B-M WORKS FOR ‘SECRETIVE’ ABU DHABI

Burson-Marsteller works for the “secretive” Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which shocked the financial markets by taking a $7.5B stake in Citigroup.

The New York Times (Nov. 28) pitched the deal as a “coming out” party for the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund with assets of more than $650B.

Abu Dhabi ruler Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who chairs ADIA, had largely been content to “pour money into low-return, low-profile investments” prior to the Citi blockbuster.

B-M took on ADIA in June under a six-month contract worth more than $800K. Its job is to support ADIA’s corporate communications function, pitch the fund as a leading global investor and handle crisis duties. Jim Lake, chairman of B-M’s U.S. public affairs practice, did not return a call about B-M’s role in the Citi deal.

When the deal closes, ADIA will become the largest investor in Citi with a 4.9 percent stake, narrowly edging Saudi Arabia’s Prince Walid bin Talal.

B-M’S WADLER MOVES TO MWW

Ame Wadler, who chaired Burson-Marsteller’s global healthcare group and served as chief strategic officer, has moved to MWW Group as executive VP/chief management officer and global health leader.

MWW CEO Michael Kempner calls Wadler a “great addition” to the staff. He says Wadler “created true intellectual capital that elevated brands.”

Wadler, a 25-year PR veteran, is to devise “new thought leadership platforms” for the Interpublic unit, and drive “practice integration across MWW’s 11 full-service office network.

Prior to B-M, Wadler held posts at Edelman, Hill & Knowlton and Lobsenz-Stevens.

MAHONE FLIES TO AEROJET

Glenn Mahone, former comms. chief for NASA, has moved to defense contractor Aerojet in Washington, D.C., as executive director of strategic communications.

Mahone rose through the ranks at NASA from assistant press secretary during the Clinton Administration to head communications for the space agency and its 300 public affairs staffers during George Bush’s second term. He is credited with overhauling NASA’s communications for the digital age before stepping down in 2005.

Mahone joins Aerojet, a rocket and missile engine maker, from defense contractor Systems Application and Technologies, where he was a VP/mktg. and bizdev.

BATTCHER EXITS DELTA; GH PILOTS CHINA

Jeff Battcher, who joined Delta Air Lines as VP, corporate communications in February, exited Nov. 30.

Battcher, 45, headed internal, external and executive communications for the airline. He was previously at BellSouth for 15 years, rising to VP-CC.

He reported to Delta CEO Gerald Grinstein, who was replaced in September by Richard Anderson.

Delta, meanwhile, has tapped GolinHarris as its China PR firm as the carrier kicks off service from its headquarters city of Atlanta to Shanghai on March 30.

The Interpublic unit will handle festivities surrounding that maiden flight. Delta is pitching the flight as the first-ever link between China and the southeast U.S., a region of more than 65M.

The Delta account will be handled by GH’s Shanghai office, which is headed by Lydia Lee.

A Delta spokesperson said GH edged two other multinationals for the business.

PN SNAGS BAROODY

Michael Baroody, who was executive VP at the National Assn. of Manufacturers, has joined Porter Novelli’s Washington office as executive VP for strategic development.

He led NAM’s advocacy, communications and policy efforts, and was a regular guest on network and cable TV shows discussing a range of issues that impact U.S. manufacturing competitiveness.

Baroody also chaired the Asbestos Alliance, an industry coalition working to hammer out a solution to the long-running asbestos litigation crisis.

Prior to NAM, Baroody was assistant secretary for policy at the Labor Dept. and PA director in Ronald Reagan’s White House.

Carolyn Tieger is managing director of PN’s D.C. office.

WEINGARTEN FUMES AT PR

Gene Weingarten, Washington Post columnist, used his Sunday, Nov. 25 column, which appears on the back page of the Post magazine, to launch his heaviest attack yet against PR and marketing.

Complaining that it takes 15 minutes each day to rid his voicemail of “Did you get my e-mail?” calls, he compared PR pros to the Gaboon viper, a six-foot central African snake with two-inch fangs, the longest of any snake. A bite causes “massive tissue damage, catastrophic internal bleeding, and a slow, shuddering death,” he said.

(Continued on page 7)

D.C. SEEKS PR HELP FOR HPV EFFORT

The District of Columbia has allocated $150K and issued an RFP for a PR effort to educate citizens about Human Papillomavirus and the effectiveness and risks of the Merck-manufactured vaccine developed to prevent it.

HPV, which is actually a group of viruses, has been closely linked to cervical cancer and venereal disease.

D.C. wants a firm to develop a public education effort and produce town hall meetings in the District wards.

The D.C. council passed a law this year requiring that the parent or guardian of every female child enrolled in sixth grade be required to certify that the child has been immunized or elected to forgo the vaccination. The public education effort requires a campaign to “provide scientifically based information… for the purposes of informing young women and their parents of the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of the vaccine.”

Merck’s Gardasil is the only FDA-approved treatment against HPV. A committee of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services has recommended routine vaccination for girls 11-12. The RFP acknowledges that there is considerable debate within the medical and lay communities about whether to require girls to be vaccinated.

Merck’s PR effort lobbying state legislatures to mandate a Gardasil vaccination program sparked controversy earlier this year before the drug maker pulled the plug on that effort. The drug maker, which has banked more than $1 billion this year in sales of the vaccine, is petitioning the FDA to get the drug approved for women up to 45.

Proposals are due Dec. 4. The RFP can be accessed here: dc.gov.

SITRICK PLANTS FLAG IN S.F.

Los Angeles-based Sitrick and Company has expanded to the Bay Area with a San Francisco office headed by returning partner Lance Ignon.

CEO Michael Sitrick said the firm has often worked for Bay Area clients, but said he wanted to make sure he had the right person to oversee an office there.

Ignon first worked for Sitrick a decade ago as VP and co-head of its IR unit. He recently was VP of corporate affairs at VaxGen, a vaccine maker that has struggled since its $900M federal contract to produce an anthrax vaccine was canceled.

Ignon was also director of corporate comms. for Tenet Healthcare Corp., and both VaxGen and Tenet are Sitrick clients. He started out in journalism as a foreign correspondent for Bloomberg, finance editor for Investor’s Business Daily and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

Ignon said he is recruiting for the new office. Associate-level employees with journalism backgrounds can send their resumes to him at [email protected].

Carlyle Group, one of the top private equity funds, has hired Dutko Worldwide for advice on investments in the healthcare arena. Laine Glisson, press secretary to former Sen. John Breaux, is on the Dutko team.

ALASKA RR SEARCHES FOR PR FIRM

The Alaska Railroad Corporation, which runs a profitable transit business for mining and passenger transport in The Last Frontier, has launched a search for a “full-service PR agency” to guide its communications and marketing efforts.

The ARC, which carries about 500K passengers a year in addition to its lucrative freight and real estate business, is state-owned but is incorporated and self-sustaining without state subsidies. It runs 651 miles of track from Seward in the south to Fairbanks in central Alaska. Revenues for 2006 were $149M with a $10M net. The railroad is receiving federal dollars for an aggressive capital program expanding and rebuilding across the state.

The PR work, according to an RFP, includes annual reports, press releases, media kits, government relations, employee communications (ARC has nearly 750 on staff), collateral and advertising.

Tim Thompson is manager of external affairs for the railroad.

President Woodrow Wilson created a commission to devise a route for the railroad in 1914 seeing it as key for mining and military purposes. President Warren Harding drove the golden spike in 1923 to complete it. The state bought the railroad from the federal government in 1985 for $22M.

HASBRO HIRES DUBERSTEIN

Hasbro has hired Duberstein Group to handle safety, manufacturing and trade matters at the nation’s No. 2 toymaker behind Mattel.

Those issues include lead in paint used on toys, a topic that has received widespread coverage following various product recalls of products made in China.

Hasbro CEO Al Verrecchia has posted a letter to “parents and caregivers” on his company’s site in which he says paints used on Hasbro toys are tested and inspected before they are applied on the products.

The firm also makes unannounced inspection trips to its factories in the U.S. and Ireland plus vendors in China.

Hasbro, according to Verrecchia, maintains a “team of Hasbro quality control engineers and inspectors based in Hong Kong and China.” They are part of Hasbro’s “U.S. based global quality assurance team, and often present on the factory floors of our vendors to confirm the quality and safety of our products.”

Ken Duberstein, former chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan, heads Hasbro’s lobbying team. He is joined by DG president Michael Berman, an aide to former VP Walter Mondale, and Eric Ueland, who was an advisor to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

Hasbro’s line-up includes “G.I. Joe,” who will star in a $170M Paramount Pictures production in `09; “Mr. Potato Head;” “Littlest Pet Shop;” plus classic board games (“Monopoly,” “Battleship” and “Stratego”).

5W PR has five offices and 10 cubicles available for rent with a short-term commitment in New York at 1120 6th Avenue in the Hippodrome Building.

The firm recently moved to a larger space. Info: [email protected] or 212/999-5585.

NYT MAKES CUTS; STOCK RATED ‘SELL’

The New York Times is making newsroom cuts for the “first time in recent memory,” according to a staff memo from Bill Keller, executive editor.

He notified the Newspaper Guild that a dozen support jobs are being eliminated now.

Some “management jobs in administrative areas” are set to go in `08, as the newsroom is poised to help the publisher “meet the difficult financial challenges facing our industry.”

Keller’s goal is to avoid the “drastic staff cutbacks” that have hammered other newsrooms.

His Nov. 28 memo came the same day that Banc of America Securities analyst Joe Arns put a “sell” rating on the New York Times Co. stock. He slashed his target price to $14 from $21 (NYTC is trading at $16.70).

Arns believes the “intrinsic value” of the stock is greater than $14, but that value won’t be realized under the current advertising down cycle bottoms out.

Though the Times’ reliance on “luxury categories” bodes well for the stock, Arns notes that the upscale segment is “far from recession proof.”

The stock is vulnerable to a meltdown on Wall Street since half of its ad revenues comes from New York and Boston (Boston Globe).

Arns had written that the Times “union-heavy employee base” (44 percent of workers hold union cards) is an “impediment to outsourcing and consolidation.”

Management however recently assured Arns that its good ties with unions will allow the company to “scale back its cost base as appropriate.”

Arns sees a golden opportunity for the NYT to monetize its worldwide online readership. He points out that less than 20 percent of the company’s online ad revenues comes from outside the U.S. (the bulk from Canada).

No Worries About Rupe

News Corp.’s impending takeover of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of Wall Street Journal, will not do much damage to the NYT, according to Arns.

Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. CEO, has promised to add more international, national, arts and fashion news to the pages of the WSJ. He was asked at a recent investor conference if he wanted to “kill” the Times. “That would be nice,” Murdoch responded.

Arns is “skeptical” that the WSJ can “steal many readers and advertisers in the near term.” He also believes the Times would retaliate against the WSJ by stepping up its business news coverage.

The BoA analyst raised the prospect of an alliance between the Financial Times, a unit of U.K.-based Pearson, and the NYT.

Pearson has been under pressure from investors to boost returns or divest the FT.

A partnership between FT and NYT would be a “remarkable counterweight to a general interest WSJ,” in Arns’ view.

Harwood covers politics

John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and a veteran D.C. reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal, will join the New York Times as a political writer at the end of the year.

Harwood will contribute in a part-time role in print and online similar to his Journal/CNBC Washington coverage. He appears regularly on political affairs TV programs.

Harwood joined the Journal in 1991 as White House correspondent and later rose to political editor after working for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida and D.C.

KOONES EXITS VARIETY

Charlie Koones is leaving the president and publisher posts at Variety on March 1. The 17-year Variety veteran wants to pursue other opportunities in media and entertainment.

Neil Stiles, managing director at Reed Business Information in the U.K., will assume Koones’ job.

Koones, 45, is credited with the growth of Variety’s digital arm that was launched nine years ago.

He also forged a syndication partnership for the entertainment trade pub with MSN.

Peter Bart, Variety’s powerful editor-in-chief, said Koones brought a “style and energy” that proved vital to the publication’s success.

People ___________________________

Craig Crawford, who has covered politics and policy for Congressional Quarterly since 2003, will be blogging daily for CQ with reporting and commentary on the 2008 presidential campaign.

He writes the “Trail Mix” and “1600” columns for the D.C. news outlet and formerly ran The Hotline blog for National Journal.

Crawford said it is a “kick” to be covering “the most wide-open presidential campaign in more than a generation.”

Former Santa Cruz Sentinel editor Tom Honig is joining Armanasco Public Relations as a senior A/E focusing on public affairs and media strategies. The Monterey, Calif.-based firm is affiliated with Hill & Knowlton.

Meredith Corporation tapped Jennifer Mirsky as editor-in-chief of women’s lifestyle content for the company’s interactive arm. She will oversee content for titles including Ladies’ Home Journal, More and Fitness.

Mirksy had been VP of editorial programming at NBC Universal’s iVillage.com. Prior to that, she directed the creation and production of 12 websites as VP for Hearst Magazine Group.

Parade has upped Janice Kaplan to the editor slot to replace Lee Kravitz who exited last month. She had been executive editor since `06.

Kaplan began her career as an on-air sports reporter for CBS Radio and was deputy editor of TV Guide prior to Parade. She is author of “The Botox Diaries and “Mine are Spectacular.”

Lance Graham, general manager of Parade Publications, takes Kaplan’s spot.

(Media news continued on next page)

FOOD PRESS WANTS SLICE OF LIFE

There’s a lot accounting for good taste in the food press. More than 120 PR pros were treated November 16 to a Publicity Club of New York panel of top food journalists at the Three West Club.

“Food is beyond eating and recipes,” said Jee Won Park, producer for CBS’ “The Early Show.”

“It goes into every aspect of life we can imagine. We need to think a little broader – the content given to me needs to be much more than consumer news.”

Taking this breadth into context, pitching the food beat requires a certain amount of creativity. Rachel Wharton, a reporter for New York Daily News, said one of her favorite ways of bringing food news to the public is “behind the scenes, human interest stories” that puts a face on a local restaurant.

“We’re really looking for things that make New York what it is,” said Laren Spirer, a food blogger for Gothamist.com. “That restaurant nobody knows about. The funky little deli that has that thing you can’t find anywhere else.”

This news bodes well for PR pros. The food beat blends with all kinds of non-food pitches.

For instance, Wharton said readers are interested in stories that bridge the gap between food and health. David Bonom, Contributing Editor for Cooking Light, said the nature of his magazine is healthy living through food, and feedback on his website’s blog confirms a growing trend in this sector.

James Oliver Cury, Executive Editor of epicurious.com, said some of the current buzzwords around his office are “organic, clean and sustainable.”

Epicurious.com gets between 36 and 40 million pages views a month, traffic that Cury attributed to a “huge percentage” of the more than 60,000 recipes the website offers.

Spirer said the nature of her work keeps her constantly reliant on pitches: “The thing about blogs is everything is instantaneous. Our readers respond instantaneously.”

Cury said the blog portion of his website gives publicists a chance to pitch two areas of the website. “There are two sections on the site that are right for pitches. For issue-related pitches, we run them on the other blogs.”

“We get a lot of feedback on our blog,” Bonom continued. “Interests come out. People talk about what they like and what they don’t like. It’s a great source of information.”

So what’s the best way to pitch the food press? The panel agreed that succinct, catchy subject lines in an email are of the highest importance.

“What’s a hot subject line? Just tell me what it is,” Park said. “What’s a good body? Just tell me how it works. Give me three ideas on how it fits in my show.”

“I save my emails,” Wharton added. “Then I search through Outlook by looking for the subject lines.”

But how creative should PR pros get with their pitches and subject lines? This was a point of contention for the panel.

Wharton said she doesn’t like it when PR pros try to dress up the pitch with hooks. Others disagreed.

“I personally don’t see anything wrong with being creative with your pitches,” Cury said at the panel event, moderated by PCNY president Peter Himler. “It’s useful. It’s taking information and trying to do something with it.”

Park said she doesn’t mind PR artistry but wants to know what the story is up front so she can work it: “Being brief and being very honest is very important to me. I’d rather know what the situation is without having to dig for it.”

Briefs _____________________________

Reuters reported that news of preliminary talks for News Corp. to potentially acquire the business networking platform LinkedIn aren’t true, shooting down a report by the U.K.’s Sunday Express.

The Express said last week that News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch and LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye started talking three weeks ago. Nye reportedly said he won’t take less than $1 billion for the site, which connects people in the business world.

Reuters cited a “source familiar with the matter,” while the Express did not identify its source, either.

Murdoch bought MySpace for $580 million two years ago.

CondeNet, the digital arm of Conde Nast, has inked a content distribution relationship with YouTube to create branded channels on the Google-owned online video giant. YouTube Channels for Style.com, Men.Style.com and Concierge.com will be rolled out over the next month, joining CN’s Epicurious.com on YouTube. A Wired.com Channel is slated to launch early next year.

The Los Angeles Press Club has announced the first-ever National Entertainment Journalism Awards for print, broadcast and web journalism. Deadline for entries is Jan. 25. LAPC has run the Southern California Journalism Awards for the last 50 years.

The contest is divided into categories for newspaper reporters and editors, television and radio journalists, and bloggers and other online news organizations. The contest focuses on film, television or music reporting and criticism. Info: lapressclub.org.

Active Interest Media is developing Whole Foods Market Magazine, a custom pub for the natural/organic supermarket company. The magazine will be available in more than 60 stores, premiering in the Midwest in January 2008, and in the Rocky Mountain area in March.

AOL has launched a money and financial website to deliver real-time news, research, stock prices and charts from more than 3,000 sources. The money.aol.com site receives its streaming information from Relegence, which AOL acquired last year.

Disney has created a corporate group to scout for start-up acquisitions. VPs Leigh Zarelli (New York) and Matt Pillar (Los Angeles) head the operation.

TechCrunch expects Disney to make up to 20 acquisitions of start-ups over the next two years.

Editor complaints about bombardment by PR people are a wake-up call to the PR industry and especially the media list services.

The services, including BurrellesLuce, Cision, Media Distribution Services and Vocus (alphabetical order), have compiled hundreds of thousands of editor names and made them easily accessible by numerous breakouts. PR firms and others also compile their own lists.

The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten (page one) beefed about a daily deluge of voicemails and Wired editor Christopher Anderson railed against the “300 e-mails” he gets daily from PR.

A “spray and pray” mentality exists—send out 300 e-mails to a specialized audience (e.g., beauty editors) and hope that one or two will use it.

The expense is so small that even if less than 1% are used it’s still worthwhile.

The media list companies are highly competitive with each other but we think they should band together to do something about this.

VNR producers are also highly competitive but 14 of them formed the National Assn. of Broadcast Communicators when use of VNR materials came under attack. The FCC has now declared that five usages are “apparent” violations of the law and an investigation is under way that could have a major impact on the industry. TV news editors and VNR firms are arguing that the feds have no right to force stations to identify the origin of video they use although both favor identification (but not the frame-by-frame identification that critics want).

Proper identification and sourcing is currently a big issue. FEMA’s “fake” press conference in which staffers posed as reporters ignited a firestorm of criticism. Senator Hillary Clinton has been accused of taking questions from “plants.” CNN has now been called the “Corrupt News Network” and other names by journalists who say the recent YouTube debate featuring Republican candidates was marred by “plants” who posed as “ordinary people” when several were democratic and liberal activists. The criticism came from Michelle Malkin (11/30 New York Post) and Tim Rutten (12/1 Los Angeles Times). Fortune (12/10) faults banks and rating services for giving fancy names to what were really “junk mortgages.”

Weingarten’s complaint about voicemails illustrates a fact of PR—without a phone call, most releases will be ignored. Some PR juniors “dial for dollars” all day. They majored in PR thinking they were going to settle community disputes or were going into public service. They were in for a rude awakening!

Some PR/communications majors are learning that they’re really being groomed for sales positions and that their every move will be tracked by computer programs that log all incoming and outgoing phone calls and e-mails. Their value in terms of dollars will be calculated to the penny. Although acting as salespeople (via press placements, special events, etc.) they will be paid a fraction of what a “real” salesperson would earn on sales generated and certainly no commissions or equity. PR figure Ben Sonnenberg got rich largely because he took shares in a local bakery that vastly expanded.

As for whether PR pros are “salespeople,” we accept what NBC’s Beth Comstock told the Institute for PR Nov. 8: “PR people are, at the core, salespeople.” Students entering PR via a PR firm will quickly find out that winning new accounts may take up to half the time of agency principals. A traditional route into PR, not taken by many recently, is to work for local media, build contacts with business and community leaders, and land a PR job either with one of the businesses, start a PR firm, or bring accounts into an existing firm.

A question posed by the Weingarten and Anderson blasts, says counselor Cyrus Afzali, is why does PR “trust junior staffers with the most important work we do?” (influencing what’s in the media). Afzali, with Astoria Communications, Sloatsburg, N.Y., says juniors typically don’t read the media they pitch. Law firms, he notes, would never trust a junior with complicated litigation. He’s “amazed” that PR is not questioning this model. So are we. Corporate and agency PR chieftains opted out of media relations many years ago, dumping it on juniors while they focus on “strategy.” PR has been recast from relations with individual editors to “relationships” with audiences such as potential customers, stockholders, retireds, suppliers, communities, etc. We don’t think these audiences want “relationships.” They want the “straight skinny” or the best possible products at the lowest prices and will shop Google and the trade and general press to find them.

Rhoda Weiss spoke to a chapter of the Society she heads (page 7) but did not invite questions from the audience nor poll members on Society matters. Obvious questions are why is the Society revamping its entire bylaws and at what charge by its 600-member law firm, Venable of D.C., and will the charter be switched to Delaware, which allows electronic meetings and votes by members or elected delegates, from New York, which does not?

We see the influence of lawyers in many places in PR these days. But lawyers are poor PR practitioners, according to a column lawyer Harold Suckenik wrote for the O’Dwyer magazine. Lawyers are trained in the negative—to look for violations of rules or the law, he wrote. Their study of common law is mostly a study of “transactions that went wrong.” Lawyers are used to making voluminous arguments to small audiences—a single judge, three to nine appellate judges, or a jury of six to 12 people. They’re not used to dealing with the masses. Finely-tuned arguments that work in lengthy legal “briefs” may not have traction with the public. To this we would add that lawyers often argue guilt or innocence, black and white, up or down, with nothing in between.

--Jack O'Dwyer