PHRMA TAPS QORVIS.

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America has tapped Qorvis Communications for a national PR campaign to educate the public about the good work done by drug companies and the important role they play in developing new medicines.

Qorvis promises a political campaign-style outreach program that will be led by Rich Masters, dubbed the “professor of punditry” by NPR, managing director of the D.C.-based PA shop.

Ken Johnson, senior VP-communications at PhRMA, picked Qorvis because the firm understands “how to win and is not stuck in the ways of the past,” according to his statement.

Johnson could not be reached for questions about the selection process.

Michael Petruzzello, Qorvis CEO, credits PhRMA head Billy Tauzin, a former Republican congressman from Louisiana, for reinventing and reinvigorating its communications department since he joined the group last year.

GEORGIA NAVIGATES 511 PR REVIEW.

Georgia is looking for PR help ahead of its launch of a statewide 511 phone number for traffic and travel information.

The service, to be managed by the Peach State’s Dept. of Transportation in Atlanta, is an offshoot of Georgia’s NaviGAtor system, which was launched ahead of the 1996 Olympics and monitors traffic congestion with the aim of assisting emergency services.

The DoT is looking for a firm to plan a public information campaign starting in January of 2007. PR and production of PSAs are keys to that effort.

The 511 hotline, operating 24/7, will cover road, air and rail travel information. About half of U.S. states have a 511-type service.

Georgia anticipates awarding a one-year contract with two option years.

Proposals are due Oct. 20 with a conference slated for Oct. 3. Kip Marshall ([email protected]) is handling questions.

Korn/Ferry says it has more than 20 ongoing searches for top PR posts. Those include slots at Aetna Life (New York), Baxter Healthcare (Chicago), Kraft Foods (Chicago), Smurfit Stone (St. Louis) and Yahoo! (Sunnyvale, CA).

Richard Marshall, who heads K/F’s corporate communications practice, is in charge. He is at [email protected].

SITRICK, CORALLO HANDLE H-P FLAP.

H-P chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who will step down in January, brought in Sitrick & Co. to boost her PR defense in the wake of a scandal involving use of private investors to smoke out leaks among board members.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco and the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce have entered the fray and are investigating H-P’s use of investigators to obtain info via a tactic called “pretexting.” Those entities join the Justice Dept., California Attorney General and SEC in probing the scandal.

In addition to probing board members’ records, reporters from media outlets including the New York Times and BusinessWeek were investigated.

“Unfortunately, the investigation, which was conducted with third parties, included certain inappropriate techniques. These went beyond what we understood them to be, and I apologize that they were employed.” Dunn said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Mark Corallo, a former Justice Dept. public affairs official who recently handled PR for Karl Rove through the Valerie Plame-CIA leak probe, is speaking for ex-H-P board member Thomas Perkins. Corallo runs Corallo Media Strategies out of Virginia. Perkins quit the company’s board earlier this year because of Dunn’s investigation.

Porter Novelli is H-P’s corporate PR firm.

KETCHUM CATCHES CULP.

Ron Culp, a ten-year PR veteran of Sears Roebuck, joined Ketchum on Sept. 18 as managing director of its Midwest operations, which include offices in Chicago and Pittsburgh.

He takes over for Adaire Putnam who has decided to quit the Omnicom unit by the end of the year.

Culp, 58, resigned his Sears slot as senior VP, PR, government affairs, communications and community relations in Feb. `03.

He took the managing director spot of Citigate Sard Verbinnen’s Chicago office in July of that year.

Prior to Sears, Culp held communications posts at Sara Lee Corp., Pitney Bowes and Eli Lilly. He is vice chair of the Economic Club of Chicago and a former trustee at the Arthur W. Page Society.

Joining Culp at Ketchum is Ted McDougal, who becomes senior VP and director of Ketchum/Midwest.

He is another veteran of Sears, and worked closely with Culp when he was there.

McDougal began his corporate career at Continental Bank, where he led marketing comms. until its acquisition by Bank of America.

GAMING WARS PR HEATS UP.

A three-way battle for supremacy among the top three video game consoles will hit full steam this fall with PR blitzes paving the way for two new systems.

Nintendo’s $249 Wii system will debut worldwide Nov. 19 with the help of GolinHarris, which announced the unveiling on Sept. 14 with a front-page New York Times business section story and subsequent official announcement.

The new system will incorporate TV Internet surfing, photo album technology, news and weather in an attempt to broaden the gaming demographic.

Nintendo’s unveiling will follow by two days Sony Computer Entertainment America’s kickoff of the $499 PlayStation 3 on Nov. 17. Interpublic firm Bragman Nyman Cafarelli and Omnicom shop InterActive PR will be handling that effort, which has been delayed twice, a fact noted up high in Nintendo’s well-placed Times story.

The digital deluge comes after a nearly four-year lull in major gaming system launches that subsided when Edelman launched Microsoft’s popular Xbox 360 last year, firing a strong first salvo – five million units sold with a forecast of 10M by the year’s end – in the latest installment of the gaming wars.

Sony tops the overall market, followed by Microsoft and then Nintendo.

O’ROURKE TAKES IXIS SLOT.

Ray O’Rourke, former managing director and head of global corporate affairs for Morgan Stanley, has moved on to IXIS Asset Management Group in Boston as executive VP of global communications.

O’Rourke headed external and internal communications for Morgan Stanley through its 2005 corporate upheaval, before stepping down last fall. Prior to that, he was with Burson-Marsteller for 20 years, eventually heading its North American crisis management practice as a managing director and executive VP. [B-M CEO Tom Nides took over the top PR post at Morgan Stanley on O’Rourke’s departure.]

IXIS AMG is a Boston-based unit of the French investment bank Groupe Caisse d’Epargne.

IT&DA PROMOTES U.S./TAIWAN TRADE TIES.

International Trade and Development Agency is working to improve economic ties between the Republic of China and the U.S. under a $175K contract.

Lester Wolff, who heads IT&DA, is a former chairman of the House Asia/Pacific Affairs subcommittee.

His firm’s contract, which runs through next May, allocates a $75K budget for the PR counsel of Richard Swett. He was U.S. Ambassador to Denmark and is currently “senior strategist” at APCO Worldwide.

The IT&DA contract is with Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S. Taiwan, on Sept. 13, announced plans to drop its official ROC name and apply for United Nations membership as “Taiwan.”

The move is to sidestep the People’s Republic of China’s official “one China policy.” Taiwan held the China seat until `71, when the General Assembly voted to give the chair to Mainland China.

BEGINNING OF END FOR SARBOX.

The Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, an independent group dominated by corporate CEOs, announced Sept. 12 that it will review Sarbanes-Oxley Act with a major emphasis on overhauling Section 404, which requires auditors and senior managers to certify the adequacy of internal controls.

That is sweet news for the ad/PR congloms that have used SARBOX as the reason why they cannot release financial numbers for various annual industry rankings. SARBOX also has proved to be a burden for troubled firms such as Interpublic that has spent millions to get its worldwide financial house in order.

The Committee, which is headed by John Thornton, chief of the Brookings Institution, and Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia’s Business School, has the support of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

Its SARBOX reform ideas will be released by the end of November, along with recommendations regarding class action lawsuits, shareholder rights and federal vs. state criminal enforcement.

KOHN HEADS WESTERN UNION IR.

Western Union has tapped Gary Kohn as VP-investor relations as the venerable money transfer company is set to be spun off from First Data Corp., which is a `92 spin-off of American Express.

Kohn had handled IR duties at FDC, and is being replaced by Alex Holmes.

WU is expected to begin trading on a “when issued” basis on Sept. 20.

The Big Board-listed stock will carry the “WU” trading symbol. The record date for the spin-off is Sept. 22, and WU shares will be distributed on Sept. 29.

Christina Gold heads WU, which has a 270K agent network in more than 200 countries.

Kohn joined Denver-based FDC in ’01. He was a financial planning and analysis manger at Thomson Corp. prior to that.

WU was founded in 1851 by Ezra Cornell in Rochester as the New York & Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Co.

Citigate Sard Verbinnen is WU’s outside PR firm.

ANREDER REPS GE UNIT TAKEOVER.

Anreder & Co. is handling Apollo Management’s $3.4B acquisition of General Electric’s silicon unit, Steven Anreder, A&C’s CEO, told O’Dwyer’s.

Apollo is headed by financier Leon Black and has invested more than $16B in companies including the plastics and adhesives unit of Tyco International—which modeled itself on GE.

The Wall Street Journal played up the deal as part of GE CEO Jeff Immelt’s effort to move from the long shadow of Jack Welch a little more than five years after he took the top spot from Welch, now a BusinessWeek columnist with his wife, Suzy.

Anreder is a former Barron’s reporter whose New York-based financial PR firm has repped Benihana, Enzo Biochem and Nature’s Sunshine Products.

The GE operation has $25B in annual sales. It employes 5,000 people in 38 countries.

TIME WARNER UNLOADS SOME MAGS.

Time Warner, which faces pressure to bolster its moribund stock price, is selling 18 of its nearly 150 magazines, in deals that could result in a $300M windfall for the New York-based combine.

The bulk of the auctioned group came to TW in the `00 $475M acquisition of Times-Mirror Magazines from Tribune.

The magazines up for sale include Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, Popular Science, Skiing, Yachting, Babytalk and Parenting.

Ann Moore, CEO of Time Inc., wrote a memo to say that while the soon-to-be-gone titles are "good performers," she preferred to focus sights on the bigger and more profitable brands that can draw larger audiences both in print and on the web.

ZIFF DIES AT 76.

Bill Ziff, who forged the Ziff-Davis publishing empire, died of cancer on Sept. 9. He was 76.

He took over the family business from his father in ’53, and transformed the magazine chain that included titles such as Popular Photography, Popular Aviation and Car and Driver into a technology powerhouse via the acquisition of PC Magazine and the launch of PC Week.

ZDNet, the firm's online presence, was launched in ’88. Ziff sold a 95 percent stake in the company to Forstmann Little & Co in `94 for $1.4B. Japan's Softbank acquired the ZD publishing group from FL&C in ’95.

Softbank took the company public in ’98, and it was acquired by Willis Stein & Partners in ’00.

Kekst & Co. handles PR for the Ziff family.

NYT ABANDONS TV.

The New York Times Co. is getting out of the TV business via the planned divestiture of its broadcast media group. It projects $150M in `06 revenues and a $33M operating profit for the nine TV station collection that includes properties in Des Moines, Fort Smith (Ark.), Huntsville (Ala.), Moline (Ill.), Memphis, Scranton, Norfolk and a pair in Oklahoma City.

Janet Robinson, CEO, called the stations well-managed and profitable. They "generate substantial cash flows and are located in attractive markets," she said.

Despite that plug, the NYTC is looking for the sell-off cash to develop its flagship newspaper and synergies between its "rapidly growing digital businesses."

Goldman Sachs is handling the TV station sale.

NEWS CORP. RINGS UP JAMBA DEAL.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is shelling out $188M for a 51 percent stake in Verisign's Jamba unit, a marketer of ringtones, mobile games and graphics.

The plan is to merge Jamba into Fox Mobile Entertainment under the leadership of Lucy Hood.

The acquisition, according to News Corp COO Peter Chernin, is part of the company's bid to become the "world's leading digital media company."

Fox entered the mobile arena with text voting for the "American Idol" series in `01.

L.A. RALLIES TO SAVE TIMES.

Los Angeles community leaders are worried about the fate of the Los Angeles Times under the ownership of the cost-cutting Tribune Co., which recently announced a recapitalization program. They fret that further editorial cutbacks will remove the paper "from the top ranks of American journalism."

Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the Annenberg School of Communication; Gary Toebben, CEO of the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce, and Warren Christopher, former Secretary of State, are among 20 leaders who penned a letter to Tribune Co. CEO Dennis FitzSimons and his board of directors, urging them to "resist the financial pressures to make cuts that would harm the paper and, in the process, harm our region."

The group, known as the Civic Alliance, notes that since Tribune acquired the LAT in ’00, 200 reporters have lost jobs, and the newshole shrunk by 70 pages per-week.

The Tribune has already cut $130M in LAT operating costs and recently announced that its newspaper group will face another $200M in cuts.

CA understands the need to run a tight ship, but believes "newspapers have a special trust, a responsibility to serve the community while making a reasonable profit."

It feels the LAT is an "irreplaceable voice" in the community and are not sure that Chicago-based Tribune management understands that point.

CA suggests that if the Tribune feels the LAT, which has a profit margin in the 20 percent range, can't achieve its financial goals "perhaps a different mode of ownership would better serve Los Angeles."

The Chandler family, which sold LAT's parent company Times-Mirror to the Trib, would like to get its hands on the paper. Supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle and entertainment mogul David Geffen have suggested the LAT would do better with local ownership.

The letter signers inform Tribune management that the LAT "has a unique ability and responsibility to unify as well as educate what is a very geographically fractured and otherwise extraordinarily diverse community."

Tribune publishing president Scott Smith says he welcomes the input of the community leaders, but points out staffing levels are only one indication of a newspaper's importance.

"There is a misperception that counting numbers of people is the right way to measure the quality of a great newspaper," he told the Sept. 14 LAT. "You are mixing quality and quantity."

BROAS EXITS FORT WAYNE PAPER.

Steven Broas, publisher of the News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne is stepping down after a nine-month stint. He joined the paper after news that Knight-Ridder was putting itself on the auction block.

Michael Christman has been named as Broas’ replacement. The 40-year-old Ogden Newspapers veteran was publisher of the Parkersburg News and the Sentinel in Parkersburg, W.VA.

(Media news continued on next page)

SIDES ALIGN OVER NET NEUTRALITY.

The Senate is gearing up for a war over information. Major Internet companies such as Google and Yahoo! fear that a new law could allow phone and cable Internet service providers to play favorites to what content consumers see – and what they don't.

This is the issue of net neutrality, a topic which has sparked considerable debate in Washington and has become a buzz word for bloggers and members of the press alike.

Proponents of net neutrality claim that Congress' recent push to rewrite the Telecommunications Act of 1996 threatens to undermine the Internet's egalitarian principles by potentially discriminating which parcels of information are received over the web.

Supporters of the telcom act say broadband congestion and an ever-changing landscape of video and peer-to-peer applications requires that service providers catch up with the technological times. The proposed re-write is intended, in part, to make it easier for franchisers to provide video capabilities for home Internet use.

Lifting some of these regulations, they claim, would encourage the future development of networks, which would ultimately benefit the consumer and encourage competition in the market.

"We're not just talking about the Internet of today, but the Internet of five to ten years from now, which will be carrying roughly 200 times more information into the home," said Mike McCurry, a partner at Public Strategies Washington Inc. "With video, the requirements are totally different. We're going to move to a whole new Internet in the next several years. What it points to is that we need more consumer choice," said McCurry, who reps the phone companies.

Rise of ‘gatekeepers’

However, neutrality supporters warn that lifting these regulations could potentially allow large broadband and cable companies to become Internet "gatekeepers," using their power in the marketplace to slow down or even deny access to certain websites in favor of sites with whom they have financial or political affiliations.

Theoretically, owners of websites could then pay service providers for higher-speed delivery so that consumers would receive those packets of information first.

According to Craig Aaron, spokesperson for nonprofit media policy group SavetheInternet.com, this could completely alter the founding principles of what we know of as the Internet.

"Net neutrality and non discrimination have always been a part of the Internet. Those who own the wires don't get to control the content," Aaron said. "These are not the companies that have been responsible for the discovery of the Internet, but they're trying to take advantage of a moment where they dominate the market.

McCurry said this is inaccurate, because any service provider that purposefully limited access would suffer an immediate backlash from consumers.

"I think this is another case where some people want the government to step in to solve a problem that doesn't exist.”

INC. UNVEILS NEW TECH INDUSTRY SITE.

Inc.com, the online portal for Inc. magazine, has launched a new site focused on entrepreneurs in the technology sector.

Dell has signed on as the launch sponsor of the new site, inctechnology.com. Articles, case studies, white papers, advice and strategy pieces are said to focus on issues like technology mangement, software, security, and e-business.

Elizabeth Wasserman, former Washington bureau chief for The Industry Standard, is editor of the site.

EICHENWALD TO PORTFOLIO.

Kurt Eichenwald, an investigative reporter for the New York Times’ business section, has joined Conde Nast’s upcoming business magazine Portfolio as a senior writer and investigative reporter.

Eichenwald, who starts work on October 1, was with the Times for 20 years. He joined the paper as a news clerk in 1985 and later covered Wall Street, corporate takeovers and insider trading before penning the “Market Place” column in 1992. He has covered scandals at Prudential Securities, Enron, WorldCom, and child pornography on the Internet.

Eichenwald has also written three books on corporate scandals.

PEOPLE _____________________

Lucia Moses, section editor for Conde Nast’s Supermarket News, to VNU’s Mediaweek, as a senior editor covering all aspects of the magazine industry.

She was previously financial editor at VNU’s Editor & Publisher.

Leah McLaughlin, executive editor for Natural Health, has moved to Prevention magazine in the new post of brand editor.

She is charged with developing and managing the magazine’s brand extensions and relationships across all media. McLaughlin also assists in the editorial direction of its food, nutrition and fitness coverage.

She was previously nutrition director and diet and nutrition editor at Fitness magazine.

Gordon Paris is exiting the CEO slot at the Sun-Times Media Group by yearend as the former Hollinger International shifts its headquarters from New York to Chicago.

The company credited Paris for heading the "investigation into the alleged massive looting by former chairman Conrad Black. He will remain a director and continue to tackle "substantial tax-related matters."

BRIEFS ____________________

Gordon’s Guide, a travel information publishing company, has unveiled a new category focused on educational travel on its website.

The publishing company has information for travelers looking to research trips where they can learn about art history in Italy or London, or for those that want to learn a new language across 50 different countries.

The Hewlett-Packard tempest, leading to the resignation of Patricia Dunn as chair, puts the spotlight on the pathology of boards of directors.

New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki, wondering how the boards of Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, etc., allowed abuses that cost investors dearly, asked psychologists to plumb the psyches of directors.

He found that boards suffer from crushing conformity, falling prey to “group think...they become increasingly sure their collective judgment is infallible...they listen mainly to each other...living in a kind of echo chamber of their own opinions.”

Nell Minow, of thecorporatelibrary.com, which rates 20,000 directors at 1,700 companies, said this in 2002: the I.Q.’s of people “drop by 50% and their courage disappears entirely” when they join a board.

This same Nell Minow has now jumped on HP director George Keyworth, who is accused of “leaking” to the press. No board can operate without confidentiality, she fumed. But Keyworth denies he revealed anything confidential. He says he often spoke to the press and was advancing the interests of HP when he talked to CNET.

Atlanta PR counselor Bill Huey commented that Minow, in attacking Keyworth, had missed the point of SOX—that a public company is owned by the people who don’t work for it. Directors represent stockholders.

“Confidentiality agreements are for people you can control, not for people who should be controlling you,” he said. “Independent directors don’t check their loyalties, values and opinions at the door including their right to talk to the media.”

If boards are skewing towards improper behavior, directors have the duty to protect their own names and the public. Robert Callander, audit chair of Omnicom, felt that way in 2002 when he criticized OMC’s off-loading of hundreds of millions of dot-com assets. His view, covered in the Wall Street Journal, cut OMC stock in half.

Ted Pincus, founder of the Financial Relations Board, drew nine comments on odwyerpr.com last week when he said the six biggest institutions in PR (five ad/PR conglomerates and PRSA) “have failed to practice the very principles they preach.”

PR is getting hammered in the media (New York Times, Der Spiegel, etc.) but there is nothing but silence from Omnicom, WPP, Interpublic, Publicis & Havas (which employ at least 20,000 PR people) and PRSA (21,000 members), he said. He called on individual PR leaders to do “PR for PR” themselves.

The press-averse policies of these six entities are hurting not only themselves but the ad/PR industry.

There is an almost hysterical attitude towards the dissemination of any kind of information.

Exhibit A in this regard is the behavior of PRSA president Cheryl Procter-Rogers at the Jacksonville and Cincinnati chapters in the past couple of weeks. She allowed no questions from members and did not ask their views on such matters as decoupling APR from board membership and Central Michigan’s proposed bylaw that would give the Assembly control of the board. She asked that her speech not be recorded, saying this has long been her policy, although she was recorded at West Virginia earlier this year and it remains on the chapter website. PRSA is refusing to put the Central Michigan proposal on its website; refusing to reveal the 2006 delegate list, and refusing to say when it will file its IRS Form 990 (originally due May 15). The 10 regional directors on the board, who owe their first allegiance to the members in their districts, never say anything to these districts as far as we can determine. Two directors quit the board this year.

The Pittsburgh and Oklahoma City chapters of PRSA, by holding ethics seminars that allow press coverage and participation (page 7), are an embarrassment to the Board of Ethics and Professional Development which won’t even let the press listen to three September ethics teleseminars. BEPS has told us it will not criticize actions of the board. We asked for some of the “Professional Standards” it has established and it said it does not provide specific standards. A good place to start would be calling for enough press contacts on press releases so reporters can reach sources. This might reduce the current deluge of press criticism of PR.

With PRSA dropping the ball on press relations, hurting not only itself but the PR industry, the last person PRSA should be featuring as a speaker is James Lukaszewski, who is taking part in nine PRSA programs this fall, including two on handling crises, his specialty.

His negative views about reporters and the media are bluntly stated in his speeches and four volumes on handling crises ($550). Busy reporters, he says, don't know about your business, don’t care about your business and can’t care about your business” and are trained in “aggression, hostility and skepticism.” He quotes the Josephson Institute of Ethics as saying “Journalists are inaccurate too often.”

Asked if he still believes what he wrote, he says he and his clients witness reporter behavior every day and he stands behind all his quotes. He adds this from Janet Malcolm: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on, knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” His five-step crisis process has, as the fifth step—respond to the “self-anointed” such as “competitors, news media, critics and other uninvited guests.” A blurb for his $795 crisis strategy seminar Oct. 12-13 talks about “Gaining a management perspective–the only perspective that matters.” This combative stance toward the media is not something that PRSA should be featuring. Lukaszewski confuses reporters and editors (who are all too human) with media, the places where not only reporters but PR pros and experts of all stripes present facts and voice their opinions.

--Jack O'Dwyer