N.J. REVIEWS BASE CLOSURE PR PACT.

New Jersey has put out an RFP to review its six-figure pact for PR and government relations work connected with the Pentagon’s base realignment and closure process.

The Garden State took a hit during the last BRAC process in 2005, when the Pentagon moved to close the Army installation at Fort Monmouth, a recommendation that was upheld after an appeal. That base is expected to be vacated by 2011.

Interpublic firm The Rhodes Group, has handled the assignment since December 2001. Its contract, which has fluctuated in the low to high $200K/year range, expires at the end of April.

New Jersey has seven other military installations, including Coast Guard stations, Picatinny Arsenal (Dover), and Fort Dix (Wrightstown).

The state’s Dept. of Military and Veterans Affairs wants strategic planning assistance, public and government relations help under the contract.

Preliminary staff work has begun at the Defense Dept. to prepare for the next round of base closings, or “realignments.”

The RFP has a deadline of April 27 and is online at the state’s procurement website.

MARGARITIS EXITS EURO RSCG.

John Margaritis and Euro RSCG Worldwide PR are splitting up by mutual consent after a partnership of little more than a year.

The former Ogilvy PR Worldwide CEO wanted to grow Euro’s U.S. PR business via the acquisition route, but the French parent, Havas, had other ideas. It sees development of organic growth as the winning formula.

Euro RSCG Magnet considered Margaritis a “big catch” when he was hired on Nov. 30.

Margaritis is leaving by the end of the month. The 57-year-old veteran of Fleishman-Hillard, Burson-Marsteller and Asprey, British luxury goods marketer, is mulling his options.

Lisa Sepulveda is CEO of Euro RSCG Magnet.

David Sandretti, who served as a Senate aide for the past dozen years, has taken the communications director post at the League of Conservation Voters.
He is in charge of press operations and legislative/grassroots and educational outreach for the Washington-based group that calls itself the "independent voice for the environment."

Sandretti worked on the staffs of Sens. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

IRAQI RED CRESCENT TAPS CASSIDY.

The Iraqi Red Crescent has retained Cassidy & Assocs. to deal with the economic, political and humanitarian issues arising from the invasion of Iraq.
U.S. ties with the Red Cross-affiliated group have soured. The IRC donated $1M for Hurricane Katrina relief during the `05 Thanksgiving holiday to “show its appreciation” for the U.S. re-development efforts in Iraq.

That mood shifted in Dec. 06 when Jamal Al-Karbouli, VP at IRC, called the U.S. military a bigger threat to security than insurgent forces. He complained to the Associated Press about repeated U.S. raids on IRC offices throughout Iraq.
Gerald Cassidy is leading the effort on behalf of his Democratic-leaning firm. He is joined by vice chairman Gregg Hartley, Arthur Mason (ex-Securities and Exchange Commission staffer) and Carl Ford (ex-aide to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.)

PFIZER’S PIRON JOINS APCO.

Courtney Piron, who was a member of Pfizer’s corporate affairs team, has joined APCO Worldwide as VP.

At Pfizer, Piron directed the economic & policy research group, dealing with healthcare reform, regulatory and policy communication issues.

She joined Pfizer in `01, after leaving the health policy director post at Wyeth.
Earlier, Piron worked in New York and Washington in Burson-Marsteller’s lobbying and crisis management units, and in the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of the Commissioner.

MURRAY CALLS O’DWYER’S ‘INACCURATE.’

Bill Murray, who joined PRSA as president and COO on Jan. 22, late in the day on March 15 sent an e-mail to an estimated 500+ "leaders" accusing odwyerpr.com and this newsletter of "a long series of editorials which are inaccurate."

Said Murray: "It's time we say, 'enough is enough.'"

He said O’Dwyer’s "constant and repetitive questions" are "frequently accompanied by abusive language and threats" and have caused PRSA to "divert valuable resources."

Despite PRSA's "continued outreach and reams of supporting data and information, the newsletter’s PRSA coverage remains antagonistic, misleading and in many cases is just plain wrong."

The letter does not go into specifics of any of the criticisms that have been placed on PRSA by this newsletter and odwyerpr.com.

MURRAY ACCUSES O’DWYER’S (Continued from 1)

One of the claims in the Murray e-mail, that PRSA has grown 18% since 1998, from 19,600 member to 22,000 currently, is factually wrong. The 2,400-member gain is 12% or a little over one percent a year in the past nine years.

Roberts Attacked NL in 1992

The last PRSA public attack on O'Dwyer media took place in 1992 and was launched by that year's president Rosalee Roberts. She accused this newsletter of printing "twisted reports" that "ignored the facts" and that constituted "libelous" charges about the Society.

As with the Murray e-mail, no specific erroneous reports by O’Dwyer were cited. The Roberts letter to "leaders" said, "He (Jack O'Dwyer) is not a member of PRSA." The "not" was underlined.

The Roberts letter became the subject of a banner headline in the New York Times ad column written by Stuart Elliott.

Roberts wrote that board and staff have "repeatedly spent time" with O'Dwyer "providing the facts."

In an editorial rebuttal, O'Dwyer wrote that "No one from PRSA has sat down with us for years to discuss at length the issues facing the Society, particularly member dissatisfaction." O'Dwyer had met with Roberts for one hour during the first four months of her term.

Full text of Murray’s letter is on odwyerpr.com.

Jack O'Dwyer responds:

Murray’s letter should have been sent to me rather than members sending it to me. I send all criticisms of PRSA to Murray and the PR staff.

No specific factual "errors" of mine are cited by Murray, just sweeping generalizations.

He claims that PRSA has a "healthy balance sheet" but that's not what three college accounting professors said last year after analyzing the audit of PRSA.

If PRSA followed the common practice of deferring about half of dues income, net assets would only be about $1 million. This is a small potatoes since PRSA's expenses are about $10 million a year.

One of our big beefs is that PRSA only admits to spending $100K or so ($187,657 in 2005) on staff on its annual conference when the real total is closer to $2M, former treasurers and presidents have told us.

Only 4% of members go to the conference. So PRSA, instead of trimming back the conference, ditched the printed 1,000-page members' directory which was enjoyed by 22,000 members.

The few get the perks while the many get the short end of the stick.
Quite a few members want to overturn this awful decision which was made without any input from the general membership.

We challenge Bill Murray to a public debate with a moderator acceptable to both of us.

I have never seen PRSA so alienated from its membership as at present.

It refuses to use its blast e-mail capability to sample member opinion and instead insists on talking only to "leaders" who can be counted on for loyalty because of various perks they enjoy.

FRASER QUITS DIVERSITY GROUP.

Edie Fraser, founder of Diversity Best Practices, last week quit the organization, which is currently owned by Working Mother Media, a monthly magazine.

Fraser, who was active in PRSA for many years and who founded its Public Affairs section in 1981, is president and CEO of the Public Affairs Group.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the House of Representatives, scheduled a hearing for March 20 on the awarding of a $20,000, no-bid contract by the General Services Administration to the Public Affairs Group and two of its divisions, the Business Women’s Network and Diversity Best Practices. It has been postponed.

Fraser has told O’Dwyer’s that the contract was cancelled within two weeks when the GSA decided that the wrong procedure had been used and that she did no work on it.

The contract called for Fraser to do a 24-page report describing GSA’s use of minority and women-owned businesses.

The Committee’s website has the text of an e-mail allegedly from Fraser to Lurita Doan, administrator of the GSA, in which Fraser writes: “Lurita, I will do anything for you and will do for the rest of my life...But I have spent so much time at GSA from the report planning to these sessions with ZERO $$. How do we solve.” The date of the e-mail was given as Sept. 6, 2006.

Fraser, who was previously involved in several PR firms in Washington, D.C., founded Diversity Best Practices in 1999 and later sold it to ivillage.com, which sold it to NBC University which sold it to Working Mother Media.

A major event of the Diversity organization is the Annual Diversity and Women Leadership Summit & Gala which took place Oct. 26, 2006 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in D.C. and is scheduled for Nov. 1-2, 2007 at the Washington Hotel & Towers.

Companies pay up to tens of thousands of dollars for tables at the banquet at which winners of Diversity Leadership Awards are recognized.

A large number of organizations and blue chip companies are contributors to the summit and gala including Bellsouth, Coca-Cola Co., DuPont, AARP, Xerox, Wal-Mart, Weyerhaeuser, FDIC, Allstate, and Amtrak.

TYCO TAPS FITZHENRY AHEAD OF REORG.

Paul Fitzhenry, senior director in Pfizer's corporate PR unit, has been named to the new post of VP/corporate communications for Tyco International as the conglomerate reorganizes.

The $41 billion Bermuda-based company plans to split into three companies by the end of the second quarter, a billion-dollar effort to create more operating synergy among its diverse operations.

Fitzhenry was a team leader for Pfizer's corporate communications group and earlier was group director of media relations and financial communications at Pharmacia.

VIACOM SUES GOOGLE FOR A BILLION.

Viacom filed a $1B copyright infringement suit against Google and its YouTube unit, charging YouTube with airing 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom's programming that were viewed more than 1.5B times.

The New York-based entertainment combine ripped YouTube for building a "lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google."

That business model, according to Viacom's statement, is based on "selling advertising off of unlicensed content" and "is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws."

Viacom says YouTube has avoided "taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site" thus "shifting the entire burden and high cost of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of the infringement."

Viacom and YouTube had been negotiating a licensing deal for months. YouTube recently removed thousands of Viacom-created clips at the demand of the owner of popular cable channels such as Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV.

Because of the breakdown of those talks, Viacom filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to prevent Google and YouTube from "continuing to steal value from artists and to obtain compensation for the significant damage they have caused."

NBCU's CAMPBELL TO DISCOVERY.

Bruce Campbell, who was executive VP-business development at NBC Universal, is the latest veteran of the GE unit to join Discovery Communications.

He follows David Zaslav, who was president of NBC Universal Cable, to Discovery. Zaslav took the Discovery CEO reins in January.

Campbell and Zaslav worked closely at NBC, working on deals such as the $14B acquisition of Vivendi Universal.

Discovery owns the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and TLC sites.

BERNSTEIN JOINS AIR AMERICA.

David Bernstein is the first hire in the "new" Air America, says Mark Green, president of the left-leaning radio network.

He is a 32-year programming executive who held jobs at New York stations WOR, WRKO and WBZ.

Green cited Bernstein's "successful track record of over two decades of building ratings and branding talk radio" in announcing the hire. Bernstein will be a "vital part of Air America 2.0," said Green.

Green's family took ownership of AA this month.

NEWSPAPER AD REVS FLAT IN ’06.

Newspaper ’06 ad revenues dipped 0.2 percent to $49.3 billion, according to the Newspaper Assn. of America.

The trade group highlighted a 31.5 percent surge to $2.7B in web advertising. Online outlays total 5.4 percent of newspaper ad spending.

John Sturm, NAA president, believes the upswing in web ads shows that publishers are "successfully monetizing their online properties by growing their audiences and building brand loyalty on the web."

National print ads registered the biggest decline for the year. They were down 5.1 percent to $7.5B. Classified ads fell 1.9 percent to $17B. That drop occurred despite a bullish 11 percent rise to $5.2B for real estate ads.

The NAA represents more than 2,000 papers in the U.S. and Canada.

LEVIN LAUNCHES REAL TALK.

Jay Levin, who was founder and publisher of LA Weekly, has launched Real Talk Media Group.

A monthly free glossy, RealTALK LA and a companion website, are Levin's initial offerings. RTLA, which is set to debut in May, promises to give a "voice and visible presence" to the people of Los Angeles especially the non-European descendant demographic market, according to its release.

The mag targets 700,000 households of Hispanic, Asian, African-American and Middle Eastern backgrounds that have household incomes of more than $75,000. Allison & Partners is handling the RealTALK LA launch.

WSJ REPLACES KANSAS.

The Wall Street Journal has named Nikhil Deogun editor of its "Money & Investing" section to succeed Dave Kansas, who is running the Dow Jones & Co. joint-venture announced March 9 with Barry Diller's IAC.

Deogun was deputy bureau chief in Washington for the past three years and headed the media, marketing and entertainment group in New York prior to that. The India native joined the Journal's Atlanta office in `94.

Monica Langley is taking over Deogun's duties in D.C. She joined the WSJ in `83 and has covered the telcom, banking, Congressional and political beats. Langley was tapped for the news editor post last year.

Kansas heads a venture that will create personal business finance sites. He will tap the personal finance content of WSJ, MarketWatch and other DJ&C properties plus IAC's LendingTree and Ask.com properties.

Kansas returned to the WSJ in `01 after holding the editor-in-chief post of TheStreet.com.

MEGA CHURCH BRINGS IN CRISIS HELP.

A Toronto mega church that is one of Canada's largest houses of worship has brought in a crisis firm as it faces scrutiny for its finances.

The Toronto Star probed Prayer Palace's $3M in annual revenues and reported that only a fraction of those funds go toward charity work. Most charity revenue from the church is derived from the congregation while church leaders live in multimillion-dollar estates, according to the Star.

The church has hired Strategic Communications Solutions, a Toronto-area firm, in the wake of the high-profile investigation.

(Media news continued on next page)

BE EDGY, ADD A HOOK FOR MEN’S MEDIA.

"We suspect that our readers don't like to read," said Adam Rich, co-founder of Thrillist.com. "It sounds confusing, I know – but it's true."

Finding what works in men's media can be a tricky business, as some of the field's top editors and producers explained at a March 8th Publicity Club of New York luncheon panel at the Three West Club.

Gentleman's publications are fickle in nature: some like stories that focus on health. Others avoid them like the plague. Some like lifestyle pieces that lean toward the risqué, offering articles on dating and sex. Others prefer product and gadget reviews, or pieces on how to succeed at business.

But there are a few qualities that all men's publications look for when ideas are being pitched. According to the panel, story ideas that cross their desk need to have a hook and they need to have punch in order to land print.

"We like our stories to have a crazy edge to it, so it's not just information," said Laura Heywood, producer for Maxim Radio/Sirius Satellite Radio. "We'll talk about health and fitness, but only if there's a weird angle to it. There needs to be something that makes it fun."

The panel, moderated by PCNY President Peter Himler, said this actually works for the publicist's advantage, because in men's media almost anything is fair game. Opening up an infinitely wider field of coverage alleviates the age-old problem of having a pitch fall outside of the media's range of focus – all a publicist needs to do is learn how to acclimate the pitch.

"Our stories are pretty straight forward," said Rich, of Thrillist. "But we don't really like to say what we will and will not cover. We like to keep it open and see what comes in."

Heywood's radio show for Maxim is a prime example of this. Because the national satellite program airs daily, it remains perpetually reliant for content, more so than the company's popular monthly magazine or its brother publications, Blender.com and Stuffmagazine.com. Product reviews can be molded to fit the show's theme and demographic, such as on-air alcohol tastings, which are popular and go over well with the show's audience.

"We put out three magazines a month, but we have 13 hours each day that we're putting together the radio show," Heywood said.

On the other hand, publications such as Best Life, which might seem reliant on opposite sources than notably younger-geared publications such as Maxim or Thrillist.com, also look for the same tailored hook when receiving a pitch.

Tyler Graham, senior editor for the magazine, said unlike Maxim, Best Life's average reader is somewhere between the ages of 35 and 55, and most have already "made it" in the sense of having a car, a home, and a family. In short, most of the magazine's readers aren't looking for career or dating advice. Still, Graham said adding a hook and appropriating a pitch to the magazine's audience is often more important than the actual editorial item itself.

"If we can get an exclusive, that's great, but it's not key. Sometimes our stories are taken from somewhere else, like a scientific study that says eating something will make you look or feel younger," he said. "The most important thing is whether we can put a different angle on it. We look for longer stories, trends, deeper stories - the stuff that people read and say 'that's cool."

Another trick when pitching men's media is to add a piece of multimedia with your story as an extra. The panel said this works especially well with web-based publications. Eric Gillin, Editor at Esquire.com, said offering exclusive movie and music clips greatly increases the chances of landing a story. Items that work especially well include live band performances and movie trailers.

"If you're pitching me and if you have a media add-in, we'll use it," he said.

One thing is for sure: publications geared for the male reader are only growing in size. GQ magazine for example, typically considered a flagship publication in the world of men's magazines, boasts a monthly circulation of about one million readers. Since going online several years ago, its website counterpart now sees nearly 30 million visits each month.

SITRICK STARS IN FORTUNE.

Fortune features a "mug shot" of crisis counselor Michael Sitrick in its eight-page investigative report called "The Inside Story of a Wall Street Battle Royal."

The Los Angeles counselor reps Canadian insurer Fairfax Financial Holdings, which is suing a bunch of hedge funds and analysts for $5B, alleging a market manipulation scheme designed to drive it out of business. Sitrick, according to Fortune, "cultivates a reputation for PR hardball." He met Fortune reporter Bethany McLean with FFH CEO Prem Watsa, attorney Marc Kasowitz, and VP Paul Rivett, to present their side of the case.

Watsa is described as a "soft-spoken gentlemanly figure" who usually avoids the press and refuses to give guidance on earnings. He sees his role as the care and feeding of long-term investors. Watsa is known as the "Warren Buffet of Canada," and head of the company whose name stands for "fair, friendly acquisitions."

That's in sharp contrast to the image of Sitrick, a "public relations consultant with a reputation for aggressive tactics," according to the March 19 issue.

Scooter Libby's perjury trial peeled back the layers of the Bush Administration’s PR tradecraft, a message machine that is responsible for the invasion of Iraq, writes Michael Wolff in April's Vanity Fair.

Wolff credits Republicans for being skilled PR players who can effectively craft, deliver and stay-on message. That's in sharp contrast to Democrats who are chaotic and scattershot when it comes to PR.

The White House corporate PR playbook fell apart due to the reality of the mess in Iraq. The prosecutor in the Libby case showed White House communicators equivocating, spinning, disassembling and – as trouble mounted – panicking as the various justifications for going to war proved untrue, according to Wolff.

The Bill Murray e-mail to PRSA “leaders” criticizing this NL and the O’Dwyer website (page one) is a PR blunder of the first magnitude.

The criticism should have been sent not only to the PRSA membership list but to this publication so we could answer it. Murray should know that PRSA is as leaky as the Titanic and we would quickly get it anyway.

The e-mail should have gone out under the name of chair Rhoda Weiss, who probably wrote it.

There’s a mistake about the percentage growth of PRSA in the last nine years. It’s 12% and not 18% as claimed. We would have corrected that.

Another mistake is that Murray criticizes us for a “long series of editorials which are inaccurate.” Editorials are opinion pieces that can be rebutted or refuted by argument. They cannot be called “inaccurate.” If “facts” in an editorial are incorrect, they can be called inaccurate (like Murray’s calculation of the growth of PRSA). The e-mail has terms such as “unsubstantiated,” “misleading” and “erroneous” without a single example being given.

The e-mail, carried in full on odwyerpr.com, is marked by fuzzy statements such as “PRSA enjoys a healthy balance sheet.” PRSA, by the reckoning of three college accounting professors (5/17/06 NL), had about $1 million in cash that it had earned as of Dec. 31, 2005, while expenses were running at $10M annually. Ideal is six months of cash and investments. Not shown is the $5M+ owed on the 13-year h.q. lease. Staff costs at the conference are given as $181,657 when they’re not far from $2M.

Why is Murray addressing “leaders” and not members? “Leaders” are worshiped at PRSA while rank-and-file members are ignored. And who are the leaders? Who has time to devote to PRSA? Quite often it’s the unemployed and partially employed. Only a couple of national presidents in the past 15 years headed a sizable organization. The rest were solo practitioners. They were not “leaders” in the business or non–profit communities. The only thing they ever led was their own firms. PRSA’s “leaders” are picked solely on their PRSA activity records.

PRSA claims that its 1,000-page members’ directory was an “anachronism” but the real anachronisms are the annual conference, the Assembly, the APR program, and the way PRSA communicates with its members (virtually ignoring the possibilities presented by the web and e-mail). Online directories have “not yet replaced printed directories,” Jill Cornish editorialized in the March 16 Association Trends, the leading publication in the industry. Many association members prefer print, she said, because “it’s easier to flip pages to check spellings than to key and rekey names and companies.” Once a name has been found, it has to be printed out or the data taken down by hand. It’s a pain, as PRSA members tell us endlessly. Also, only ten names at a time can be accessed and 5,000+ names are lost forever each year when members don’t renew. There’s no guarantee members will keep online entries up-to-date. Numerous kinds of research are impossible or difficult online. Also lost were the lists of chapter presidents, sections, districts, bylaws, etc. The decision to kill the directory was made without discussion on PRSA’s website.

The annual conference of PRSA, a pork-barrel of speaking platforms and perks for insiders, is an anachronism. A blizzard of workshops is scheduled (180+ at the 2001 conference but trimmed lately to around 150). The “presenters” get nearly full registrations (worth about $1,000) and have something to brag about on their resumes. Having so many workshops guarantees that at least 150 people will be at the conference. Another group of guaranteed attendees is the 250 Assembly delegates. There are about 200 exhibitor personnel and nearly 40 members of the PRSA staff (a huge expense). Nearly 20 ex-presidents attend partly because it’s free for them. Also present are the 17 national board members and 100 or so fellows. Both the ex-presidents and fellows have black-tie dinners. About 200 of the 1,500 attendees are college professors who pay a reduced rate but are not entitled to meals. Chapter and national leaders, conference committee people, fellows, ex-presidents, and district leaders all display up to four colorful ribbons on their chests. Absent are 21,000 of the 22,000 PRSA members. Staff spends many months working on arrangements, planning five years in advance.

Although New York is the communications capital of the world and the scene of PRSA’s biggest conference ever (the 2004 meeting that drew 4,000), PRSA rarely holds its meeting there. The previous New York conference was in 1990 and a return visit is not scheduled. Staff likes its annual junket to a distant city. This cold shoulder to New York is an engraved opportunity for PRSA/NY or another PR group to host an annual PR conference in the city. The national board is so hostile to New York that no one from PRSA/NY will serve on it. The Tri-State rep is Francis Donofrio of Bethany, Conn...the Assembly, a holdover from the 1950’s, is dysfunctional because how can a legislature be effective if it meets one day a year?...almost no one takes the APR test anymore because there’s no writing involved–it’s like a lifeguard test that doesn’t include swimming...as for communications, PRSA could use blast e-mails and the web to sample member opinion, elect leaders, keep the Assembly in continuous session, etc., but it doesn’t...two key staffers left PRSA last week but there was no mention on the PRSA website. CFO John Colletti left after six years and PR manager Cedric Bess after five years. There are no replacements yet for either, indicating they departed suddenly...PRSA is ignoring a boil on the hide of the industry–the recent vote by an audience of PR pros at a PR Week/U.K. function that it’s O.K. for PR pros to “lie occasionally” to keep their jobs. That’s something that must be rebutted.

--Jack O'Dwyer