SARD SAILS ON GALLEON

Sard Verbinnen is representing Galleon Group, whose billionaire founder Raj Rajaratnam is charged with running the biggest inside trading scandal involving a hedge fund. He allegedly traded on non-public information involving stock of IBM, Google and other top companies.

Galleon Group, according to its statement, was “shocked” to learn of the arrest of Rajaratnam. It "had no knowledge of the investigation" before Rajaratnam was arrested at his swank Sutton Place digs in Manhattan. The firm, which is winding down its business, intends to "cooperate with the relevant authorities."

George Sard leads the charge for the hedge fund that once had $7B in assets under management. He is assisted by Dan Gagnier, managing director, and Renee Soto, principal.

MERCURY QUITS RAIL PR RE-BID

Mercury Public Affairs, which lost a $9M PR pact for California’s high-speed rail push after its political ties were questioned and the pact was put out for bids a second time, said it is dropping out of the re-bid process.

“Mercury followed the initial RFP process to a tee but we were ultimately sidelined because of internal politics,” said Brian Jones, managing director of the Omnicom unit’s Sacramento office. “Because of this, along with a recent increase in our client workload, we have decided to not invest our time, energy or resources into a process we no longer have confidence in, nor believe in.”

The Los Angeles Times dogged Mercury for being awarded the contract pointing to its executives' ties to the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The rail authority's board, which is overseeing the re-bid, meets on Nov. 5 to consider a new five-year pact.

ALLISON RECRUITS BIRO FOR N.W.

Former MWW Group digital group chief Tom Biro, who was recently with MTV, has been recruited by Allison & Partners to open a Seattle office.

The outpost is the No. 15 independent firm’s first foray into the Pacific Northwest and its ninth outpost. Seattle is the third office it has opened this year, joining Atlanta and Columbia, S.C.

Biro was VP of digital for MWW in three years at the firm before moving to MTV in July 2008 as senior director of communications for MTV Networks.

Andy Hardie-Brown, COO of A&P, said the region is home to "some of the world's most dynamic and innovative companies."

OMNICOM'S NET SLIDES 23%

Omnicom suffered a 23 percent decline in third-quarter earnings to $166M as revenues plunged 14 percent to $2.8B.

For the nine-month period, net at the world's largest advertising/PR combine fell 23 percent to $564M and revenues decreased 15 percent to $564M.

Overseas revenues dropped 16 percent to $1.4B in Q3, while domestic revenues dipped 13 percent to $1.5B.

PR revenues from units such as Fleishman-Hillard, Porter Novelli and Ketchum dropped 14.9 percent to $266M during the just-completed period. That compares to an 11.6 percent dip to $1.2B for the advertising group.

NY FED PR CHIEF MAKES A MOVE

Calvin Mitchell, who heads public affairs for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is moving to Thomson Reuters in November as global head of corporate affairs.

Mitchell, most recently executive VP of the Fed's communications group, has been with the bank since August 2005. He'll counsel NY Fed president William Dudley through Nov. 13.

Fred Hawrysh, former chief client officer at Burson-Marsteller, is currently senior VP and global head of corporate affairs at Thomson Reuters. He has not yet been reached.

Mitchell was previously in corporate and agency posts, including senior VP at Abernathy MacGregor Group. He is a Foreign Service Officer and was director of communications to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and held PR posts at the Dept. of Treasury, National Security Council, and the White House.

CHERENSON, TROHAN NIX AUDIOCASTING

PR Society chair Mike Cherenson and parliamentarian Colette Trohan are arguing strongly against audiotaping the Assembly but some senior members are arguing back that audiotaping is not only easy by essential.

Cherenson told a bylaws teleconference Oct. 24 that audiotaping the Nov. 7 Assembly in San Diego was “near impossible—technologically challenging.”

He said difficulties were presented by the fact that about 400 people were in the room and eight hours of audio-streaming would be required.

Several senior PRS members disputed the difficulties, saying that a live audiostream would be both “tricky” and “costly” but audiotaping 15 or 30-minute segments and then uploading them to the Society website would be both easy and nearly cost-free.

(Continued on page 7)

FDA WHACKS PHARMA VNRs

The Food and Drug Administration's Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications has declared two video news releases from King Pharmaceuticals for the painkiller Embeda to be "false or misleading" for omitting risks of the drug and presenting misleading claims.

In a seven-page letter to King CEO Brian Markison dated Oct. 8, division director Thomas Abrams outlined the "serious" VNR violations and requested a response with a plan of action to disseminate corrective messages about the issues raised.

"The omission of serious and potentially fatal risks associated with the use of Embeda, as well as the misleading presentation of the potential for abuse, is especially egregious and alarming in its potential impact on public health," wrote Abrams.

King announced the commercial availability of Embeda extended release capsules on Sept. 21 with its PR firm, Spectrum.

In a statement provided to O'Dwyer's via Spectrum, KP's VP of investor relations, Jack Howarth, said: "King Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is working with the FDA to address its concerns, and we are working diligently to ensure that we communicate clear and accurate information to the media and to stakeholders when discussing our novel technologies. We are working expeditiously to correct the issues identified."

The marketing oversight division had previously met with King via teleconference in March to express concerns about Embeda marketing, according to Abrams.

The FDA said the VNRs "misbrand" Embeda in violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The federal agency warned that failure to correct the violations may result in regulatory action, including seizure or injunction.

SWITZERLAND DEPOSITS PR AT EDELMAN

The Embassy of Switzerland has hired Edelman to a four-month $160K contract to enhance its overall image in the U.S.

The U.S. and Switzerland have clashed over the European country's long tradition of bank secrecy laws, which critics say provide cover to American tax dodgers.

UBS, Switzerland's top bank, turned over the names of 4,450 wealthy American clients to U.S. officials earlier this year.

Edelman is to play up Switzerland's "close economic, political and cultural relationship with the U.S.," according to its contract.

Peter Segall, managing director of Edelman/Washington, heads the account. He is joined by executive VPs Chris Hayes (international affairs) and Rich Meyers (financial communications), senior VP Kevin Sheridan (media relations), VP Michael Hartl (international affairs), senior account supervisor Mory Fontanez (digital public affairs) and account supervisor Amgad Naquib (international affairs).

Edelman has fortified its outreach, hiring Podesta Group as a subcontractor on the business. PG, the well-connected Democratic firm, receives a $21,200 monthly fee. PG's six-member Swiss team is headed by Tony Podesta.

GM WANTS TAXPAYERS OUT OF DRIVER SEAT

General Motors is using social media and other communications tools to make its “global growth story” a domestic one as the embattled automaker seeks to regain corporate footing following a speedy Chapter 11 filing and U.S. bailout, said Chris Preuss, VP-communications for GM Europe, Oct. 20 at Weber Shandwick's second annual “VoiceBoxx” client showcase event.

“We want to get you out of the car ownership business as fast as we can,” he joked at the Samsung Experience space at New York City’s Time Warner Center.

“GM relies on social media to re-connect with a lot of ticked off people” including investors, employees, vendors and customers. The automaker had to deal with a “torrent of hate” because it “inflicted a lot of pain” on its constituencies.

GM took a “public beating” in the U.S. marketplace because it let brands become commodities that competed on price. Management was perceived as “idiots.”

Though GM’s travails “lost a generation buyers,” Preuss sees the opportunity to win the 18-30 year-old market because they are “an open book” unlike “Baby Boomers” who tracked the automaker's long fall from grace.

Preuss told of how GM has tightly integrated its communications functions under Weber Shandwick and sister Interpublic companies McCann-Erickson and Doner.

The execs said GM faces a “long, hard road back,” but he is buoyed by market research that shows GM making big strides in quality.

Openness is the new communications mantra as GM goes about building a new business rather than reconstructing what it was in the past, according to Preuss.

Siemens wants to tell its story

Jim Whaley, VP-corporate affairs and marketing at Siemens, told how the German giant is in the “sweet spot,” involved in “hot” business/environmental categories such as high-speed rail, smart grids and sustainable energy.

It's up to Whaley's team to “tell the Siemens’ story to America.” That stands in sharp contrast to the engineering heritage of Siemens, which is to develop a product, set a price, make a sale, satisfy a customer and then move on to the next challenge.

Anita Larsen, director of media relations at Unilever, uses social media to “amplify a brand” in order to break through the clutter.

The use of social media is among ways that Unilver promotes the “value proposition” of a product like Dove soap against off-price retail brands.

David Steel, senior VP-strategic marketing at Samsung, says speed is vital in the fast-paced consumer electronics business.

Samsung uses social media to listen to customers to help determine “what’s next.”

Jack Leslie, chairman of Weber Shandwick, says social media allows his firm to target thousands of people to influence millions.

Poppy Harlow of CNNMoney.com moderated the event.

NYT LOSES $35M, SLATES CUTS

The New York Times Co. Oct. 22 reported a $35M loss, an improvement from the $106M year ago deficit. Revenues slide 22 percent to $525M.

Janet Robinson, CEO, sees “positive benefits” in the company’s effort to reposition the business for the evolving future of the media industry.

On the advertising front, the New York Times/International Herald Tribune suffered a 30 percent decline in advertising to $165M, while the Boston Globe/Worcester Telegram & Gazette dropped 27 percent to $54M.

Robinson says print advertising in the fourth quarter is up “modestly, digital trends have improved “significantly.” The Times is cutting 100 staffers from its 1,300-person newsroom. It plans to achieve those cuts via buyout offers, but will resort to layoffs if the numbers don’t add up.

Bill Keller, executive editor, penned a memo to staffers to say the NYT has fought valiantly to avoid major newsrooms cuts. “The company has chosen to protect the journalism by cutting production and other business-side costs and the newsroom has managed its resources frugally.”

CSR REACHES OUT TO DOWNSIZED JOURNOS

The Columbia Journalism Review has launched the CJR Encore Fellows program to tap the expertise of downsized Baby Boomer reporters who are not ready for retirement.

The initial fellow quartet includes Lisa Anderson, former New York bureau chief at Chicago Tribune; Jill Drew, associate editor at the Washington Post; Terry McDermott, 30-year veteran of the Los Angeles Times, and Don Terry, who was part of a New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning team.

The foursome will write for CJR for a nine-month period and receive a stipend as they mull how to apply their journalism expertise for the next phase of their careers. Journalism, in turn, benefits from their long experience and reporting skills.

The program is a partnership of The Atlantic Philanthropies; Civic Ventures, the San Francisco group that has helped Silicon Valley veterans transition to non-profit careers and the Poynter Institute, which will teach the fellows new digital skills.

The restructure of the media landscape combined with the advertising recession has resulted in the loss of 16,000 print jobs this year. CJR hopes for additional funding so it can help other laid off journalists.

Meanwhile, Columbia University is suspending its environmental journalism program as newspapers drop science and “green” coverage.

Columbia is putting the program on hold due to the media’s dire financial straits and the drop in tuition funding opportunities for students.

Kim Kastens and Marguerite Holloway, directors of the program, understand students assume “a huge debt for the knowledge and skills” of the program. They are not “comfortable exhorting young people to take on the burden when their chances of repaying it have so diminished.”

HUMAN RIGHTS STORIES ARE ‘TOUGH SELL’

Pitching human rights stories to American editors is sometimes a tough sell, NBC News correspondent Ron Allen told New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute on Oct. 20.

Allen, who has reported from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia, has had “mixed results” in getting his pieces airtime.

Editors are somewhat human rights "fatigued" and reluctant to run just another torture or coup story, he noted. TV stations are under intense ratings pressures and cover news that is going to “sell” or build audiences. That means news from Washington or Michael Jackson celebrity fare gets a thumbs-up.

“Cost benefit analysis” is the reality of the TV business, said the NBC reporter.

Allen does his best to develop people angles to his pieces. “Wars are fought in neighborhoods not battlefields,” he said.

The newsman became a foreign correspondent handling human rights issues because he wanted to cover “things that matter” and “to tell the story of the voiceless.”

Khaled Dawoud, New York correspondent for Al Jazeera Arabic, is puzzled by the disinterest of Americans in foreign news since the U.S. is so heavily invested overseas on the military, economic and political fronts.

He thinks at the very least Americans “should want to know more” about how things are working out.

The Al Jazeera correspondent talked about difficulties of working in the U.S. People ask him how Bin Laden is doing, whether he received training in Afghanistan or how does it feel to work for the decapitation channel?

During the Bush Administration, Dawoud said he knew to “stay home” on days the colors of the security alert were raised. “One can become a little defensive,” said Dawoud.

BBC World News America’s Katty Kay spoke about how emotions can get in the way of objectivity when reporting on horrendous abuse.

She talked about how a colleague rescued a child who was being stampeded to death at refugee camp in Congo when the food truck arrived.

A more “objective” reporter perhaps would have let the child die, preferring to “tell it like she saw it.”

M. Sliwa Public Relations organized the panel.

FORTUNE CUTS BACK

Time Inc.’s Fortune is cutting back the number of annual issues from 25 to 18 in a move to cope with the advertising downturn.

The revamped business magazine will concentrate on longer stories. There will be new columns, including “Washington Watch,” and “how-to” pieces aimed at busy professionals. A cleaner look and revamped website is in the works.

Fortune’s ad pages are down 35 percent for the first nine months of the year.

(Media news continued on next page)

NEWSDAY ERECTS PAY WALL

Newsday will begin charging $20 a-month for access to its website on Oct. 28. Print subscribers and customers of parent company Cablevision will continue to have free access to the site.

Newsday estimates that 75 percent of households in its Long Island marketing base either have home delivery of the paper or a cable TV sub.

Debbie Krenek, Newsday, managing editor, believes people looking for “hyper-local” news will pay for its “pioneering web model.”

MAG AD PAGES CONTINUE DECLINE

Advertising pages plunged 27.2 percent and revenue fell 20.3% in the third quarter, according to the Magazine Publishers of America.

Total pages at the 247 titles reported by the group fell to under 120K in Q3, compared with more than 164K for the same period of ’08.

Among the biggest hits for large titles were U.S. News & World Report (down 85.3% in ad revenue), Architectural Digest (-46.5%), W (-43.4) and the New York Times Magazine (-42.7).

BusinessWeek, which was acquired by Bloomberg last week, saw ad revnue slip 31.5% for Q3 to $112.6M.

Twenty-two titles posted positive gains in ad pages for the period, including Fine Cooking (66.2), People Style Watch (32.2%), The Week (30.4%), Family Circle (+21.8), OK Weekly (17.5%), and Muscle & Fitness (13.2%).

LEVIN BLASTS L.A. SHERIFF’S DEPT.

TMZ founder Harvey Levin claims the Los Angeles County sheriff's department violated his rights when it obtained his cell phone records in its probe into who leaked information about Mel Gibson's 2006 drunken driving arrest.

That arrest was highlighted by anti-Semitic remarks made by the actor.

"When I found out what Mel Gibson did, I began calling the sheriff's department," Levin told a Radio TV News Association meeting Oct. 20 at a UCLA and City News Service- sponsored media workshop. Levin claims the sheriff's department said the arrest was made without incident. "When I started citing line and verse, I was told that if I run the story, my career would be ruined," said Levin.

Levin said he found out "the deputy had been ordered to remove the information from the report, rewrite the report, and not include any of that." Levin claims four pages of the report with the anti-Semitic remarks were excised.

The L.A. workshop was about "Making and Breaking News, and the state of the news business 2009," and Levin broke news himself, catching the audience by surprise. Panelists VP and News Director Jose Rios, KTTV-TV/KCOP-TV, and Andy Ludlum, program director KNX/KFWB radio, promised to support Levin's challenge to L.A. authorities.

Rios said: "This is not about new media, old media or traditional media. This is an attack on the media and the First Amendment, and I think institutions like the sheriff's deptartment sometimes do things that they probably later regret. It is our job to call them on it when we find this behavior.”

Added Ludlum: “I agree. My question for Harvey is ‘Do you feel you have received adequate support from the journalism community here in Los Angeles?’”

Levin replied: “I do. This is very new and we've spent the last week looking at things we kind of took for granted, so this really caught us off guard; we had no inkling of this, and it has taken a week just to get our bearings.”

What was the motive? “I don’t think the motive is relevant here. They could have whatever reason for doing this, but it does not justify what they did. I think they are upset that this particular document leaked, because it embarrassed them, because they lied all day, and it was particularly embarrassing because of that.”

Moderator Frank Mottek, KNBC-TV, used the Levin story to kick off the panel discussion. The Los Angeles Times first broke Levin's accusations lodged against the sheriff's department.

Different News Digestion Systems

Levin said veteran journalists face pressure to make reports relevant for younger audiences that have different ways of digesting information.

“Treatment matters,” he said. “The world has changed dramatically, but media have not.”

He added: “In five years it is pretty clear that things are going to move online because that is what people want. It’s the gravity of things, it's the speed of things, and it's the ability to get it when you want it, the ability to blend media.

“Television and TV Online won't look the same,” he continued. “There will be one box that services the web, TV and it will be called something different. It will be blended together. TV shows will be programmed differently along with everything else.”

Levin said media people will ask: “How do we deliver programming, information, news in a way that honors not exploits?”

CHICAGO NEWS COOPERATIVE SET TO ROLL

The Chicago News Cooperative will launch Nov. 20 as a non-profit news organization headed by Jim O'Shea, former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune and editor of the Los Angeles Times.

The venture is backed by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and public TV station WTTW.

The site will ask readers to pony up $1 or $2 a week for access to stories and to various news groups. James Warren, ex-managing editor of the Trib, will pen a column.

CNC has inked a deal with the New York Times to provide two pages of news twice a week for a Chicago edition.

Billboard has launched launched a monthly Brazil edition for music fans in that country. The new edition joins others in Russia and Turkey.

Billboard charts were created for the country. Initial circulation is 40,000.

NEXT FIFTEEN '09 PROFIT SLIPS

Next Fifteen Communications Group, the parent company to firms like Bite Communications and Text 100, posted a 3.6 percent revenue rise to £65.4 (about $107.7M) for the ’09 fiscal year compared with ’08, but profit fell to £3.2M ($5.3M) from £5.5M ($9.1M) in ’08.

The company said profits were affected by both restructuring and currency movements, in addition to the global economic downturn. The year contained several key moves in expansion and contraction for the holding company, including its push into consumer PR with the August acquisition of M Booth & Associates, as well as acquisitions and mergers in Asia (Upstream Marketing & Comms.) and Europe for a total of £4.5M in pay outs.

“Significant” headcount reductions kept costs under control, including the closing of Text 100 offices in Seattle and Dublin and the merger of London-based Inferno into Bite.

Will Whitehorn, chairman of NF, said the M&A moves in ’09 have placed its firms in a solid position as the global economy rebounds and noted “already our own client base is indicating a tentative recovery in both the tech sector and consumer spending.”

Next Fifteen said in announcing its year-end earnings that it would increase its 40 percent stake in U.S. policy communications shop 463 Communications to 70%. That firm has offices in Washington, D.C., and Palo Alto, and posted ’09 fiscal revenues of $3.79M. The increased stake will cost $2.1M, including $1.4M in cash and the rest in NF shares, which values the company at around $7M.

NF is also in the process of creating a digital agency to compete for social media and related business.

F-H UNVEILS NOOK

Fleishman-Hillard unveiled Barnes & Noble hotly anticipated electronic reading device, Nook, on Oct. 20 to “generally positive views from the publishing community,” according to the New York Times.

The Wall Street Journal reports the event was “well attended by CEO of many of the industry's biggest publishing houses.” Those “connections” enabled B&N to land a major concession from publishers: “the ability for buyers to lend their purchases to friends for as many as 14 days,” reported the WSJ.

The $259 Nook can hold up to 17,500 e-books, and offers subscriptions to more than 20 newspapers. It competes with Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader devices.

Laura Russo handles B&N at F&H. Mary Ellen Keating is B&N’s corporate communications chief.

KCSA GRABS BOSTON BOUTIQUE

New York PR and IR shop KCSA Strategic Communications has acquired boutique Boston area firm TanenPR, adding five staffers to its ranks.

KCSA said Julia Tanen, who founded the B2B and professional services PR firm in 2001, will oversee its push into Boston and the Northeast. She takes a managing director title in what is now KCSA’s Natick, Mass., office.

Tanen clients have included CarScan, Centers for Disease Control and Zoe Foods.

CISION WEATHERS THIRD QUARTER

Cision, noting a “significant recessionary impact” in North America, posted a slight 2.6 percent increase in revenue for the region in the third quarter compared with ’08 – 190M Swedish Kroner, or about $27.7M – contrasting with continued losses at its European operations during the period.

The company said North American business was hit by continued weak demand for print monitoring services, a slide which was partly offset by increasing revenue from social media work.

It increased its share of clients on the CisionPoint PR software platform from 48 to 57 percent from Q2 to Q3.

Cision said last week that it inked an alliance with LexisNexis to provide LN content to its clients via the CisionPoint platform.

European Q3 revenue fell more than 14 percent compared with ’08 to 99M SEK, or $14.4M. U.K and German operations were a particular drag on revenue and Cision said its sale of its money-losing Print Monitor operation in the U.K. should be completed in Q4.

On the German operation, CEO Hans Gieskes said: “This development is not acceptable and we are therefore taking actions to structurally improve our business” there.

Cision has shelled out more than $3M in restructuring charges for the first nine months of the year shedding 576 staffers via reductions and divestments. It now counts 1,875 employees.

Overall, net loss for the quarter was 309M SEK ($45M), compared with 248M SEK or $36M for the same period in ’08.

VOCUS POSTS Q3 LOSS

Vocus reported a five percent uptick in third quarter revenue over 2008 to $21M, but swung to a $382K net loss for the period after posting a $218K profit for Q3 of last year.

Rick Rudman, chairman, president and CEO of the PR software company, touted the “solid” results but admitted in a conference call that “no one really knows” when PR spending will recover and added that the company is operating “in the midst of what continues to be a challenging environment for the public relations industry.”

Rudman said the fourth quarter could be a good indicator of how the PR industry is recovering as 2010 budgets are set.

During Q3, Vocus added 240 net new subscribers, including Cornell University and The Dannon Company, and passed the 4,000 customer mark for the first time.

The Lanham, Md.-based company also beefed up its sales force by 13 staffers to 162. Sales and marketing expenses were $9.2M for Q3.

Vocus, based in Lanham, Md., expects four quarter revenue in the range of $21.7-$21.9M.

BRIEF: A second edition of “In The Court of Public Opinion: Winning Strategies for Litigation Communications” by James Haggerty has been published by the American Bar Association.

AUDIOCASTING NIXED (cont’d from page 1)

The seniors said not only is audiocasting easy but necessary if PRS leaders are to live up to their repeated claims that they want to make the Society more “democratic” and more “transparent.”

Cherenson told the a.m. teleconference Oct. 24, in response to a question by Houston delegate Sally Evans, that “the challenge is providing a live feed, an audio feed of an eight-hour event with 400 people and multiple microphones in a hotel.”

He said members are no doubt familiar with the problems of doing events in hotels “with technology, costs and requirements.”

While some are suggesting that Skype be used, Cherenson said that “an eight-hour conversation with 400 people is near impossible, technologically challenging to say the least.”

He added that “It’s really not done by many organizations. We’ve researched it."

Evans replied that sessions of Congress are telecast daily.

Trohan interjected that Congress has “unlimited funding.”

Cherenson asked Trohan for her opinion and she said she “strongly recommends against getting involved in the Judge Ito effect where all of a sudden instead of having your meeting and dealing with what you have to deal with people are very aware that there are cameras, whatever, some kind of audio feed.”

[Judge Lance Ito was accused of playing to the cameras and dragging out the trial of O.J. Simpson].

Advised Trohan: “The real thing is you should put out a synopsis of the actions that would not take as much time as minutes to put together and pretty much say here’s what happened.”

NCC SEEKS MORE INFO ON BYLAWS

Delegate Aaron Ellis, saying that all of the nearly 1,400 members in the area of the National Capital Chapter need a “good understanding” of what the new bylaws entail, has obtained a special teleconference Nov. 2 with bylaws chair Dave Rickey and NCC delegates.

Ellis, director of communications of the American Assn. of Port Authorities, Alexandria, Va., told the Oct. 22 p.m. bylaws teleconference that he would like all chapter members to understand what is behind the bylaws revision.

Reached at an AAPA conference in Galveston, Texas, Ellis accepted free passwords to odwyerpr.com coverage of the bylaw battle so that members would be able to read commentary about the bylaws and listen to six bylaws teleconferences that are on the site.

Ellis will pass the codes to NCC administrator Sherri Core.

Whether the NCC members will be given the codes is not yet known. Chapter president Barbara Burfeind, communication director of Defense Visual Information, is in Rome this week. Phone and e-mail messages were left with her and messages also given to fellow staffers at the DVI.

Jeff Ghannam of the Biotechnology Institute, president-elect, said that whether the codes would be passed on to chapter members would be taken up at a teleconference of the chapter delegates this Friday.

PRS rank-and-file members could sign up for a governance e-group to listen to the teleconferences when they were “live” but only delegates had access to the recordings.

Ellis said the aim is to have the NCC delegation vote as a group on all motions. It’s expected that four or five of the delegates will not be able to attend but will be represented by proxies, he added.

Hour and Half Planned for Lunch

Parliamentarian Colette said a “hard stop” is set for noon by the agenda with return to the Assembly floor set for 1:30 p.m.

Senior members blasted this as a blatant waste of time when so many important and complicated issues are at stake.

Plans are to limit speeches by members to two minutes. “If you can’t make your point in two minutes you’re not going to make it in five,” said Trohan.

The “hard stop” at 5:30 p.m. has been removed from the agenda. “We will stay as long as necessary,” said Rickey.

Seniors warned that if the agenda is adopted in the morning it will take a two-thirds vote to amend it and replace the 1.5-hour lunch period with box lunches at the tables of the delegates. They urged that the agenda not be accepted.

Trohan said the Assembly will be presented with the most important issues first. Most of the attention, she said, has been focused on Article V which would provide election of board and officers by a quorum of 500 members voting “in person or by proxy”; which allows the board to expel any member at the board’s “sole discretion”; which lets board members serve four years in a row; which says the chair presides at meetings of the Assembly, and which limits officer positions to those who have already served on the board.

Also controversial is a bylaw that would install the chair of PRS as chair of the nominating committee.

ADAPTEC MOUNTS PROXY DEFENSE

The Abernathy MacGregor Group and shareholder communications firm Georgeson are mounting a PR defense for Adaptec as hedge fund Steel Street Partners guns for data storage solutions company’s CEO Sundi Sundaresh.

Jason Booth, a VP at Steel Partners, told O’Dwyer’s that the company is not using any outside PR but noted he is an alum of Sitrick of Company. The company, which controls four seats on the Adaptec board, has hired IR and proxy solicitation firm McKenzie Partners as it runs a vote to remove the CEO and a director of Adaptec.

In a lengthy statement, SP is urging shareholders to consider Sundaresh’s “value destruction” and “long history of failures elsewhere.”

Adaptec, meanwhile, is leaning on AMG and Georgeson to fend off the minority bid. Publicly traded Adaptec posted 2009 sales of $114.8M.

The minutes of the July 24 PR Society board meeting, finally posted Oct. 24 after a two-month delay, which is par for PRS (which delayed the Oct. 2008 minutes for five months) tell volumes about the conduct of the Society.

Inexplicable (except for “politics”), is the choice of Philadelphia for the national conference in 2013 although the conference was just there in 2007.

Snubbed again is New York, where the 2004 conference drew a record 4,000. The previous New York visit was in 1990—14 years earlier.

Staff and the non-New Yorkers who run PRS are at it again.

Staff does not want New York because there is then no week or more of expense account living by the 35 and more staffers who attend the conference. There is no need for 35 to go. Conferences were just as big in the 1970s when 5-6 staffers would go and local volunteers would be used.

Other conference locations revealed in the minutes are Orlando for 2011 and San Francisco for 2012.

Murray Gets Contract; Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

The other shocker is the last item in the minutes given here in its entirety: “Motion: Mr. (Jim) Haynes moved and Mr. (Phil) Tate seconded approval of Mr. (Bill) Murray’s employment contract. Motion passed.”

What contract? For how long? For how much?

The Assembly, which elects the board and officers and therefore sits over the board (no matter what the board may say) should “turn tail” Nov. 7 and demand from Murray and the board the details of the contract.

It is he and the board who report to the Assembly and not the opposite. Under Federal law, details of Murray’s contract are supposed to be available to members.

This skimpy two-page report, two months after the fact, is in sharp contrast to the extensive report that was posted on Aug. 6, 2004 about the board meeting two weeks previously. (Click here.)

Board reports were much more extensive and much more timely posted in previous years.

Agenda Must Not Be Accepted

But even before Murray is grilled, the Assembly must not accept the agenda that the board has prepared.

It calls for an hour and a half lunch break which would be a colossal waste of time considering that the Assembly must consider and vote on 15 articles of a new code. Box lunches are the answer.

The board and staff are expert at wasting time. That has been done throughout the year with the bylaws revision with delegates now under incredible pressure to make far-reaching decisions (and under “battle conditions”) in a short period of time.

Parliamentary websites urge that revisions of bylaws be done in a series of meetings and definitely not at a regular meeting which usually has other business to consider. PRS leaders ignore such advice.

The “hard ending” of 5:30 p.m. has now been removed from the agenda meaning the Assembly could go on and on.

Maybe it could go on and on until most of those left are those who will approve the bylaws which spell hari-kari for the Assembly.

Assembly Packed Like Can of Sardines

If passed, the Assembly will no longer be itself but a mere extension of management—packed with 17 national directors, 19 section heads, 10 district heads, more than 25 national committee heads (although more could be named), and an unlimited number of new delegates since the board could “establish additional criteria for delegates.”

Oddly, perhaps madly, the board wants the new “Leadership Assembly” to become a group of advocates who pursue industry issues while at the same time reducing Assembly terms to one year from three and continuing the bylaw that calls for one Assembly meeting a year.

How could a group that turns over 100% each year and only meets once a year decide anything?!

We’re worried that the draconian bylaws will pass because only three of the ten districts are opposing management—Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and North Pacific.

Where is New York in this battle? Nowhere. Former chief critic of PRS Art Stevens, who had urged that the conference be in New York every third year, was on the bylaws committee and fully supports its recommendations. The New York board unanimously supports Stevens in his vow to vote on the bylaws he helped propose.

The bylaws committee was fatally compromised because 10 of the 11 members were APR and only 20% of members are.

Chair of the Tri-State district is Doug Fenichel of PRS/New Jersey, an ardent supporter of APR who conducted the first ever teleconference of APRs in September 2008. We feel he will be supportive of national’s goals. (Click here.)

Lynn Appelbaum, PR professor at CCNY who reluctantly joined the board last year (after two nomcom deadlines had passed) is not to be found. A message on her phone says she is “on sabbatical” until December.

Whoppers Told About Audiocasting

The PR Society, abandoning all pretense at following facts or logic, says audiocasting the Assembly is “near impossible” but proxies are o.k. even though delegates pressing a bunch of keypads may look like they are playing “bingo.” Big chapters are playing dead on bylaws revision.

The PR Society sideshow of illogic and inconsistency rolls on towards its appointment in San Diego Nov. 7.

Last week saw chair Mike Cherenson kiting a blatant inaccuracy, that audiotaping of the Assembly is “near impossible--technologically challenging.”

Then how can PRS tell callers that parts of the speeches of the three keynoters will be audiocast on the PRS website the same day the speeches are given!?

Audiocasting live on a website is “tricky, technicians tell us, but not taping a half hour or hour of a proceeding and then uploading the file a little later to a website.

This website has carried the audiotapes of six PRS hour-long teleconferences on the bylaws with no problem at all.

Blowing any claims to objectivity, parliamentarian Colette Trohan last week ardently supported Cherenson in arguing against “live” or “near live” reporting on what leaders have called the most important Assembly in PRS’s history. She’s afraid of the “Judge Ito effect,” referring to the judge in the O.J. Simpson trial who dragged it on for nearly a year and was accused of playing to the cameras.

--Jack O'Dwyer