CALIF. ISSUES RFP TO SAVE VINEYARDS

California has issued an RFP to review its six-figure PR account to educate winegrowers and the public about Pierce’s Disease, bacteria that infects grapevines and is spread by an insect found in the state in the late 1990s.

Brown-Miller Communications handles the account, which was last reviewed toward the end of 2005.

The firm’s recent pact worth $350K expires at the end of February.

California’s Dept. of Food and Agriculture oversees the eight-year-old Pierce Disease Control Program, which has used PR for outreach and education targeted at growers, wineries, pest control advisors, government and the public.

While the disease has been in the Golden State for more than 100 years, the glassy-winged sharpshooter, an insect native to Mexico, was discovered in the state in 1994 and has been found to carry Pierce’s disease and other bacteria among plants.

The state estimates that more than 1,000 acres of grapevines were destroyed between 1994 and 2000 from the disease. The bacteria and insect also threaten other crops like alfalfa, almonds, and fruits.

Media, industry and public outreach, speaker kits, and quarterly newsletters are among the assignments for the account. Proposals are due Feb. 22. Info: Jay Mountjoy, [email protected].

MCAFEE’S MACDERMOTT TO MS&L

Manning Selvage & Lee has recruited Siobhan MacDermott, who handled PR at antivirus software company McAfee Inc., as director of its North American technology practice. She is based in San Francisco.

MacDermott held the VP-worldwide corporate & executive communications and analyst relations title at McAfee. She was in charge of global messaging, corporate strategy, crisis, government relations and CSR programming.

MacDermott served as McAfee’s global spokesperson via appearances on CNN, Sky News, Bloomberg, BBC and CNBC. Earlier, she was senior VP-global marketing and communications at Betrusted and ran her own consulting firm. MS&L is part of Publicis Groupe.

David Hahn, senior VP at Planned Television Arts, has replaced founder Rick Frishman as managing director of the Ruder Finn unit. Frishman remains at PTA as senior counsel. He plans on devoting time to writing, speaking engagements and forging new partnerships for PTA, a top book publicity firm.

OGILVY MOVES TO ‘FAR WEST SIDE’

Ogilvy PR Worldwide will be one of the first major PR firms to stake a claim on Manhattan’s “Far West Side” when it opens for business at 636 11th Ave. in July ’09. The WPP unit and its sister advertising/marketing firms will occupy the entire 11-story building and get to put the Ogilvy name on the 95-year-old structure that once housed Auerbach Chocolate Factory.

The building offers 360 degree window views of the Hudson River and Midtown Manhattan. It fills the entire block between West 46th and West 47th.

The New York Times reported that since 11th Ave. is several blocks from the nearest subway line at 8th Ave. a shuttle bus will carry staffers from train stations and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Ogilvy notes that the expansion of the subway line to the Far West Side is in the works.

The firm will pay rent in the "low $50s." That compares with the reported $100 sq foot rent that Ogilvy's current landlord at Worldwide Plaza (8th and 50th Street) was looking for.

Ogilvy's new headquarters will be across the street from the luxury 222-room Vu Hotel that is being developed by Kimpton Hotel and Restaurant Group.

F-H RENEWS ‘ALL KIDS’

Fleishman-Hillard has won a $250K extension of its contract to promote Illinois' Dept. of Healthcare and Family Services "All Kids" state-sponsored healthcare program. F-H's GMMB public affairs unit also picked up a $250K extension.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich established the program in `06 to provide comprehensive and affordable insurance for children living in households without insurance coverage.

All Kids is supposed to close the gap for households with incomes too high to qualify for the state's "KidCare" program but not rich enough to foot the bill for private healthcare policies.

EVOLUTION OF PN TRACED

Gary Stockman, 46, who was named president and CEO of Porter Novelli on Jan. 1, heads a firm that grew from $1.8 million in fees and 43 employees in 1981 to a self-described $214M in fees and 2,483 employees in 1999. It was the fastest growing "firm" in the history of the business.

The $214M/2,483 figures were not attested to by O'Dwyer's Directory of PR Firms.

PN and other PR firms owned by the ad conglomer-

(Continued on page 7)

R&C PUSHES BACK AGAINST CRUISE BOOK

Rogers & Cowan has mobilized to refute a new book critical of high-profile client Tom Cruise.

The “unauthorized” biography by Andrew Morton is being rapped as a “vicious and false attack on a man, his religion and his family,” according to R&C co-chair Paul Bloch, who reps Cruise.

Morton’s book, released Jan. 15, raises the suggestion that Suri Cruise, the daughter of Cruise and wife Katie Holmes, was conceived with the frozen sperm of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise’s lawyer told London’s Daily Mail that the book was not being published in the U.K. because of that country’s strict libel laws. He added: “It’s a boring, poorly researched book by a man who never talked to anyone involved in Tom Cruise’s life or anyone close to him.”

The New York Daily News said the Church of Scientology is mulling a $100M lawsuit against Morton and publisher St. Martin’s Press.

Paula Wagner, Cruise’s production partner, issued a statement via Leslee Dart’s firm, 42West, calling Morton’s book a “disgraceful piece of gossip-mongering, filled with distortions and outright lies that no sensible person will take seriously."

An Internet video of Cruise praising Scientology also surfaced last week, bringing his devotion to that religion further into the spotlight. Wagner, who is not a Scientologist, also referenced that clip in noting: “It’s easy to mock an out-of-context video, but that doesn’t change the fact that Tom Cruise is one of the hardest-working and nicest human beings I have ever known.”

The Internet search portal Lycos said searches for Tom Cruise spiked 400 percent in the week before the book’s release.

SITRICK MAKES GRAMMY PUSH

The Recording Academy has been using Sitrick and Company to bolster its push to produce the annual Grammy Awards in the wake of the Writers Guild of America strike.

Mike Sitrick and Jim Bates have helped make the successful case that the awards show should not be picketed by the WGA, which decided last week not to protest.

Sitrick had been pointing out a handful of reasons the Grammy’s shouldn’t be picketed. A statement from TRA president/EO Neil Portnow put out last week by the firm noted his group has the support of the music industry’s two main unions and has been fighting for more than a decade for fair compensation for digital content. “We also want to underscore that the Grammy Awards telecast is now, and will always be, a union show,” he said, including two WGA members who have not yet been granted a waver by their union to work on the show.

It was The Recording Academy’s similar struggle for digital rights that the Writers Guild, West, cited in deciding not to picket the Grammy’s.

The RA has also been advertising and pointing out to media that top acts like the Foo Fighters and Carrie Underwood will appear at the event, despite the strike, an effort to avoid the fate of the hobbled recent Golden Globe Awards.

H&K PROMOTES ELECTRIC CAR PLAN

Hill & Knowlton is repping Silicon Valley-based Project Better Place, which plans to build an electric grid in Israel to power a fleet of electric cars.

PBP has just announced a venture with Renault-Nissan Alliance to provide zero-emission battery-powered cars to plug into the proposed grid.

Founder Shai Agassi is basing his plans on the cell phone business model.

His firm will construct 500K “charging spots” throughout Israel similar to cell towers used by mobile phone companies.

Drivers will pay a monthly subscription fee to access the charging network. An onboard computer will keep track of the battery power supply and direct the driver to the nearest charging spot.

Israel’s government has agreed to provide a tax incentive for the purchase of the cars up until 2019.

PBP, which was founded in October with the goal of reducing global dependence on oil, expects its grid to be in place by 2011.

Israel is to serve as a showcase for PBP, which wants to build grids in other countries.

PAWLUK JOINS GH

Adam Pawluk, a veteran of Ketchum and Ogilvy PR Worldwide, has joined the healthcare practice of GolinHarris in New York.

He handled the “Where to Stop & Where to Go: A Guide to Traveling with an Overactive Bladder in the U.S.” program conducted with travel maven Arthur Frommer in conjunction with Novartis Pharmaceuticals.

That guide features “restroom-rich tours of America’s leading cities,” according to a write-up in the Washington Post.

The program maps out bathrooms located near tourist sites in cities such as New York, Washington and Boston.

Pawluk also worked on the “Linkages to Life” program that boosted awareness of the need for organ donations among African Americans.

He reports to Dave Catlett, executive VP. Pawluk will work on GH’s Alpharma Pharmaceuticals and Waters Corp. accounts.

TITAN TAKES ON $15M INDIAN CASINO BIZ

The Titan Agency has picked up $15M in advertising, PR, branding and promotional work for the Pearl River Resort, the Mississippi casino and resort that is owned by the Choctaw Indians.

The entertainment complex in Choctaw includes the Golden Moon Casino, Dancing Rabbit Golf Club, Geyser Falls Water Theme Park, 16 restaurants and a convention center.

Tony DeMartino’s Atlanta-based shop has extensive experience working with tribal casinos (Cherokee Nation and Creek Nation) plus non-tribal gambling meccas (Paris Las Vegas and The Venetian).

Titan’s goal is to expand Pearl River’s guest base from beyond its southeast marketing region.

The Choctaw Indians are the only federally recognized tribe in the Magnolia State. The tribe has about 10,000 members.

WSJ.COM KEEPS CHARGING FOR CONTENT

The Wall Street Journal will keep charging readers for access to much of its website, and will soon hike its subscription rate.

That’s a sharp reversal for News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch who acquired Wall Street Journal parent, Dow Jones & Co, in December for $5.6B.

He told investors in November that News Corp. expected to make wsj.com free, and envisioned 15M readers in “every corner of the world.” The site attracted 5.4M unique visitors in December.

Murdoch backtracked from that plan on Jan. 24 when he told the World Economic Forum that News Corp. will improve the free portion of the site, while maintaining a “strong offering” for the subscription part of it.

The Journal currently provides free breaking news alerts, lifestyle and personal finance content. It opened up its op-ed section earlier this month.

The annual subscription price of wsj.com is expected to rise $20 to $119 next month. Print subscribers are charged $49 a-year.

BRONSTEIN ‘UPPED’ AT HEARST

Phil Bronstein is moving from editor of the San Francisco Chronicle to a corporate post at parent Hearst Corp. He becomes editor-at-large at Hearst’s newspaper unit and the Chronicle.

Bronstein is to relinquish day-to-day operations at the paper and will focus on more strategic matters, according to George Irish, president of Hearst Newspapers. The former husband of actress Sharon Stone will continue to serve as the “principal public face of the paper.”

Ward Bushee, editor of the Arizona Republic, replaces Bronstein.

Bronstein became editor of Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner in `91, and took over editing duties at the Chronicle in `00 with the merger of the two newsrooms.

BBC JOINS WITH MYSPACE

The British Broadcasting Corp. has cut a deal with MySpace to run selected content on the social networking site that is owned by News Corp.

MySpace touts the partnership as its first global pact with a top broadcast operation.

The partnership fits the Beeb’s strategy of putting its material “right at the heart of where audiences spend their time and watch video online,” according to a statement from Simon Danker, director of digital media at the BBC. BBC and MySpace will split ad revenues.

SCHAFFER NAMED HBO PR CHIEF

Time Warner’s HBO has promoted Quentin Schaffer to the executive VP-corporate communications slot.

He takes the job that Richard Plepler vacated in `07 after he was promoted to the co-presidency position.

Schaffer joined HBO in 1980 and was responsible for promoting hits such as “The Sopranos,” “Entourage,” “Sex and the City,” “Deadwood” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” He reports to Plepler.

PRINCE TO EXEC ED AT READER’S DIGEST

Reader's Digest has named Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia’s Tom Prince as executive editor.

Prince was VP, development editor, at MSLO and oversaw the launch of now-struggling Blueprint magazine.

Earlier, he was executive editor at Real Simple and Allure. He is also a former deputy editor of New York Magazine.

ATLANTIC DROPS PAID FIREWALL ONLINE

The Atlantic has removed the paid firewall on its website, TheAtlantic.com, in a drive to boost traffic.

Goldman Sachs sponsored the first week of the move.

The entire contents of the print magazine, daily blog posts, roundtables, web-only dispatches, and the 150-year-old magazine’s archives are now available for free.

“Like most publishers, we’ve been studying ways to integrate a relevant and compelling web presence into our strategy – and it turned out there was a completely natural fit,” said Atlantic Consumer Media president Justin Smith.

TheAtlantic.com saw its traffic triple in 2007 to 1.5M unique visitors. Digital ad sales grew to 10 percent of total ad sales for company during that time.

AP EXPANDS SPORTS, ENTER. COVERAGE

The Associated Press has named Jim Kathman global director of AP Sports Products, a new post charged with leading “the transformation of AP into the leading global, multimedia sports news agency,” said Tom Brettingen, Senior Vice President of Global Newspaper Markets for the AP.

Kathman, based in Washington, D.C., joined the AP in 2001 and has worked in its broadcasting division on projects like a partnership with Microsoft to create the Online Video Network. He was previously with Perot Systems and Dow Chemical.

Earlier in January, the AP named Daniel Becker to the new post of director of entertainment content overseeing expanded entertainment coverage across video, photo, audio and text formats and developing new multimedia products.

The AP said Becker and Kathman reflect an emphasis worldwide to expand its news coverage by taking primary roles in covering sports, entertainment and financial news.

COLARUSSO JOINS PORTFOLIO

Dan Colarusso, who was city editor of the New York Post until last month, is now at Conde Nast’s Portfolio as editor of its website.

He also served as business editor at Rupert Murdoch’s paper and wrote for TheStreet.com.

Colarusso reports to editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman and group president Dave Carey.

Portfolio’s site attracted about two million unique visitors in December.

(Media news continued on next page)

CITIZEN JOURNOS HAVE SHOT AT PULITZER

Helium.com, a citizen journalism site, and the non-profit Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, have partnered to cover underreported “critical global issues.”

The entities said their partnership provides Helium members with a platform to write about issues raised by the Pulitzer Center, including international affairs that have been “underreported, misreported or not reported.”

The partnership also gives citizen journalists the opportunity to win a journalism award from the Pulitzer Center. The Center will pick from top-ranked articles in several categories and award the winning writer with a Pulitzer Center Citizen Journalism Award.

Article at Helium.com are sorted for quality in a simple A versus B comparison. Helium pegs it audience at more than 95,000 citizen journalists writing on more than 78,000 topics.

REVOLVING DOOR CONTINUES AT LAT

James O’Shea is exiting as editor of the Los Angeles Times because of his resistance to further budget cuts at the paper that was recently acquired by Chicago real estate mogul Sam Zell.

The LAT reports that O’Shea is the fourth top executives to leave in less than three years over proposed budget cuts.

O’Shea was managing editor of the Chicago Tribune before taking the LAT job in Nov. 06. He replaced Dean Baquet, who had opposed cuts at the LAT when the paper was owned by Tribune Co. Baquet returned to the New York Times.

Zell completed the $8.2B acquisition of Tribune Co. last month.

LAT publisher David Hiller called O’Shea’s departure part of a larger reorganization of the paper. He said the duo no longer shared the same vision of the paper, which has suffered a circulation drop of 200K to 800K during the past eight years.

HOMAN TO LAUNCH MICHIGAN AVENUE MAG

Susanna Homan, director of corporate communications at Cramer-Krasselt in Chicago, has been named executive editor for the new magazine Michigan Avenue, set for a Sept. 15 debut.

Homan is charged with editorial oversight and securing and managing contributors for the title, which will cover Chicago-based personalities, lifestyle topics, business and dining.

Homan has been writing a column, “Susanna’s Night Out,” in the Chicago Sun-Times for the past seven years and also pens the Sun Times’ weekly feature “Shopping With Susanna.” She will continue to contribute both columns.

People _______________________________

Theresa O'Rourke, deputy editor of Cosmopolitan, has been appointed executive editor of Every Day with Rachael Ray. She was previously deputy editor at Shop Etc. and features editor at Allure. She has written or served as a contributing editor for Real Simple, InStyle, Women's Health, Marie Claire and Shape.

Briefs ____________________________________

The New York Times has launched a text messaging service to deliver news, features and columns from the newspaper and weekly magazine to cell phones and mobile devices. Rob Larson, VP of product development and management for NYTimes.com, said the Times' mobile site has experienced triple-digit growth.

Users can send a text message to NYTNYT (698698) with a keyword ("Rich" to read Frank Rich, for example) and receive the content back to their mobile devices.

SISCHY STEPS DOWN AT INTERVIEW

Ingrid Sischy resigned as editor-in-chief of Interview Magazine on Jan. 24 after 18 years at the helm of the Andy Warhol-founded magazine. The move follows the divestiture of Sandra Brant, longtime CEO of parent company Brant Publications, who sold her interest this week to co-owner and ex-husband Peter Brant. - Brant Publications also publishes Art in America and The Magazine Antiques.

"With Sandra Brant's decision to sell her interest in Brant Publications, it is only appropriate that I resign at this time," said Sischy. "Sandy and I have worked together as a team, and that has been a huge part of the fun of it."

Glenn O'Brien, who worked under Warhol at Interview, and Fabien Baron, creative director for French Vogue, take over for Sischy and will also oversee Art in America and The Magazine Antiques.

Sischy started her career at Artforum Magazine in 1979 and has contributed to a range of magazines and was fashion and photography critic for The New Yorker. She has also been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair since 1997.

F-H’S TALAN TUNES IN UNIVISION

Monica Talan, senior VP and partner at Fleishman-Hillard, has been named VP of corporate communications at Spanish-language media conglomerate Univision Communications.

Talan played a key role in 2002 in launching FH Hispania, the firm’s Hispanic marketing unit, when she was based in F-H’s Austin office. She was with the firm for more than 10 years.

She was previously PR manager for Enron in Latin America and international media coordinator for the Texas Dept. of Commerce.

Talan is based in New York for Univision and reports to chief marketing officer Maryam Banikarim.

Univision’s properties cover TV, radio, music recording and publishing, and online. The privately held company is based in Los Angeles.

USA today has acquired BNQT.com, an “action” sports video community, and the Cold War Collective, an ad network comprised of 20 websites and blogs covering action sports like skateboarding, surfing and motorcross. USAT said the move provides advantages like increased audience reach, stronger marketing and technology and sponsorships, along with added content.

An odd sidelight to the $7.2 billion trading loss at Societe Generale is that Risk Magazine of the U.K. this month named the French bank “equity derivatives house of the year,” praising its ability to manage risks.

The magazine describes itself as “without a doubt, a world-beating publication on financial risk management.” Its “risk management models” are at the “cutting edge” of equity, credit, energy and commodity markets,” the company website further says.

The scam by a 31-year-old trader indicates deep, systemic flaws in SocGen’s oversight capabilities, financial news stories are saying. Risk is the “flagship publication” of Incisive Media, Haymarket House, London, which was acquired by Apax Partners venture capital firm in 2006, for $373M.

Youths hooked on “new media” including TV and the internet are wiring their brains in such a way that reading comprehension is sabotaged, said an article in the Dec. 24-31 New Yorker.

Caleb Crain argued in “Twilight of the Books” that declining newspaper and book readership is evidence of declining analytical powers in the new generation.

He quoted Tufts Professor Maryann Wolf as saying that sophisticated thinking such as inference, critical analysis and insight is developed via reading and that these functions are not being developed in those who merely pump volumes of images and information into their brains. Wrote Crain: “The addictive immediacy and the overwhelming volume of information available in the ‘Google world’ of novice readers invite neither the time for concentrated analysis and inference nor the motivation for them to think beyond all the information given.”

She feels the “digital world may be the greatest threat yet to the endangered reading brain as it has developed over the past five thousand years.”

The board of the Council of PR Firms is sticking by its decision to pay $85K to Infocom Group, parent of Bulldog Reporter and the Daily ’Dog, for a weekly electronic NL designed to increase “visibility for the Council and its members among member employees and clients, current and potential.”

After just having spent more than $100K on a multi-year campaign in PR Week/U.S. while spending virtually nothing in other PR media in the past five years or so, CPRF is now going to spend money with one PR news medium when it should sprinkle $$ around equally if it is going to make media expenditures at all.

It’s time for new directions at the CPRF since for the first time in its ten-year history the five-member executive committee has more non-conglomerate than conglomerate PR executives.

Chair Ray Kotcher of Ketchum and past chair Marcia Silverman of Ogilvy PR Worldwide are from conglomerates but not the other three—Andy Cooper, CooperKatz; Joel Curran, CKPR (adv. & PR), and John Seng, Spectrum Science Communications.

The five new members of the 18-member board include only one from a conglomerate, Mark Hass of Manning, Selvage & Lee, part of Publicis. The others are Lou Hoffman, Hoffman Agency; Jim Terman, Jasculca/Terman; Otis Wragg, Wragg & Casas PR, and Seng. Non-conglomerate directors now outnumber conglomerate directors by 12 to six. However, well over half of the CPRF’s $1M in income still comes from conglomerates. About 15 such members pay $40K in dues ($600K) plus lesser amounts paid by other conglom firms.

One reason the CPRF has only 103 members (down from 132 in 2000-01) is that many firms don’t know about it. A vigorous ad campaign using some of the $600K it has in its treasury might attract more firms. But we doubt CPRF wants more than about 100 members. That’s the way it acts. The $2,500 minimum dues eliminates well over 95% of firms.

CPRF has not carried out its mission of being “the trade organization for PR firms.” Rather, it’s mostly an organization for members. Its 103 members are less than 1% of the 10,000+ PR firms in the Yellow Pages. Its policies of favoritism to some PR trade press and discriminatory ad practices mirror what goes on at the conglomerates. It stresses that it promotes PR “by demonstrating the value of PR as a strategic business tool and by helping its members and their clients achieve high standards of PR practice and business performance.”

As a publicly-chartered trade group, CPRF’s duties are to the entire PR counseling community and not just members, as demanded by Chapter 63 of the IRS Code dealing with the “Tax-Exempt Status for Associations.” This law allows CPRF to keep $600K in its treasury without paying taxes on it. The PR brands represented on the CPRF board should only be associated with fair, law-abiding practices and policies.

Porter Novelli (page one), by its own figuring, increased in size 118 times from 1981 to 1999, making it by far the fastest-growing firm in the history of PR. Actually, PN was dozens of firms put together by parent Omnicom, itself made up of 1,500+ companies.

Grouping numerous firms under one banner makes it easy to advertise the overall entity. But is the result a unified company with a common culture? Also, is it fair to match such roll-ups against firms that have grown organically and have a common culture?

Ketchum, acquired by OMC in 1996, grew importantly by mergers. It talked about its “aggressive acquisition plan” in 1989 when it bought Braun & Co., Los Angeles, with 40 employees. Ketchum made at least 17 acquisitions from 1984 to 1996, adding 200+ staffers.

The ad/PR agency had $11M of longterm debt in 1996. The ad and PR sides each contributed about half of 1995 income of $124M. A letter from Deloitte & Touche March 6, 1996 said Ketchum was in violation of loan covenants and there was “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

OMC, in buying Ketchum, agreed to take on $13M of its debts. The purchase price totaled $44.94M.

--Jack O'Dwyer