CLIMATE GROUP SEEKS PR PITCHES.

The Presidential Climate Action Project, a non-partisan climate change group, has issued an RFP through the University of Colorado at Denver for a firm to implement its strategic communications plan.

Burson-Marsteller won a competitive pitch in June to draw up a PR strategy for the group. The latest RFP, issued on Sept. 7, is the next step of a multipart plan by the Project and is focused more on execution of communications.

The Project wants to put climate change at the top of the next U.S. president’s agenda. The Univ. of Colorado, along with several groups like the Pew Center on Climate Change and the National Wildlife Federation, are working to draw up a climate action plan to be unveiled in early 2008 ahead of the election season for the 44th president.

Despite a small $45K budget, 10 firms pitched for the group’s initial account earlier this year.

The RFP can be downloaded from Colorado’s procurement site. www.gssa.state.co.us.

MULLINS, FLEISCHER TOUT IRAQ PROGRESS.

Jerry Mullins, a senior executive for the Washington, D.C., public affairs firm WeberMerritt, is serving as spokesman for Freedom’s Watch, the non-profit group touting U.S. success in Iraq with a $15M advertising blitz.

Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary who is now a communications consultant, is a founding member of FW.

The group’s ads include a spot of a soldier who lost both legs in Iraq urging forces to continue the fight there, before a plane heading for the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 is shown.

The radio and TV ads are running in dozens of Congressional districts in 20 states offering an 800-number for people to contact their representatives “and urge them not to surrender to terror.”

Mullins, who has counseled NASCAR, USLAW.com, and produced ads for the Republican National Committee, did not return a call and email about WM’s work with Freedom’s Watch.

Pam Mills, former president of the Washington, D.C. chapter of PR Society, died Sept. 7 after suffering a massive hemorrhage of her lungs. She was 41.

The cystic fibrosis patient had been first on a wait-list for a double-lung transplant.

She ran Mills Communications, which was founded in ’02.

NAB TUNES IN CORALLO COMSTOCK.

The National Assn. of Broadcasters is using crisis management/PA firm Corallo Comstock in its effort to derail the proposed XM-Sirius Satellite Radio merger.

NAB has been the leading opponent of that hook-up, maintaining the marriage would limit programming and raise consumer fees. It is behind the XMSiriusMonopoly.org site.

The trade group representing 8,300 free TV and radio outlets believes the XM/Sirius deal violates the initial Federal Communications Commission stipulation that the two services had to be independent. The FCC made that rule when it granted XM and Sirius their licenses in `97. [XM and Sirius counter that an explosion of new media services since `97 makes that point moot.]

The Justice Dept. and FCC must approve the merger. Mark Corallo and Barbara Comstock are former Justice Dept. officials who set up shop on Jan. 1.

Their work for the NAB bolsters efforts by The Ashcroft Group, which was hired by the broadcasters in March. NAB has posted on its website a Feb. 27 letter from former Attorney General John Ashcroft to then-AG Alberto Gonzales opposing the XM-Sirius deal.

NAB does not identify Ashcroft as its lobbyist. TAG received $160K in fees from the NAB during the first half of this year.

OGILVY SUPPORTS CANCER TEST BLITZ.

Ogilvy PR Worldwide is supporting Myriad Genetics as the Utah biotech company unleashes a public awareness blitz for its genetic breast and ovarian cancer test.

The purpose of the campaign touting the $3,000 BRACAnalysis test “is to save lives,” according to Myriad president Gregory Critchfield. The blood screening is meant to identify high-risk women so they can take measures toward prevention of the cancers.

The New York Times has reported that the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office is investigating Myriad advertising for the test amid criticism that the expensive test may cause undue alarm in patients.

The physician outreach and education component of the campaign – the test can only be ordered by a doctor – along with consumer education and PR are focused on the Northeast. An ad push will hit Boston, Hartford, Providence and New York through the spring of 2008. The company said the Northeast region’s numerous medical resources are the reason for that geographic focus.

Myriad says that fewer than three percent of the million people in the U.S. with a genetic risk of cancer know of it.

GC TAPS FORMER LIBYA LOBBYIST.

Jill Schuker, a former Libyan lobbyist and Clinton/Carter White House official, has joined the senior advisory board of Global Communicators.

As head of JAS International, Schuker repped the Ghadafi International Charity Foundation.

That work “focused on media and civil society reform as part of bipartisan support for full normalization” of relations with the U.S., she said in an e-mail sent to this NL. She worked closely with Libyan strong man Muammar Ghadafi’s son, Saif, “for whom these issues and opening to the west are paramount.” Saif heads the foundation.

Schuker wrapped up the Libyan work last summer. She worked as a subcontractor to Fahmy Hudome International, the Government of Libya’s lobbyist.

Though Schuker served President Clinton and is a big fan of the former First Lady, she told O’Dwyer’s that she has “close contacts” with Democratic candidates, singling out Obama, Dodd and Biden.

She denied having a “special relationship with or a role” in the Hillary Clinton run. “I respect Hillary Clinton enormously of course as a candidate and intend to be supportive of her in the future,” said Schuker.

Jim Harff, GC’s CEO, expects Schuker’s “impressive national security and government relations credentials” will boost his Washington, D.C.-based shop.

Schuker was senior director of communications at the National Security Council during Clinton’s Administration and held State Dept. and United Nations posts during Carter’s four years in office.

She is headed for Kiev later this month to serve as an official election observer in Ukraine’s parliamentary tally set for Sept. 30.

GEORGIA SEEKS INPUT FOR TRANSIT PR.

Georgia’s Dept. of Transportation issued an RFQ on Sept. 5 for a new contract to manage education and safety campaigns, policy efforts and a statewide speakers bureau.

A spokeswoman for the Department told O’Dwyer’s it is new work and there is no incumbent.

To pitch, a firm must have handled at least three marketing, PR or public outreach efforts related to transportation, tolling, trucking or other similar fields, one of which had to be executed for a public entity. Notably, the DoT is also requiring that interested firms provide a list of clients who have terminated their relationship with the firm over the last three years. It also “prefers” its project manager to be APR certified.

Hayslett Group won a competitive pitch for the DoT’s 511 information line PR account earlier this year. A provision in the new RFQ precludes a PR firm from being engaged in any active contracts with the DoT.

Answers to the RFQ are due Sept. 24 and an offers’ conference has been scheduled for Sept. 1.

VIRGIN AMERICA TAPS BKSH.

Virgin America Airlines, the low-fare carrier that is minority owned by British billionaire Richard Branson, has hired Burson-Marsteller’s BKSH & Assocs. as its Washington representative on aviation issues.

BKSH CEO Scott Pastrick, a former Clinton and Carter Administration advisor, leads the account. He is assisted by Charlie Black, aide to Presidents Reagan and Bush II and past spokesperson for the Republican National Committee.

VAA, this week, filed a petition with the Dept. of Transportation to extend the deadline from Nov. 18 to Feb. 18 to replace CEO Fred Reid. The DOT, in approving VAA’s launch in March, ruled that Reid was too close to foreign investors. Branson’s Virgin Group controls a 25 percent stake in VAA.

Don Carty, the former American Airlines CEO who serves as chairman of VAA, said the extension would give his board needed time to identify, interview, recruit and arrange the relocation of a seasoned airline exec to the west coast.

The San Francisco-based carrier launched its maiden flight on Aug. 8 with service to New York. It debuts D.C. to S.F. service on Sept. 26, and flights from D.C. to Los Angeles begin Oct. 24.

F-H STOKES ’STACHE MANIA.

Fleishman-Hillard is behind “mustache mania,” which reached a high point Sept. 14 at Shea Stadium when New York Mets analyst Keith Hernandez was honored for winning the “Top Sports Mustache of All Time” contest sponsored by the American Mustache Institute in St. Louis.

SportsNet New York, which airs Mets games, distributed 25K phony `staches to honor its broadcaster and former star first baseman of the St. Louis Cardinals and Mets. The stache was poly bagged with a card that honors “The Man. The Met. The Mustache.”

Hernandez, according to F-H VP Dan Callahan, was not even on the original ballot due to a more modest mustache compared to those sported by Oakland Athletics Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers (handlebar) and Cardinals relief ace Al (The Mad Hungarian) Hrabosky, who favored a Fu Manchu.

Callahan credits an appeal by Metsblog.com for landing Hernandez at the top of the list with 31.7 percent of the vote. Fingers scored 23.9 percent, while Hrabosky picked up 12.3 percent of the tally.

The AMI sent a congratulatory video to Hernandez that aired during the game. It featured Aaron Perlut, AMI’s executive director and F-H staffer.

The AMI was formed to counter the discrimination that mustache-wearers have suffered since the end of the 1970s.

Callahan said its purpose is to serve as a publicity platform to raise money for Challenger Baseball, a St. Louis-area league for children with disabilities.

COKE’S ESSEX TO H&K.

Carol Essex, a Coca-Cola Co. veteran, is the new VP-business development and marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Hill & Knowlton.

She is assuming the post of Christopher Burghardt, who exited in July for a corporate affairs slot at InBev.

Essex is an eight-year veteran of Coke, serving PA and PR posts in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

She joins H&K in October, and will report to EMEA CEO Andrew Laurence and chief marketing officer Tony Burgess Webb.

NEWS IS OUT, INTERNET IN, SAYS WOLFF.

Print and broadcast news are losing readers and viewers under intense competition from the Internet, says columnist Michael Wolff in the October Vanity Fair. The Internet, he says, gives people "access to all information at all times and not merely to today's news – indeed, all information, practically, that ever was…"

He feels newspapers such as the New York Times are doing a poor job in adapting to the internet by merely transferring lengthy newsprint stories to the web when people want much shorter, punchier material to read.

At the same time, he says, newspapers are cannibalizing themselves by giving away much of their content free.

The NYT only grosses $250 million from its website but its news costs are $300M, he says. Total revenue of the paper is about $2 billion.

The NYT, in its paper form, continues to seem "unique and important" but online it's "denuded of much of its authority" and its articles seem little different from those in USA Today, Wolff adds.

Wolff, who lost heavily in a previous Internet venture, says he is embarking on a new business called newser.com, which he plugs in the Vanity Fair article. One feature is a link to the "top 100 news sources." Slogan of the website is "Faster, smarter news."

Wolff is a fan of "aggregators," websites that do no original reporting but are collectors of what everyone else is reporting. He especially admires Jim Romenesko, a reporter from Milwaukee who started a blog called Media Gossip which became a leading source of media news.

The Internet is at its best, says Wolff, "when it sorts, searches, organizes, actually when it reads for you." It allows precise targeting of areas of interest, making it cheaper for advertisers to reach specific audiences, says Wolff.

Veronis Suhler Stevenson, media research firm, says that by 2011 the Internet will have greater ad volume than newspapers, currently the biggest ad medium.

‘WORDY WOMEN’ TAKE OVER MEDIA, PR.

Women are on the verge of taking over “word-based professions” like journalism, law, marketing and PR, writes Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn in his book, “Microtrends. The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes.”

Penn, who defines PR as “the art of helping people express themselves in just the right way,” notes that B-M’s staff is 70 percent female. Women held 30 percent of PR jobs in the ’70s.

Penn, who is Hillary Clinton’s pollster and strategist, believes the impact of women in TV is evident by the rise in the number of stories about child care, abortion, and sex discrimination in the workplace.

He notes that when Elizabeth Vargas briefly co-anchored ABC’s “World News Tonight” it devoted more time to “sex and family stories” (e.g., contraception, childbirth, postpartum depression, childhood pornography) than NBC and CBS newscasts combined.

Penn sees the same trend in PR and advertising. “Television commercials for tampons, vaginal creams, and ‘relief from period pain’ used to be few and far between. Now you can’t watch even a half-hour of prime time without seeing them,” he wrote.

On the downside, Penn says some PR and journalism executives worry about the scarcity of men in their businesses. “With half the human race underrepresented, can we really reach our full potential?” he wrote.

Ready for Woman President

Politics may be the next wordy profession. Penn has seen the past prejudice against women in public life “slowly turning to acceptance and even preference.”

There is a whole new generation of young women “watching to see if America, too, will get its first woman chief executive as has already happened in the U.K., Germany, Israel and Chile.”

Penn wrote: “If millions of young women are gaining ground in journalism, PR and law, politics is the next jump—as they require many of the same skills you need in politics.”

The author notes the progress that women have made in the Senate. There are 16 female Senators, up from one 25 years ago.

Microtrends looks at 75 groups such as “Office Romancers” (Penn is proud of the several interoffice marriages that occurred at B-M and Penn Schoen Berland under his watch.), “Old New Dads,” “Militant Illegals,” “Snowed-Under Slobs,” “Archery Moms,” (Penn famously coined the term “soccer moms” when handling President Clinton’s campaign), “Tech Fatales” and “Smart Child Left Behind.”

The book shows how the daily decisions of those groups are “forging the shape of America and the world both today and tomorrow.”

OP-ED AUTHORS KILLED IN IRAQ.

Two of the seven soldiers who wrote an Aug. 19 op-ed piece in the New York Times that was critical of the American occupation of Iraq were killed there.

Sgts. Omar Mora and Yance Gary died Sept. 10 just as Gen. David Petraeus reported to Congress about the Bush Administration's "surge" strategy, noted Editor and Publisher. They were killed when their cargo truck overturned.

The Times op-ed piece was called "The War As We Saw It." It said the U.S. occupying force has "long outlived its reluctant welcome."

The authors wrote that any thought of winning over the local population and "this counterinsurgency is far-fetched."

They wrote: "In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal."

The authors stressed as "committed soldiers" they will see their mission through.

E&P also noted that another of the authors, Army Ranger Jeremy Murphy, was shot in the head. He is in a military hospital and expected to survive his wound.

(Media news continued on next page)

NYT’S BROWN TO SPORTING NEWS.

Clifton Brown, a 19-year staffer at the New York Times, is moving to the Sporting News as its National Football League reporter. He will write the "NFL Insider" column, blog and appear on SN Radio.

Brown covered football for the Times for the past two seasons. He also covered the National Basketball Association and golf tournaments.

Before joining the Times, Brown covered sports for the Detroit Free Press and Boca Raton News.

Hope-Beckham does PR for SN.

BIANCULLI TUNED OUT OF DAILY NEWS.

David Bianculli, a 14-year veteran of the New York Daily News, is no longer with the paper.

The TV critic told the New York Observer that he received a "reverse Godfather" contract renewal offer from the paper. "They gave me an offer I couldn't accept," he said.

Bianculli said it was clear that he didn't fit into future plans of the paper that is owned by real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman. He is just one of the staffers affected by a shake-up instituted by editor-in-chief Martin Dunn.

Mark Mooney, national editor and 14-year vet, and Dean Chang, metro editor and 17-year News pro, recently got the boot.

Mooney believes the News is having a "personality crisis," one triggered by rival New York Post surpassing it in circulation for the first time last year.

Chang told the Observer that the News needs to return to its "working class roots" and not cover stories favored by Zuckerman, such as the Presidential race and Midwest developments.

Boyle Dies at 54

Bill Boyle, senior managing editor of the News, died Sept. 7. He was 54 and passed after taking part in an experimental chemotherapy trial aimed to combat stage-three melanoma.

Boyle "understood the value of a great story well told and was devoted to the craft of making words come to life for the reader," according to a tribute from Dunn.

Boyle began his newspaper career at the Doylestown (Pa.) Intelligencer and later move to the Wilmington News and Philadelphia Daily News.

The News profiled Boyle as an "old school newspaperman, a chain-smoking, black coffee-drinking editor who kept his cool on deadline."

PEOPLE ___________________________

News Corp. has announced that Fox News Channel business reporters Stuart Varney, Dagen McDowell, Rebecca Gomez, David Asman and Cheryl Casone will anchor Fox Business Network, NC’s new network which debuts on Oct. 15.

They will retain positions at FNC. Varney also is substitute host of "Your World with Neil Cavuto," while Asman hosts "Forbes on Fox."

Walter Cronkite, the legendary CBS anchor who retired in '81, is mulling a comeback on cable channel Retirement Living TV.

The 90-year-old newsman would appear on "Daily Café" and comment on current events. That program is hosted by CNN veterans Mary Alice Williams and Felicia Taylor.

Charles Hirschhorn, chief creative officer at RLTV, said negotiations with Cronkite could wrap up in a couple of weeks. The cable TV channel is targeted at the 55-plus crowd and viewed in 28M households via Comcast. It programs eight hours a day but expects to go to a 24-hour schedule in October.

Cronkite's son, Chip, is a producer at RLTV.

Janet Clayton is leaving a 30-year career at the Los Angeles Times to "pursue other opportunities."

Jim O'Shea, associate managing editor of the metro section, tried in vain to persuade Clayton from leaving the paper, according to his staff memo.

According to O'Shea, Clayton noted that she has been working in newspapers since she was 21 and "felt it was time to take a break without resorting to maternity leave."

Clayton joined the LAT as an intern in Washington, D.C. She became the first woman and first black person to edit the LAT's editorial pages. In 04, she assumed command of the LAT's metro staff.

Gloria Borger, contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report, has joined CNN as commentator on Campbell Brown's prime-time program.

She will be a senior political analyst as the Presidential campaign picks up steam. Borger wrote the "On Politics" column in the newsweekly. Borger also was a panelist on PBS' "Washington Week in Review," and CBS News' "Face the Nation."

She began her journalism career at the Washington Star in ’75.

Matt Purdue, editor of Worth, has joined Peppercom as senior analyst, a new post to help clients understand the media and business trends that affect them. Purdue has 20 years of journalism experience under his belt.

John McKeon joins Dallas Morning News as president and general manager, a new position, on Oct. 1. That makes him the Belo Corp. property's No. 2 exec behind Jim Moroney, publisher and CEO.

McKeon is leaving the President post at Los Angeles Newspaper Group, a division of Dean Singleton's MediaNews combine.

He also did stints at Newsday, Florida's Sun-Sentinel and the Los Angeles Times.

Michael Burgi has been promoted to editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Mediaweek.

Donna Dorian, a longtime art and poetry staffer at the New Yorker, has been named editor of Garden Design magazine. The title is published seven times a year by Bonnier Corp. Dorian has written for Town & Country, House Beautiful and Southern Accents.

This is "end of news" as we know it, says Michael Wolff in Vanity Fair and we agree (page 3).

People still want "news" but they also want information, history, context, opinions, and heated debates about issues. They're suspicious of anything that's "rigged."

Wolff, who had a previous web disaster that he described in Burn Rate, has just inked a nearly $1 million advance to write about News Corp's purchase of Dow Jones. He says it's easy on the web to flip to other news outlets and blogs to make sure one is not getting propaganda.

Independent experts abound in blogville (where links to related blogs are standard). Search engines such as technorati help PR pros to find specialties.

Tight writing is in and long-winded newspaper articles are out, says Wolff. Papers that just transfer newsprint content to the web are going to lose out because of TLDNR (too long did not read), he feels.

The onslaught of information on the web seems to be turning institutions inward. Veteran recruiter Jean Cardwell reports ten searches in recent weeks (9/5 NL) for "strategic internal communicators." PR pros are needed to combat a tide of criticism and information that may weaken an employee's faith in his or her own employer. Debating skills and product knowledge are needed to influence independent blogs.

An example of the web is the topic of coffee and caffeine that came up with the appointment of Joe DeRupo of the National Coffee Assn. to a PR post at PRS. DeRupo has been saying that the recent "scientific evidence" about coffee has been "almost entirely positive" and that coffee "absolutely" has a protective effect against type 2 diabetes, protects against colon and rectal cancers and "may" protect against gallstones, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. But other websites say coffee pulls calcium from the body and "something in coffee other than caffeine appears to be more likely to cause stomach irritation, worsen ulcers, raise blood pressure and blood cholesterol, speed up heart rate and increase risk for heart disease" (goaskalice.columbia.edu).

Caffeine gives you a boost for 4-6 hours but then (since what goes up must come down) you suffer from sleepiness, feeling overtired (you need another boost), and may have a "terrible headache." Caffeine, the most widely used drug, has a host of ill-effects even in small quantities, websites say. De-caf still has 3%-12% of the caffeine in regular coffee and drinking 5-10 cups a day is like drinking 1-2 cups of regular coffee.

We called up DeRupo in his first week on the job and had a pleasant conversation with him. He was not a member of PRS and was not aware of our coverage of PRS in our NL or website. He promised to have lunch the next week. No one had ever told him there was any problem with us. PRS was playing its favorite game–not telling someone something. After that first phone call, he has not responded to any e-mails and has not called us…DeRupo is the third important new (and expensive) PRS staffer this year and like the previous two (COO Bill Murray and CFO Phil Bonaventura) seems powerless to change PRS policy. Murray has not communicated with us in any way after an initial lunch and we never talked to Bonaventura, who remains an unregistered CPA who cannot use CPA after his name. PRS has yet to release its important IRS Form 990 that was originally due May 15. It could file as late as Nov. 15, thus depriving the Oct. 20 Assembly of seeing it. We hoped Bonaventura would file this statement, a public document…Murray and CEO Rhoda Weiss have hid out from the press and members so far this year. Both should have addressed PRS/New York which would have drawn a big audience and made money for the chapter. Instead, Murray met only with the board. Tradition was that the PRS president addressed the chapter but current PRS/NY leadership is not interested in bucking national in any way. Membership has dwindled from 1,200+ to 500+ and it has only one big program a year-its awards reception in June. PCNY, NYWICI, NY/NIRI and EPPS (entertainment publicists) all have monthly functions and bigger memberships than PRS/NY. The $225 national dues to PRS is a killer for New York PR pros.

Only a few e-mails have been posted thus far on the secret e-mail group created Sept. 7 by PRS for Assembly delegates. The e-mails are against the board's proposal to replace the ten districts with five "regions" (since it's become too hard lately to find even one board candidate from some districts). This private e-mail group for "elected" representatives flies in the face of all known democratic principles. Most of the delegates are only serving their first or second years (because of the three-year limit, job turnover, etc.) and have little or no knowledge of the issues facing PRS. Our question is what right does national have telling chapters who to send?

While PRS ducked the Princeton Review's dissing of PR (9/5 NL), a thoughtful comment came on prconversations.com (int'l PR blog) from PR professor Anne Gregory of the Leeds Business School, U.K., known as the "only full-time professor of PR in the U.K." She said PR pros have to accept the "ambiguity" in their calling. PR, she wrote, "is often seen as promoting the voice of the rich and powerful, of self-serving corporates, of shady political positions…the techniques it employs are often seen to be dodgy-front groups, use of journalists who write favorable copy, lavish and corrupting hospitality and so on. It is not perceived as a transparent profession, indeed its very claim to be a profession is questioned largely because of what are perceived to be its ethics." Still, she says the "vast majority" of PR pros act with integrity and honesty and should not give up fighting the stereotype since PR can be a "rewarding and exciting career."

Our wish is that PR's associations provide a shining example of what PR can be at its best.

--Jack O'Dwyer