NYS SEEKS PITCHES FOR TOBACCO PR

New York State is targeting large agencies with an RFP to guide a new PR initiative for its anti-tobacco programs over the next three years.

The state's Dept. of Health wants proposals from firms with at least $25M in annual PR billings from 2004-2006 to tie together its coalition of anti-tobacco entities around the state.

Firms are not required to be headquartered in the Empire State, but will be required to maintain at least a satellite office if chosen.

DoH spokeswoman Claudia Hutton told O'Dwyer's that the campaign is a new initiative focused on PR after a coalition of anti-tobacco groups last year pooled resources to run an advertising campaign. "In government, advertising is something that you pay for, but public relations is something you talk through that doesn't cost as much money," she said. "We have to teach people what to say."

She said a dollar amount could not be placed on the planned contract until the state budget passes.

As outlined in the RFP, the state wants a firm to establish and run a "Center of Excellence in Tobacco Public Relations" to include a series of sustained PR and media advocacy plans with statewide entities funded by the Tobacco Control Program.

That includes development of a speakers bureau, sample letters to the editor, media relations, PR resource kits and other work.

Interested firms cannot work with any tobacco clients and are required to provide a complete listing of clients from 2005 to the present.

The state hopes to ink an initial three-year contract to start on Oct. 1 and run through Sept. 30, 2011. There is a single two-year renewal option.

Information on the RFP has been posted online at http://www.health.state.ny.us/funding/rfp/0711301006/.

REYNOLDS JOINS QORVIS

Tom Reynolds, who was press secretary for presidential candidate and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, has joined Qorvis Communications as a director.

Reynolds is to handle public affairs and crisis management for the Washington, D.C.-based firm.

Reynolds also held the top press job for Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who chairs the Agriculture Committee, and Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat who chairs the House's Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment Subcommittee.

C&W PRESSES FOR FOOD ALLERGY CASH

The Food Allergy Project has hired Clark & Weinstock in Washington, D.C., to press for more federal dollars for food allergy research to help the 12M Americans who react to allergens such as peanuts, wheat, shellfish and soy.

The FAP, bills itself as a not-for-profit group of parents, researchers and educators, and believes the private sector is not able to raise the targeted $50M a-year needed to find a cure for allergies.

The New York-based group contends the federal food allergy research effort is "woefully underfunded." The National Institutes of Health, for instance, spends less than $10M a year for food allergy research compared to $107M for attention deficit disorder and $1.2B for diabetes.

The FAP believes a stepped-up federal commitment to food allergy research will attract the brightest scientists and researchers to the field.

C&W's Vin Weber, the former Republican Congressman from Minnesota, is working for the FAP.

He is joined by Ed Kutler (aide to ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich), Sandra Stuart (chief of staff for ex-California Congressman Vic Fazio) and Erik Hotmire (former communications director for Sen. Sam Brownback).

Mercury Public Affairs, New York, is also working with the FAP.

C&W and Mercury PA are part of Omnicom.

MWW SPEAKS FOR LINENS 'N THINGS

MWW Group is handling chapter 11 communications for struggling New Jersey-based retailer Linens 'n Things.

The company, which operates in 49 states, said it is shopping for a liquidator to shutter 120 of its 589 stores as it faces curbed consumer spending in the U.S. It filed for bankruptcy protection last month after media speculation about its future.

Richard Tauberman, an executive VP for MWW in its East Rutherford, N.J., headquarters, is heading the work. VP Susan Kenney is also handling the account.

LnT said that it secured court approval for a $700M loan from GE Capital and it expects to earn up to $130M from the closing of about one-fifth of its stores.

The New York Post reported on May 27 that the retailer was considering more store closings, up to one-third of its operations.

Home furnishings and related products are the retailer's specialty. Bed Bath & Beyond is its largest competitor.

RUBENSTEIN DID NYC’S SCIENCE FEST

Rubenstein Assocs. handled New York City’s first annual World Science Festival that kicked off May 28 at Columbia University with the World Science Summit invitation-only gathering of scientists and policymakers from throughout the world.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg gave a welcome speech in which he touted the city as a global research center and played up how science benefits NYC’s economy.

The Big Apple is the No. 2 recipient of funding from the National Institutes of Health from `99 to `06, and has produced more biotech patents than any metro area during that period.

The WSF is the brainchild of Brian Greene, a Columbia physics and math professor, and Tracy Day, Greene’s wife and “Nightline” producer.

Their goal is to shift the perception of science as being the playground of “eggheads” by showing how it impacts politics, culture, education and economics.

The WSF featured programs through June 1 at 22 different venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, New Victory Theater, New York Botanical Garden, New York Public Library, Rockefeller University, American Museum of Natural History and the 92nd Street Y.

Walt Disney Imagineering prepared “The Science of Imagination” program that explores robotics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and pyrotechnics. A day-long street fair was held in downtown Manhattan on May 31.

Sponsors of WSF include Con Edison, Credit Suisse, Rockefeller Foundation, John Templeton Foundation and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

PN, EVC GUIDE SONUS, ONCOGENEX DEAL

Porter Novelli and EVC Group are handling the merger of West Coast cancer treatment developers Sonus Pharmaceuticals and OncoGenex Technologies. The stock deal is in the $12M range.

San Francisco-based EVC is handling IR for Sonus, which had been reeling from the recent failure of a breast cancer drug and faced delisting on the Nasdaq for trading under $1 (it was at 34 cents on Monday).

PN’s Life Sciences unit is guiding communications for Vancouver-based OncoGenex, which has three cancer therapies in its pipeline, including one in clinical trials.

The Omnicom unit has worked with OG since 2006.

The combined company would bring OG into the public markets as OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals under OG’s current president/CEO, Scott Cormack.

OG had previously withdrawn plans for a $48M initial public offering early last year after turmoil in U.S. markets.

The combine received unanimous approval from both company boards and is expected to close in the third quarter pending shareholder approval.

Sonus is based in Bothell, Wash.

The Vancouver Sun reported that Sonus and OncoGenex will be going before a Nasdaq listing panel to appeal the delisting decision and to propose a reverse stock split that would see the newly merged company trade under the symbol OGXI.

MURDOCH SEES LANDSLIDE FOR DEMS

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch expects the Democrats to win the November elections by a landslide, bolstered by a sour economy and widespread disdain for President Bush.

The Australia native said the shocking victory by Democrat Travis Childers for a Mississippi Congressional seat last month is a sign that the GOP is in disarray.

Reuters reported May 29 that Murdoch made his political predictions at the Wall Street Journal’s annual “D: All Things Digital” conference in California.

The media mogul sees an “Obama phenomenon” and the fact that the nation is “undoubtedly in a recession” as factors boosting the Democrats to victory in the fall elections.

Despite that thumbs up for the Democrats, both leading candidates, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama, have problems, according to Murdoch, who oversees the conservative Fox News and New York Post.

The Arizona Senator is hurt by close ties with the White House, while race is an issue for Obama.

Murdoch believes Obama will overcome the race issue and emerge as America’s first black President.

The Post endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton in the New York primary. Murdoch says he had a hand in that endorsement.

DUNKIN’ DONUTS PULLS AD

Dunkin’ Donuts pulled an online ad that featured pitchwoman Food Network host and pitchwoman Rachael Ray wearing a scarf that was mistaken by conservative bloggers as a keffiyeh.

Conservative firebrand Michelle Malkin blogged that Ray’s scarf looks like a keffiyeh, the “traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.”

That scarf, she continued, was popularized by former PLO chief Yasser Arafat and is a “regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage taking videos.”

Margie Myers, Senior VP-communications at DD, explained in a statement that Ray is not wearing a keffiyeh. It is a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design that was selected by a stylist for the advertising shoot.

The chain, however, has dropped the ad because the “possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee.”

DD has outlets in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Pakistan.

O’KEEFFE BUILDS ‘BUZZ’

O’Keeffe & Company, an Alexandria, Va.-based tech firm with a penchant for high-profile anniversary parties, marked its 11th year with Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin at a May 15 event in McLean, Va.

Stephen O’Keeffe, founder and principal of the firm, said Aldrin has commanded people’s imagination for decades, from piloting combat jets to diving to the Titanic wreckage.

For the firm’s 10th anniversary, O’Keeffe hosted “Perfect 10” model Bo Derek.

MSNBC HIT FROM RIGHT, LEFT

MSNBC has taken hits from both sides of the political spectrum, reported Howard Kurtz in the May 28 Washington Post.

Steve Schmidt, a top strategist for John McCain, called the cable network “an organ of the Democratic National Committee.”

Ed Gillespie, President Bush’s counselor, blasted “blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann.”

Terry McAuliffe, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, charges Matthews with being “in the tank” for Barack Obama, and practically the “Obama campaign chair.”

Kurtz believes MSNBC is positioning as the “antithesis” of Fox News, and that its 61 jump in prime time ratings last month has made it a juicy target.

Steve Capus, president of NBC News, said people once thought of MSNBC as an “also-ran cable channel,” but that is not the case anymore.

AOL TEAMS WITH CNBC

Time Warner’s AOL unit announced that CNBC will provide content to its newly launched AOL Money & Finance video site.

The effort, according to Marty Moe, senior VP of AOL Money & Finance, is to give “consumers the most current and comprehensive financial news and information.”

The AOL finance site attracts more than 15M visitors a month. CNBC is available in more than 95M households in the U.S. and Canada.

COPLEY NEWS SOLD TO CREATORS

The Copley Press has sold its Copley News Service to Creators Syndicate in a deal that goes into effect on July 1.

The San Diego-based operation distributes syndicated columnists and cartoonists. It will be renamed Creators News Service.

CP’s main media property is the San Diego Union-Tribune.

VIACOM REVAMPS SPIKE’S SITE

Viacom has revamped its spike.com site offering deeper high resolution, full episode video player and advanced social networking. It also has linked a content deal with Playboy.com.

Erik Flannigan, executive VP/digital media, said the site is aimed at guys in the 18 to 34 year old age bracket.

The video player will enable viewers to watch Spike TV classics such as “Pros vs. Joes,” “Murder,” “DEA,” “Wacked Out Sports” and “I Bet You Will.”

DISNEY CREATES COMICS UNIT

Walt Disney Studios has established Kingdom Comics to create graphic novels based on its films.

The trio of Ahmet Zappa, Harris Katleman and Christian Beranek are responsible for the operation.

They will develop titles from new and classic Disney releases, or comics based on individual characters.

NAA CANCELS INVESTMENT SUMMIT

The Newspaper Assn. of America has canceled its annual “Mid-Year Media Review” that takes place in June. The event is to tout the prospects of publicly traded media companies to Wall Street.

The executives, instead, will speak at the Deutsche Bank Media & Telecommunications Conference slated for New York on June 9-10.

Reuters reports that tanking advertising sales, plummeting stock evaluations and continued circulation drops made for grim conference chatter.

There are no conference plans yet for `09.

GANNETT NIXES MINI-TENDER

Gannett Co. is advising shareholders to reject the "mini-tender" offer launched by TRC Capital Corp. to acquire up to 2.5M shares of the media giant. That block represents about 1.1 percent of the company's outstanding shares.

TRC, on May 14, offered to purchase those shares at $29.45, Gannett's stock is now selling for $29.32.

Gannett notes that TRC has made mini-tenders for other companies. Those tenders "void many of the investor protections afforded for larger tender offers," including the filing of disclosure of documentation with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC, notes Gannett, "has issued an investor alert regarding mini-tender offers. The SEC noted that "some bidders make mini-tender offers at below-market prices, hoping to catch investors off guard if the investors do not compare the offer price to the current market price." TRC's offer expires June 13.

Gannett publishes 85 daily newspapers including USA Today. Its shares traded as high as $59.83 during the past year.

GALLOWAY NAMED EXEC ED AT THR

Stephen Galloway has been named executive editor for features and events at The Hollywood Reporter.

He joined THR in `93 and has served as editor-at-large since `99, handling much of the publication's awards coverage and film features.

Galloway, who is British, has written for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, TV Guide and worked for French TV in Paris.

Elizabeth Guider is editor of THR.

WSJ STAFFS UP MAGAZINE

The Wall Street Journal is staffing up its lifestyle magazine, WSJ, which has been penciled in for a September 6 launch.

Jeffrey Podolsky, New York editor for Tatler Magazine, is taking the editor-at-large position.

Janelle Carrigan, who is travel editor of the paper's "Weekend Journal" will become features editor of WSJ.

Sasha Wilkins, who has written for the Times of London website, Harper's Bazaar and Elle, is going to be executive style editor of the new publication.

Kate Auletta, of House & Garden, is becoming assistant features editor.

(Media news continued on next page)

LHJ CELEBRATES 125 YEARS IN BIZ

The Ladies Home Journal is celebrating its 125th anniversary throughout 2008 via an editorial redesign that features new typefaces, photography and an overall more sophisticated look.

Diane Salvatore, editor-in-chief, said LHG has published work by "world-class philosophers, presidents, journalists, novelists, architects and scientists" in its rich history.

The Meredith Corp. property is airing BetterTV segments in a dozen markets that showcase a "Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman" editorial list of the most 125 intriguing women during the past 125 years.

LHJ has a circulation of 3.8M and readership of 13M. Its website attracts 1.8M unique visitors each month.

NBCU LAUNCHES IN RUSSIA

NBC Universal has launched the Sci Fi and Universal Channel brands in Russia. They debuted on NTV Plus' digital platform.

The Sci Fi kick-off included the airing of blockbusters "Jurassic Park" and "ET: The Extra-Terrestrial."

The UC launch featured "Out of Sight" (George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez star) and "Sudden Death" (Jean-Claude Van Damme).

Brief __________________________________

Tribune Media Services has begun international syndication of Samantha Power’s Time magazine column on world affairs.

Power, 37, is professor of practice of global leadership and public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She also served as foreign-policy adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

TMS has exclusive rights to sell her column to international markets.

She became a Time columnist in 2007.

HONING MUSIC PITCHES

Send a CD of your artist’s music, put a Post-It on it to say if it's for radio and what music tracks to listen to because time is of the essence for music editors. "If the best song is No. 8, tell me, I do not have enough time to listen to the whole album."

That's advice from Kurt Patat, senior communications manager at AOL Music, given at the Entertainment Publicists Professional Society media workshop, “Working With Music Journalists in a Technology Driven World," in Hollywood on May 15.

Music writer Dan Kimpel says he's “songwriter-oriented.” He looks for “somebody who understands how large that world is, but also how small that world is as well. I want a story that hasn’t been beaten up in the media. I am always thinking about who reads what I write. It is necessary that the things that are pitched to me are applicable to publications I serve.”

Kimpel has profiled Leonard Cohen, Green Day, Metallica, Fergie, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne, and Maya Angelou. He is a “Song Biz” columnist and feature writer for Music Connection magazine and contributes to American Songwriter, BMI World and SESAC magazines.

This summer passengers will hear his interviews with recording artists and songwriters on Delta On Air, the airline’s in-flight audio programming. Kimpel can be reached at [email protected].

Los Angeles, according to Todd Martens, “is not a songwriters town, it is a project town.” The Los Angeles Times producer said the “market is so flooded with music stories, we are usually looking for something two to three weeks out.

"I cover a lot for the Times blog, and started out covering the Grammys and branched out from there,” he said.

Martens’ duties are split between devising new content for the latimes.com site and creating ways to present the paper’s material online.

Prior to joining the Times, Martens was reporter for Billboard Magazine, where he wrote the weekly column “the Indies.” He griped about receiving just press releases from publicists.

“I need a picture, a stream, because with music you just want to hear it, and you don’t really care about the story,” explained Martens ([email protected]). “It can be an interesting read, but if you don’t like the music, then the story doesn’t really count. So I always look for the full MP3 and I like to be told that it is legal to post it on the site. I like to have meat and potatoes in my post.”

Patat ([email protected]) raised the typical beef about receiving unwanted pitches. “Visit my site before you pitch me,” he said.

He recalled getting a pitch from a publicist for a kids’ music web site, while AOL doesn’t have such a site. Patat also got an email saying, “Dear Terry please put this on Yahoo Music site.” He replied that his name is Kurt and that he works for AOL Music.

“Do a little research so you can put your pitch into context, and send a short pitch like, 'Hey, thought this might sound good on Spinner,' and mention it is a good fit. That is going to get my direct attention, as opposed to just sending a blanket press release.”

Patat revealed that there are some 200 radio station formats and music platforms, so it is advisable to label which music genre and which track he should listen to on the CD when it is mailed to him. Streams and MP3s are acceptable, and he prefers getting the entire song, too. Publicists should allow for minimum of two to three weeks notice.

Don’t Stress

"When it comes to getting music first, you don’t have to be first," said MK, owner and editor of Popbytes, a music, film, television, celebrity gossip and entertainment news blog. "If you start stressing about being first you’ll go crazy."

“The day the CD comes out the story is dead, and if we haven’t gotten an advance CD at that point, then it’s fair game to go download it and review it,” advised MK ([email protected]).

An issue raised by the Coach course at Hunter College is whether the course violated federal rules.

Federal law requires colleges as well as research hospitals to have “Institutional Research Boards” that protect students and patients from having undue research done on them.

There was no such review at Hunter where word of the course “popped out” at a faculty meeting.

Prof. Bob Hirsch wrote to insidehighered.com: “Didn’t the students have research conducted on them by the company (survey of attitudes) and didn’t the non-class students have surveys conducted on them? The course appears to have been a study by Coach to determine if it could modify the attitudes of students (i.e., brainwashing, mind control…”).

“Playing with someone’s head” is risky, he wrote. He noted that advertising and marketing do this but “not under the pretense of providing an unbiased perspective in the guise of education.”

Research was conducted into attitudes of students before and after the anti-fake campaigns. At Howard University, where Prof. Rochelle Ford worked closely with Travis Johnson of the Int’l Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition and Melina Metzger and Michelle Moore of Paul Werth Assocs., both primary and secondary research was conducted among 300 students and attitude changes were measured.

Anne Barlow of NYC College of Technology told insidehighered.com: “The commercial model doesn’t work well in an academic setting.”

Prof. Henry Giroux wrote: “The real issue is the increasing subordination of all aspects of the university to corporate values…lost in this transformation is the distinction between training and a critical education. The university now adopts the aesthetic of the mall and its administrators increasingly resemble PR hacks.”

Insidehighered draws 500,000 unique visitors a month. Its audience is 1.4 million college instructors and two million professionals in higher education. Founders of the D.C.-based website are educators Will Collins, Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman.

What some Hunter professors are now calling the Hunter/Coach “scandal” will be taken up again in the fall by Hunter professors, some of whom are thinking of demanding a “censure” of Hunter administrators.

A chasm is evident between academic and editorial attitudes and practices and PR attitudes and practices. “Controversy is at the heart of free academic inquiry” says the American Assn. of University Professors. Editors also thrive on controversy and the U.S. Constitution fosters “vigorous” public debate. But the Hunter/Coach course materials provided a “narrow” viewpoint, said the Academic Freedom Committee. When the professor in the class attempted to broaden the materials, he was slapped down by Coach lawyers. Coach PR was a no-show in this incident.

Materials of the IACC complain of abusive labor practices in the production of fakes but the labor practices of IACC members also merit examination to provide balance.

Coach has extensive guidelines for its suppliers but there is “wriggle room” because Coach can only promise that it will not “knowingly” allow violations. The class should have been told to visit chinalaborwatch.com and similar websites.

The first foray should have been to the Coach financials, which are readily available on the web. With a little guidance, the students would learn how hugely profitable Coach (and many IACC members) have become using cheap labor.

Gross profit of Coach on sales of $3.05 billion in the 12 months ended March 29 was $2.02B and net was $728M. Coach has almost no debt—$13.94M, giving it a debt/equity ratio of 0.01. It only has 3,100 full-time employees. The rest are part-timers, contractors, etc. Labor costs are kept to a minimum. Use of Hunter students at a cost of $10,000 to reach millions on myspace and facebook fit this mold.

CEO Lew Frankfort and his wife personally gave $1M to Hunter in 2007. He was ranked No. 4 in terms of pay in 2006 on the New York CEO pay chart of Crain’s New York. His remuneration of $44.4M was topped only by CEOs of Gamco Investors, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.

He made more than Rupert Murdoch of News Corp., who was 15th on the list and Ralph Lauren, No. 18. Frankfort’s 2,989,922 shares at $33.70 a share are worth $100M.

Carole Stadler, who as general counsel of Coach suggested the $10K gift for the Hunter course to the school administration headed by Jennifer Raab, a lawyer, sold stock worth $20.5M from Sept. 2006 to March 2007 (mostly at about $50 a share), netting about $10M after paying option costs.

Stadler, 48, left the company last year. A Hunter grad and daughter of Lorraine Edelberg Sadler, 1949 grad, Sadler has been a supporter of the “Mother’s Day Campaign” which raises money for the school.

Hunter PR students who contrasted the finances of companies like Coach with the finances of the ad conglomerates might think about a change of careers.

They would find WPP with $6.2B in debt (.72 debt/equity ratio); Omnicom with $3.08B in debt (.76 debt/equity ratio), and Interpublic with $2.15B in debt (.92 debt/equity ratio). Their debt almost equals their stockholders’ equity!

Why? Advertising/PR is labor intensive and labor costs can’t be easily shipped overseas. But the Big Five are trying as hard as they can to cut labor costs. WPP’s Martin Sorrell complained in 2004 that there are “too many people in the middle” in PR and wants PR to be like investment banks (“big producers at the top and then a lot of arms and legs, a lot of soldiers”). Yes, a lot of poorly-paid people at the bottom.

--Jack O'Dwyer