Club, NAACP, Pax Christi USA and the National Organization for Women.

Fenton set up a conference call for reporters on Aug. 16 with Gen. Joseph Hoar (USMC Ret.), who headed the U.S. Central Command before retiring in 1994; Lt. Gen. Robert Gard (U.S. Army Ret.), who fought in Korea and Vietnam and retired in 1981, and former National Security Council member Morton Halperin, who served in the Clinton, Nixon and Johnson administrations. Halperin's son, Mark, heads ABC News' political unit.

The three released an open letter to President Bush yesterday signed by 21 colleagues calling for a change in U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran. They argue that a “hard line” is not working.

Fenton also works for the liberal advocacy group Moveon.org.

Briefs ______________________

The top business cliché in major U.S. media from January through July was “at the end of the day,” according to an analysis by Factiva. That hackneyed expression was mentioned 12,640 times. “In the black” was a distant second at 4,876 mentions, the Dow Jones unit reported. “In the Red” rang in at 4,628 mentions, and “level playing field” and “time and again” were just under 3,000.

Black Enterprise magazine plans to launch a half-hour nationally syndicated TV show in late September.

Ed Gordon, a prominent black journalist formerly with CBS and NBC, is slated to host the series, “Our World with Black Enterprise.”

He now heads a production company, Gordon Media Group.

The International Fur Trade Federation kicked off three worldwide campaigns via Vogue, Elle and Wallpaper this month.

The effort, which pushes a different aspect of fur in each publication, aims to position fur as the choice of “strong, stylish women with a sense of individuality.”

Creative Marketing Plus, a New York-based marketing communications firm, is promoting the effort.

VNU Business Media has relaunched the American Artist website, myamericanartist.com. The site covers art and art materials with content from American Artist, Watercolor, Drawing and Workshop magazines.

PCworld.com has revamped its website in an overhaul the publication calls its most significant upgrade since 2000. The magazine worked with MetaDesign Inc. in changing its look and adding features like live chats, user reviews, and customization.

NBC Universal has tapped custom publisher Pace Communications to produce a magazine section promoting NBC’s fall lineup of TV programs. The section will appear in Pace’s in-flight magazines for United, Delta and U.S. Airways.

People ____________________

Glenn Coleman, deputy editor of Popular Science, has been named editor of Crain Communications’ FinancialWeek.

Coleman, former assistant managing editor of Money, was previously with Crain in 1990, serving as features editor of Crain’s Chicago Business. Before joining Money in 1999, he launched InvestmentNews, a weekly newspaper published by Crain.

Conde Nast has ousted Vanity Fair publisher Alan Katz in favor of Edward Menicheschi, president of WWD Media Worldwide, the parent to Women’s Wear Daily and Footwear News.

Menicheschi has headed WWD since 2001 after serving as president of IAM.com, a talent search website for the entertainment industry. He was formerly associate publisher and executive editor of Vogue and earlier worked on advertising and retail programs for GQ.

Stephanie Johnston, editor-in-chief of the American Bar Association’s Student Lawyer magazine, has been named EIC of Public Works. The 66K-circulation magazine, published by Hanley Wood, covers public works departments at the municipal, county and state government level. Johnston was previously associate publisher and EIC of Construction Equipment Distribution.

Sen. John McCain, retired cyclist Lance Armstrong, Bob Buford of mega-church fame, and stay-at-home mom and political activist Mary Shull are the latest to sign on to Hotsoup.com, the online community headed by former Associated Press political writer Ron Fournier and a slate of other political and Internet players.

Omnicom’s massive share buyback program, covered in this NL Aug. 9, was the subject of a full page feature Aug. 14 by New York Post financial columnist Christopher Byron (page 2).

Byron noted that “publicity shy” CEO John Wren has given only three interviews in four years. Wren himself said he rejected advice from his PR firms after the June 12, 2002 Wall Street Journal piece on OMC’s accounting practices cut the stock in half.

OMC kept quiet and “stuck to its knitting” and the stock recovered to the $80s. However, it has remained in the $80s for years in spite of 17 million shares being removed from the float and analysts predicting 10M more will follow.

An e-mail posted on the OMC bulletin board Aug. 18 at finance.yahoo.com asked: “Billions for share buybacks buys stockholders nothing. Why?”

There will be no answer from OMC which has given new meaning to the word “silent.” All Byron got from OMC PR staffer Patricia Sloan was instructions to read the SEC filings.

OMC’s dodging of press questions is bad for PR since the company is the biggest owner of PR firms. Its units such as Fleishman-Hillard, Ketchum, Porter Novelli and Brodeur have about $1 billion in fees. The definition of PR, according to Wren, is “duck the press.” Wren refused to talk to the New York Times when Timothy O’Brien did a Feb. 16, 2005 (Sunday) feature headlined “Spinning Frenzy: PR’s Bad Press.” The Ketchum/Armstrong Williams/Dept. of Education scandal touched off the article.

With no PR organization out there presenting a positive view of PR, “PR’s Bad Press” has continued unabated. The NYT’s Frank Rich on July16 described PR as “empty gestures,” lack of “substance,” publicity stunts, propagandizing, press avoidance, marketing and “sloganeering.” Der Spiegel, German weekly, called PR pros “Masters of Deception” in a lengthy feature Aug. 7. A Harris Interactive/PRSA Foundation poll released Nov. 10, 2005 found that 83% of 1,015 respondents believe PR is “just another tool that companies can use to market their products or state their positions on certain issues.” And 79% believe PR pros “are only interested in disseminating information that helps their clients to make money.” In other words, PR is a selfish activity of organizations that lacks redeeming public service qualities. PRSA buried these important findings about PR by mixing them up with findings about the media and attitudes towards PR of Congressional staffers and business executives.

The positive take on PR is that it represents the public to organizations, answers press questions, and performs ombudsman and educational roles rather than just a sales role. PR can help provide full details about a subject so that public understanding is increased. PRSA is the group that is supposed to be putting out this message and leading by example. Rhoda Weiss, in seeking the nomination for president-elect last year, said that PRSA is to be “the voice of PR” and that PRSA is to be “the first source media turns to for expertise.”

Those were hollow words. PRSA is almost completely tongue-tied.

President Cheryl Procter-Rogers, the only PRSA officer allowed to speak to the press, has made no public appearances this year (not counting three visits to chapters) and has been unreachable by this NL since March 20. Advocacy chair Mike Cherenson is similarly absent from public view. The background of Weiss reveals almost no interest in press relations but rather an obsession with “leadership.” “Leader” and “leadership” are mentioned 23 times in an autobiographical essay by her in the Sept./Oct. 2005 Health Progress magazine of the Catholic Health Assn. Weiss is a consultant with the St. Francis Healthcare System of Hawaii. We have yet to find any substantiation of a claim she made in Bulldog Reporter that she is “Acting CEO of a Statewide Health Organization.” She is studying for a “Ph.D. in Leadership and Change in the Professions” at Antioch University, a program with a tuition of $18,600 over a 4-5 year period. PR professors at other colleges said they know of no such program at any other institution and said Antioch is noted for its unusual programs.

With PR under such withering attacks, the field does not need another PRSA president who can’t stand the public limelight. Weiss should withdraw from president-elect for the good of the industry. One reason for this is we can’t expect any of the other PR or IR groups to carry the flag for what is right about PR/IR. The Council of PR Firms is mostly funded by tight-lipped OMC and the other four equally silent conglomerates. It can’t campaign for openness and dialog. The Arthur W. Page Society and PR Seminar (many corporate PR execs belong to both) are not accustomed to public debate. IABC traditionally avoids statements on controversial issues. The National Investor Relations Institute does not address the general public. The fact that reporters are barred from the quarterly teleconferences of public companies is o.k. by NIRI.

Arthur Sulzberger, in managing both the business and editorial sides of the New York Times, has not only broken tradition but is doing a bad job of both, says Michael Wolff in the September Vanity Fair (page 3 of NL). The paper is compromising its “integrity,” writes Wolff, by violating the principles of fair “governance.” The holders of the small number of “B” shares (50 family members) have the power to elect a majority of the directors. The disenfranchised “A” holders are in open revolt, he notes, and are waging a “press campaign” against the “B” holders. A question we have that relates to the integrity of the NYT is why has it never covered the finances of OMC when the Wall Street Journal and New York Post have done so? Is this interference with the editorial side by the business side?

--Jack O'Dwyer