M. SILVER WINS ARUBA

M. Silver Associates has won the Aruba Tourism Authority’s PR account for North America, following a multi-stage review. Quinn & Company had handled the six-figure account since a review in 2003.

Senior VP Jennifer Maguire and VP Dawn Weissman head the account for New York-based M. Silver. The firm will focus on the U.S. and Canada for the Dutch-owned Caribbean island, which is rolling out a new branding campaign and tourism website this fall.

Myrna Jansen-Feliciano, managing director for the ATA, said several “strong contenders” were interviewed but saw the right team chemistry, insight, creativity, and global perspective in M. Silver. She called competition in the tourism industry “global and fierce.”

Quinn & Company, also based in New York, won several awards for its work with Aruba and also guided the tourism hotspot through the 2006 disappearance of an American teenager, Natalee Holloway, that drew worldwide press scrutiny. News about that case continues to be archived on the ATA’s website, Aruba.com.

Aruba is part of the Netherlands but maintains its own independent government.

IMF TAPS TWO FIRMS IN COST-CUTTING MOVE

The International Monetary Fund, in a cost-cutting move, has awarded two six-figure PR contracts covering Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Hill & Knowlton has been tapped for the Middle East and Asia, while AMO-Euro RSCG was hired to cover Africa and Latin America, according to IMF media division chief William Murray. He told O’Dwyer’s the combined value of the contracts is about $1.5 million, split roughly equally between the two companies. AMO is a network of six financial communications firms of which Euro RSCG C&O is a member.

Murray said the two firms were chosen from a field of a dozen leading international firms that competed through an open process.

The IMF, based in Washington, D.C., said it decided to bring in outside firms to cut costs amid plans to trim its payroll by nearly 400 staffers worldwide.

Reuters reported that the Fund has sought $100M in savings a year amid falling income as fewer countries are requesting its loans. The news agency also noted that the IMF has failed to restore its reputation in many developing countries, especially in Asia following a regional financial crisis in the 1990s.

The IMF has 185 member countries. It is considering a $750M loan to Georgia to boost confidence following the country’s invasion by Russia this month.

F-H ADVISES MAPLE LEAF IN CRISIS

Fleishman-Hillard is counseling embattled Canadian food processor Maple Leaf Foods, which had its products tied to the deaths of 12 people.

Listeria bacteria has been traced to cold cuts from a Maple Leaf plant, sparking the company to eventually recall 220 of its products in Canada and plunging it into a crisis that has hit both its reputation and share price.

Maple Leaf, which won some praise for its handling of the crisis, said the cost of the recall could top $20M, not including the reputation hit and potential loss of business. The company is a longtime client of F-H’s Toronto office, which is currently advising Maple Leaf.

Maple Leaf recalled a swath of products from its Toronto plant dating back to January even though only two lines were found to be affected. The company also shuttered the Toronto plant and had it sanitized by an outside company.

CEO and president Michael McCain has apologized and offered his sympathies for the sick and deceased in newspaper ads and TV commercials, and he appeared in a YouTube video to express that remorse.

WPP CLOSES IN ON TNS

WPP cleared a large obstacle in its hostile bid to acquire the U.K. market research giant Taylor Nelson Sofres last week as GfK of Germany said it was no longer persuing its own run at TNS.

But TNS CEO David Lowden wants shareholders to reject Martin Sorrell’s $2 billion takeover attempt. Lowden thinks WPP should raise its price.

WPP would become the No. 2 market research entity in the world behind Nielsen and the No. 1 advertising/PR conglomerate above Omnicom. WPP moved on TNS in May with an offer that was quickly rejected by TNS’ board. TNS said in late April that it planned to merge with GfK but the German company scuttled those plans when WPP stepped in.

WPP set a new deadline of Sept. 12 for TNS shareholders to vote on the deal. WPP wants to fold its Kantar research arm into TNS.

CJR ASKS READERS TO ‘JOIN’

The Columbia Journalism Review, in a special mailing last week to subscribers (envelope marked “a note to subscribers”), is asking them to join the new “CJR Press Associates” with suggested donations running from $50 to $500.

“In this tightening economy, even with our advertising and subscription revenues and philanthropic support,

(Continued on page 4)

SOCIAL MEDIA COMBINE SCUTTLED

The planned combination of Canada’s Social Media Group and D.C.-based Livingston Communications – hailed in July as the creation of the largest social media communications agency – has been scuttled by the two firms.

Maggie Fox, founder of the independent, Ontario-based Social Media Group, said in a post on her blog Aug. 28 titled "World's Largest Social Media Agency? Not This Time" that cultural differences scuttled the planned merger.

“We dotted our I’s, crossed our T’s and started working together as a team while the lawyers finished up the paperwork,” she wrote. “It was during this time that Geoff [Livingston] and I both realized that, while similar, our organizations and management styles were very different.”

Livingston expressed a similar sentiment in a video blog post last week.

“As we moved forward through our due diligence process, it became apparent that our two cultures and our management style were not going to work well together,” he said. “And to continue forward we would have been forcing square pegs into round holes and would be detrimental to both the team up in Toronto as well as mine here in Washington, D.C.”

The deal would have created a 20-staffer agency focused solely on the social media space.

Livingston said in announcing the sale of his firm in July that he couldn’t “stand watching the large agencies of the world continue to guide large social media programs, often ineffectively.”

Fox said the failed deal is not a sign of the sector’s health. “Our decision not to proceed is in no way a reflection on the health or viability of social media as an industry - it’s simply about doing the right thing for everyone involved, and being honest about it,” she wrote.

NORTH BRIDGE BACKS PICKENS PLAN

D.C.-based North Bridge Communications has been tapped to handle public affairs work for the Pickens Plan, the PR campaign backing oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens’ energy program.

Pickens’ $58 million advertising and PR push is urging Americans to embrace alternative energy like wind power as well as natural gas to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

The public affairs firm, which was founded last year, is handling public policy advocacy with respect to advancing the Pickens Plan, according to a Senate filing.

Paul Cummins, a partner at North Bridge, declined to discuss his firm’s work or how it got involved, saying he preferred to focus on the campaign itself.

“We, as a team, have chosen not to discuss the individual members of the team in the belief it will only detract from the plan,” he said.

New York based Sloane & Company handled media relations for the campaign’s July launch.

Cummins, a veteran of firms like DCI Group and Robinson Lerer & Montgomery, set up North Bridge in March ’07 with Phillip Hayes, a former Hill & Knowlton exec.

STUDIO BACKS ‘TOWELHEAD’

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has taken aim at Warner Bros. and its independent movie division ahead of the limited September 13 release of “Towelhead,” a film based on the best-selling book of the same title about a 13-year-old Arab-American girl.

CAIR’s Greater Los Angeles chapter is asking the studio to consider changing the film’s name because the term is an “ethnic slur” considered offensive to American Muslims and Arab-Americans.

Warner used the name “Nothing is Private” during the Toronto International Film Festival last year and CAIR sent a letter to studio executives urging that title be used for its upcoming release in the U.S.

“We have no desire to inhibit the creative process or your right to produce any film you wish,” wrote CAIR-LA’s executive director, Hussam Ayloush, asking the studio to consider the “social implications” of the title. Ayloush acknowledged that the studio has made it clear that it means no offense, but he said using the term for the title of a major motion picture release could increase its acceptability.

Apology But No Change

Warner Bros., in a statement supplied to O’Dwyer’s, apologized for any offense taken from the title but said it supports the name. The studio called the film a “medium to create dialogue and support the expression of ideas, as controversial and or as unpopular as they may be.”

The studio also provided statements by “Towelhead” author Alicia Erian and director Alan Ball in support of the title on the film’s website.

“The job of the artist, however, has been, and always will be, to highlight that which is ugly in the hopes of finding something beautiful,” Erian said. “This charge, by necessity, will at times put the artist at odds with admirable groups such as CAIR.”

Erian also said she was not contacted by any organization when the book was released in 2005, a fact that the film’s actors have pointed out in conducting publicity for the upcoming film.

Ball said he felt it was important to retain the novel’s title because the book “effectively dramatizes the pain inflicted by such language.”

The New York Times, in reviewing the book upon its release in 2005, said: “Still, 'Towelhead' is a crass title for Erian’s book, partly because it will nudge the slur closer to ubiquity and partly because the novel isn’t primarily, or even secondarily, about race and politics.”

DE SANTIS TAKES VP SLOT AT DRUG MAKER

Kathryn de Santis, who directed IR and corporate communications at Human Genome Sciences for 11 years, has left for a VP post at Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, a publicly traded specialty biopharmaceutical company.

De Santis is a former VP for Dewe Rogerson, now Citigate Dewe Rogerson, where she handled IR and financial communications for biotechnology clients. Earlier, she was an A/S on biotech accounts for Burns McClellan in New York and handled IR accounts for Edelman and Hill & Knowlton.

At Sucampo, she takes the title of VP, IR and corporate comms.

PROPUBLICA ADDS STAFF

ProPublica, the non-profit investigative reporting newsroom, has hired three staffers.

Christian Miller, a reporter at the Los Angeles Times since `97, joins as a reporter. He covered the 2000 presidential election for the LAT and served as a bureau chief for various countries in Central and South America. Earlier, Miller wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle and St. Petersburg Times.

Dan Nguyen, reporter, web programmer and multimedia producer at the Sacramento Bee, is now web producer at ProPublica. Lisa Schwartz, a freelance researcher who worked at ABC News for six years, is ProPublica's research director.

Stephen Engelberg, managing director at ProPublica, says the new staffers will further his goal of producing stories with a "moral force."

ProPublica has several pieces that are nearly finished and others in the pipeline, said Engelberg in a statement. "By the end of the year, we hope to have partnered with perhaps a half dozen media outlets to get those stories out to the public," he added.

REVENUE SLIPS AT TIMES CO.

Revenue fell just over 10 percent at the New York Times Company in July caused mostly by steep drops in classified ads.

Ad sales overall slipped 16.2 percent to $129.4M compared to ’07, including a more than 30 percent drop in classifieds and a 13.3 percent fall in retail ads.

The company said national advertising revenues decreased as weakness in the studio entertainment, transportation, hotel and national automotive categories offset growth in media, financial services, advocacy and healthcare advertising at its flagship media unit, which includes the Times paper and website.

Internet advertising revenue increased 0.9% as the Times noted a weakness in online recruitment ads.

The company said online advertising for the News Media Group is trending up in August in the low double digits as display advertising at nytimes.com has improved.

Ad revenue for its About.com unit was up more than 14 percent.

Total revenue for the month was $235.9M.

AMANPOUR TO GET TOP MATRIX

Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent for CNN, has been named the 2008 International Matrix Award recipient by the Association for Women in Communications.

The 20-year-old group gives the award for the “highest level of professional excellence in communications.” Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas took home the honor in 2007.

Amanpour, who began her career at CNN in 1983 as an assistant on its international assignment desk in Atlanta, will get the honor at the group’s annual Matrix and Clarion Awards event on Sept. 27 in Washington, D.C. The AWC will also present seven Clarion Awards in the PR category at the event. List of winners is at womcom.org.

MEDIA ZONE IN ON OBAMA

Sen. Barack Obama scored a solid spike in news coverage last week ahead of the Democratic National Convention.

LexisNexis reports that Obama was the subject of 47 percent more media coverage across several platforms than Sen. John McCain.

LN’s Media Coverage Sentiment Index showed the tone of media coverage from Aug. 18-24 across print, broadcast and online media – a total of 5,214 stories – was 33 percent positive, 38 percent neutral and 29 percent negative.

McCain drew 3,554 stories during the period with 36 percent positive, 32% neutral and 32% negative. LN said those numbers were similar to previous analyses.

The news tracking company said Obama coverage was boosted by rumors and prognostications about his running mate, which culminated in the Saturday, Aug. 23 selection of Sen. Joe Biden.

LN said that Obama has consistently garnered about one-third more media coverage than McCain since early July.

MYSPACE OVERTAKES YAHOO

MySpace.com helped parent Fox Interactive Media overtake Yahoo as the top display advertising in the U.S., according to a Dow Jones report.

Internet users viewed 56.8 billion display adds on Fox sites in June for a 15.2 percent share of the U.S. online display ad market, based on comScore data. Yahoo sites displayed 53.1 billion ads in the same month for a 14.2% share.

The social networking site MySpace accounts for nearly all of Fox Interactive’s revenue.

Briefs ________________________

Topix.com, the online news aggregation site, said it rose to become the third largest individual newspaper website in June, according to comScore Media Metrix data. NYTimes.com and USAToday.com posted more unique visitors – 11.9M and 6.5M, respectively – than Topix’ 6M. Washingtonpost.com drew 5.8M uniques, while LATimes.com saw 5.2M.

Topix is touting its “local news” aggregation, which is sorted by zip code, as an alternative to advertisers eyeing local markets.

The Associated Press named longtime staffer Kurt Rossi as its VP of global technology operations after Rossi had served as acting head since May. He succeeds Nick Evansky, who resigned. He started with the AP in 1979 as a technician in New York and staffed several posts in the U.S. and London before being named director of technology for AP Digital in 2000.

Elayne Fluker, editorial director for the Beauty & Style and Entertainment divisions at iVillage.com, was named managing editor of Brides.com, effective September 8. Fluker was previously managing editor of Vibe and Vibe Vixen and began her career at Essence magazine.

(Media news continued on next page)

CJR ASKS READERS TO JOIN (Continued from pg. 1)

we face a constant struggle in moving ahead,” said the letter from Mike Hoyt, executive editor.

The American Journalism Review, a similar six-times-a-year publication, is down to one full-time editorial employee and faces imminent shutdown, the Washington Post has reported.

Operating deficit was estimated at $200,000 on a total budget of $800,000.

A major advertiser, the Gannett Co., pulled its eight annual pages of ads from AJR in 1999 after an article “took some not-so-subtle swipes” at Gannett executives, the New York Times reported March 8, 1999.

The article was written by former Gannett editor Geneva Overholser. AJR is published by the University of Maryland College of Journalism.

'Needed' More Than Ever

Hoyt told subscribers that “The world has never needed the CJR more than it does now. And there is so much more we could and should be doing at this critical moment in history.”

He says the magazine has been redesigned and “we’ve started hiring a few top new editors, reporters and writers.” CJR’s two websites have been combined into one.

Future progress “depends entirely on the funding we can generate,” said Hoyt. He told readers that “the role of the independent press in this country faces serious threats.”

Tribune Has Loss, Scripps Profit Dips

The Tribune Co. reported a 2Q loss of $4.53 billion after taking a $3.84B write down of the book value of its newspapers.

E.W. Scripps last month also took an $874 million write-down as “sharp declines in ad revenue throughout the industry reduces the value of newspaper business,” reported the AP Aug. 13.

Scripps said 2Q revenues, counting its cable businesses, rose 3.8% to $664M. Starting with 3Q, the cable businesses will be reported under Scripps Networks Interactive, a new entity listed on the New York Stock Exchange (SNI). Annual sales are estimated at $1.55 billion.

SNI, which includes the HGTV and Food Network cable channels and online-shipping site Shopzilla, is projecting a profit of 35 to 38 cents per share.

MarketWatch Glum on Newspapers

MarketWatch columnist Chuck Jaffe, noting that Gannett last month said it would cut 1,000 jobs, said the newspaper business is “an industry that not only will get worse before it improves, but which may be so sick that improvement never comes.”

Jaffe confessed he spent about 20 years in newspapers but he long ago sold any newspaper stock he had.

He exempts from his dire predictions his current employer, News Corp., which owns MarketWatch, “because its focus is more on TV,” and also excludes the Washington Post Co., “which due to its subsidiary business is more of an education company that happens to own a newspaper.”

Competition from the web is accelerating the decline, he feels.

“The only thing papers have going for them is local news staff, covering the kinds of important hometown events that readers want to know about but which they can’t get anywhere else,” he writes.

“Trim your staff and you can quickly strip away your ability to provide enough unique readership opportunities,” he concludes.

Papers are “going online” but “it’s not enough to keep up with the lost newspaper revenues,” he said.

MARIOTTI RESIGNS ABRUPTLY

Veteran Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Jay Mariotti resigned suddenly from the paper last week after 17 years after reporting from the Beijing Olympics and observing that sports journalism has become “entirely a website business.”

The Chicago Tribune broke the news of Mariotti’s departure just two months after the columnist signed a three-year contract extension.

“I'm a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn't compete,” he said of newspapers. “Everyone is hanging on for dear life at both papers. I think probably the days of high-stakes competition in Chicago are over. To see what has happened in this business … I don't want to go down with it.”

The Tribune called Mariotti one of the leading columnists “in a city with a strong sports journalism tradition.”

The paper said he had a style that “relied on being contrarian no matter the topic,” and that “readers turned to him as much to disagree with what he had to say as agree.”

Sun-Times editor Michael Cooke told local CBS affiliate CBS2: “That’s Jay’s opinion. He has plenty of them. But the facts, of course, say something different. I’m going with the facts.”

PEOPLE EN ESPANOL ADDS COLUMNIST

People en Espanol debuted a column in the magazine’s October issue released on Sept. 2 by emmy award-winning journalist Cristina Saralegui. The monthly lifestyle column, called Buen Vivir, will cover vacations, entertainment and other lifestyle issues with an eye on budget.

Saralegui just marked the 19th year of "The Cristina Show," one of the highest-rated programs on Spanish-language television. The show airs on the Univision Network.

GUTHMAN DIES AT 89

Edwin Guthman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and editor who rose to the No. 3 spot on Nixon’s enemies list, died Aug. 31. He was 89.

Guthman earned a Pulitzer early in his career for proving the innocence of a victim of McCarthyism, the Los Angeles Times reported. He also had a brief stint in PR working for Robert F. Kennedy as a Justice Department spokesman.

He served as national editor of the L.A. Times from 1965 to 1977.

The Columbia Journalism Review, hurt like many print media in this day of the web, is “passing the hat” for contributions from readers, saying “future progress” depends on how much it raises (page one).

This is a novel approach. CJR is saying what a lot of other print media could say: “The world has never needed the CJR more than it does now.”

CJR already gets help from the Columbia J School, the University, and in recent years a grant from the president’s office. We don’t think pleading with readers for donations is the answer.

While readers still want news and investigative pieces, they want a lot of “how-to” advice these days.

CJR must not only tell journalists how to do their jobs and get jobs, it must broaden its beat to include PR, communications, promotion, internal PR and IR, covering both news and how-to in these areas.

It should think of changing its name to “Columbia Communications Review” and tackling PR/IR/PA. CCR (new name) could do a 60th anniversary piece on the PR Society and we would certainly help it. The NYT will not cover this subject.

Another novel reaction to the onslaught of the web on print is the E.W. Scripps spin-off of its cable TV programs that show people buying, selling and remodeling homes, and which provide cooking classes, and give hints for “fine living.”

As of July 1, HGTV (home & garden), Food Network, DIY (do-it-yourself), Fine Living and Great American Country, which together grossed about $350M in the second quarter, are in Scripps Networks Interactive (SNI-NYSE). The 17 dailies and ten TV stations of Scripps are left behind.

Wachovia thinks SNI’s price ($40) will be driven by “growing expectations” of SNI being sold to “a larger media player.” SNI CEO Kenneth Lowe, who holds 102,215 shares, has denied any intention to sell. Other companies have said the same but must respond “in the interests of shareholders” if a big offer appears. Scripps stockholders got a tax-free distribution of one SNI share for each Scripps (SSP) share while keeping their SSP shares.

SSP (newspapers/TV and a final quarter of cable operations) saw its 2Q operating profit dip to $51.2M on income of $164M from $97.5M and expects 3Q profit to be 10-15 cents a share vs. 94 cents in 2Q/2008.

The 3Q earnings of SSP are for local properties only and will not include the cable networks and Shopzilla and uSwitch and are therefore not directly comparable. But the figures illustrate the smaller profits that will be reported by SSP.

SSP actually had a loss of $531M or $9.78 per share including a 2Q non-cash write-off of goodwill. There was also a pre-tax, non-cash charge of $95M to reduce the value of the investments in Denver Newspaper Agency and a separate partnership in Colorado, Prairie Mountain Publishing.

SSP at $7.27 has a market cap of $396M and enterprise value of $683M (54.5M shares outstanding) while wealthy SNI at $41 has a market cap of $6.79 billion and enterprise value of $7.07B (163M shares outstanding).

We got interested in Scripps since Gary McCormick of HGTV is chair-elect nominee of the PR Society.

HGTV is the big money-maker at SNI, grossing $171M in 2Q, up 12.9%. Second is Food Network with $136M while far behind are DIY ($19M), Fine Living ($14M) and GAC ($6.7M).

McCormick is director of partnership development, increasing affiliate fees and building relationships with multiple system operators (MSOs). He writes press releases and handles special events and talent appearances.

The Scripps website has more than 10 pages devoted to the high ethics of Scripps including a web-based hotline for “reporting ethical concerns.”

We have many “ethical concerns” about the PR group that McCormick wants to head including its refusal to share any of the proceeds from selling tens of thousands of copies of our articles; its refusal to let us or an O’Dwyer PR staffer join PRS; its refusal to carry our ads, and its blocking of information to members including transcripts of its Assemblies and the plea by PR professors for discussion and vote on its directory.

How a journalistic company can allow itself to be within ten miles of an association that has instituted a formal press boycott (April 9, 2008 PRS board letter), among other abuses, is beyond us.

The Scripps motto is “Give light and the people will find their own way.” If we were to assign a motto to PRS, it would be “Give darkness.”

Reformers lack access to the PRS press so their initiatives never see the light of day. Some issues are debated by leaders in private “e-groups” that members can’t access. This would be like Presidential candidates only debating in front of party bigwigs.

The Scripps website includes a heart-rending story of how it got this motto. Carl Magee of New Mexico, an editor who fought corruption early last century, wound up in jail after being sued for libel. His main target was Senator Albert Fall who was implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal in 1923. He first used the motto in 1922. In 1927, Scripps bought his paper and all Scripps papers started carrying the motto.

PRS members urge us and the other copied authors to “forget” about our claims because they’re “so old.”

The blog policyownersfordemutualization.blogspot.com is fighting for the return of $155 billion in alleged insurance overcharges by mutual insurance companies since the 1950s.

Its main problem, like the problem of the PRS reformers, is reaching the owners of 24 million policies. The companies don’t seem to be cooperating in getting the message out.

The blog says 17 mutuals have used the overcharges to acquire other companies and for other purposes instead of paying dividends to the policyholders as promised. Some mutuals, including MetLife and Prudential, returned $100B+ to policyholders. Among those remaining as mutuals are New York Life, Mass Mutual and Northwestern Mutual.

The “demutualization” blog is not giving up no matter how “old” the claims are.

Horst Avenarius, chair of the German Council for PR, says “past events involving misconduct of an organization” are to be given “transparency without reservation.”

It took decades in Germany to win settlement of WWII claims but the claimants did not give up.

--Jack O'Dwyer