CA AIR POLLUTION ORG WANTS PR PITCHES

The air pollution control agency for Southern California is reviewing its six-figure media relations contract through early April via an open RFP.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, known as AQMD, covers air quality for 10,743 square miles and 16.7M people in the region, the second most populated urban area in the country and No. 1 for smog.

The agency wants pitches for the $180K-a-year account to work with its media relations manager, Sam Atwood, on various PR assignments over the duration of the year-long contract.

An optional bidders conference is set for March 23 in Diamond Bar, Calif., but proposals are not due until April 6.

The anticipated contract will carry two year-long options. Download the RFP at odwyerpr.com.

O'Rorke PR and VPE PR have worked with the AQMD in the past.

FREUD TO LEAD LONDON GAMES

The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games organizing committee has chosen hometown Freud Communications as lead shop to handle the Summer Games. A half dozen firms pitched for the account pegged in the $3.5M range.

Freud, which is 50.1 percent-owned by France’s Publicis Groupe, won the pitch in tandem with MS&L Worldwide sister shop.

Edelman and Hill & Knowlton also are on London 2012's roster. The London organizing committee expects to add more firms for a variety of projects.

Matthew Freud's shop handled the “handover” ceremony of the Games from Beijing to London. His firm has done work for PepsiCo, Nike and Sony.

Freud is son-in-law to media baron Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp.

GH GETS CREATIVE

GolinHarris has named James Kelly its first creative director. Based in New York, Kelly will report to Ellen Ryan Mardiks, who was recently upped to vice chairman.

Kelly is charged with bringing a “more disciplined and focused creative process” to the Chicago-headquartered Interpublic operation.

Kelly had been at GH’s sister firm, Weber Shandwick. He served as senior VP and creative director for WS/U.K and Ireland region. Prior to Interpublic, Kelly was at Omnicom’s Porter Novelli and Publicis Groupe's MS&L Worldwide.

WOODS TURNS TO FLEISCHER

Embattled golfer Tiger Woods has brought in Ari Fleischer Sports Communications as he is rumored to be planning a return to professional golf this month.

Fleischer's firm is affiliated with IMG Sports & Entertainment, which represents Woods.

The New York Post broke the news, citing two unnamed sources in the golf community.

The Arnold Palmer Invitational is slated for March 25 in Florida, where Woods lives and has been spotted practicing. Another event, the Tavistock Cup, will be on Woods’ home course near Orlando March 22-23.

A source told the Post: “They were in his living room this week going over a strategy for how to handle Bay Hill in two weeks,” a reference to the course where the Palmer event is held.

Fleischer has most recently worked with baseball’s Mark McGwire and the U.S. Olympic Committee in the sports PR realm.

Woods held a tightly choreographed press conference last month to apologize for marital infidelity which has cost him several sponsors.

D.C. FIRM WORKS MEDIA FOR ALLAWI

A joint venture of Kearsarge Global Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based public affairs firm, called Sphere Consulting is working the international media on behalf of Iraq’s former prime minister Ayad Allawi, who is leading a coalition to oust current PM Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki in the country’s March 7 elections.

James Courtovich, managing partner at Kearsarge and Sphere, told O’Dwyer’s via email that Sphere is coordinating efforts with Allawi’s team. He provided this statement from the politician:

“The Iraqi people have spoken, and it is vital for our country’s future that the integrity of the democratic process is respected. As the votes are counted, the great number of Iraqis who risked their safety to take part in these elections are watching.”

Kearsarge formed Sphere with London’s I.W. Osborne & Co. late last year. KGA has counseled Ted Forstmann of Fortsmann Little & Co. and John Walton, vice chairman of Wal-Mart.

Courtovich was VP at Ketchum, manager of PA at Burson-Marsteller and senior advisor to former Texas Senator Phil Gramm.

Full Table of PR Firms Ranked by 2009 Healthcare Revenue is inside on page 7.

U.S. PR CHIEF OUTLINES CHANGES

The U.S. must follow a more aggressive and strategic approach to public affairs to get its message to the world and counter opponents and enemies with sophisticated media strategies, said the U.S. PR chief, Judith McHale, in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10.

McHale, who has traveled to Europe, the Middle East and Asia in her first year as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, spoke as the State Department completed an eight-month review of its public diplomacy efforts and outlined changes in stake for the nation’s PR plans, including the addition of new positions overseeing foreign media and regional public affairs.

McHale noted 40 new democracies have emerged over the past 25 years with citizens shaping governments unlike any other period in history. “Public opinion is influencing foreign governments and shaping world affairs to an unprecedented degree,” she said.

She also outlined the challenges of the global stage as enemies and opponents use sophisticated media strategies to spread disinformation and rumors that spur hatred and violence.

McHale said she directed public affairs officers worldwide in December to be more aggressive and strategic in their communications efforts. She credits that stance with changing the global narrative about the U.S. relief efforts in Haiti following the devastating earthquake there.

McHale also said a new position at State – Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Media Support – is being created within the Dept.’s bureau of public affairs to pay “high level attention” to foreign media. Deputy assistant secretaries for public diplomacy are also being established in each of the State Department's regional bureaus to put a PR perspective in senior policy talks and coordinate initiatives in those regions, McHale said.

Social media has become a key part of U.S. public diplomacy with tools like Skype, Facebook and YouTube playing a role in outreach across the globe.

McHale also presented the Senate committee with the draft “Pakistan Communications Plan,” essentially a PR framework for winning the public in that country.

“It has been an uphill battle but, as our voice gets more frequent play, the impact on the discourse in Pakistan's media has been noticeable,” she said.

CHICAGO STATE U. AWARDS PR PACT

Jasculca/Terman and Associates won a competitive pitch with Chicago State University to guide a six-figure PR contract for the 143-year-old institution.

Two other firms pitched for the 15-month contract, which started on March 12, to develop a PR and marketing strategy.

The South Side school has a paltry graduation rate below 20 percent and was recently whacked by veteran Windy City journalist James Warren as a "patronage dumping ground with an awful record for graduating students" after a state senator pushed through $40M for an additional campus.

SEAWORLD FISHES FOR SUPPORT

SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment has hired OB-C Group, the former O'Brien Calio shop, for public policy support in the aftermath of the February 24 killing of an Orlando trainer by a killer whale.

OB-C's SeaWorld team includes the well-connected Democrat and founder of OB-C, Lawrence O'Brien III.

OB-C is dealing with issues such as Travel Promotion Act, Fair and Cost Effective Travel Policy Act and Amusement Park Ride Safety Act.

A staffer could not be reached for questions about whether the firm is dealing with fallout surrounding the killing of Dawn Brancheau, who was thrashed underwater and drowned by a 22-foot, 12,000 pound orca called Tiliku.

SeaWorld has not yet decided if Tilikum is going to perform in shows again. It remains on public display at the Florida park. The marine park operator, which owns 26 orcas, has ruled out euthanasia.

Since the murder, trainers have been banned from getting into the pools with whales, but they will eventually get back into the water, Chuck Tompkins, SeaWorld's chief trainer told the Wall Street Journal on March 9.

Jim Atchinson, SeaWorld's CEO, admits his company is still "trying to get our arms around the incident."

SeaWorld, which used to be part of Anheuser-Busch, was sold to Blackstone Group for $2.7B last year.

PB EYES BREAUX LOTT

Lobbying powerhouse Patton Boggs is talking takeover of Breaux Lott Leadership Group, the firm headed by former Louisiana Senator John Breaux and ex-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

The firm collected nearly $3M in fees during the fourth-quarter of 2009 from blue-chips in the energy, transportation, communications, healthcare, financial services, engineering/construction and defense sectors.

Federal records show that BLLG received $150K each from AT&T, General Electric, Entergy Corp., Nissan North America, Retail Industry Leaders Assn., Plains Exploration and Production Co., Northrop Grumman, EduCap and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Chevron was down for $130K, while National Assn. of Broadcasters, Information Technology Industry Council and Assn. of American Railroads paid $120K.

Tyson Foods, Arsenal Capital Group and United Maritime kicked in $100K. Fedex and Financial Services Roundtable gave BLLG $90K apiece. Southern Shrimp Alliance, Shaw Group, Raytheon, United Space Alliance, Parsons & Whittmore, Ashley Furniture, Prudential Financial and Shell Oil contributed $70K to the firm's bottom line. Other clients are National Assn. For Home care and Hospitals ($40K), LHC Group ($30K), CC Services ($20K), Diageo North America ($10K) and Fortune Brands ($10K).

American Gas Alliance and Edward Jones are clients added last month to the firm's roster.

John Breaux Jr. and Chester Trent Lott Jr. are partners of the firm.

CHRISTIE TO HEAD TIMES CO. PR

Robert Christie, VP of corporate communications at Dow Jones, is slated to move to the New York Times Co. to fill its vacant senior VP of corporate communications post.

Catherine Mathis, who held the position, moved to Standard & Poor’s last summer.

Dow Jones brought in Bethany Sherman this month from Nasdaq to lead communications.

Christie will head internal and external comms. for the Times Company, starting March 22. The 40-year-old executive directed PR for the launch of the Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition in 2005, the Journal redesign in 2007, and DJ’s acquisition of CBSMarketWatch.com in seven years at the company.

He was previously at Sony Electronics and a senior A/D at Goodman Media International.

Christie started his PR career at the National Academy of TV Arts and Sciences.

AP HIRES NYT DIGITAL VET

Nick Ascheim has been hired by the Associated Press to head its newly created business unit called AP Gateway. He gets the AP Digital/general manager title.

Ascheim was responsible for the New York Times website. He joined the Times in 2004 as director of entertainment and video.

At the wire service, Ascheim is to sell consumer applications for Apple’s iPad and other digital devices. He reports to Jane Seagrave, AP’s chief revenue officer.

Earlier, Ascheim was editorial director at FoxNews.com and head of TheSquare, a college networking site.

TURCOTTE TAPPED FOR AMNEWYORK

Paul Turcotte, a veteran of Sirius XM Radio, is the new publisher of amNewYork, the free daily published by the Newsday Media Group of Cablevision.

He reports to Terry Jimenez, NMG publisher, which operates a collection of community papers and various websites.

Turcotte was a top advertising sales executive at Sirius XM. Earlier he worked at Hachette-Filipacchi Media and Men’s Health Magazine.

USAT FORMS SOCIAL MEDIA SQUAD

USA Today has named Brian Dresher manager of social media and digital partnerships at the Gannett paper. He was online marketing manager.

He is joined by Alexandra Nicholson, who is social media strategist. She is charged with working with editorial to develop off-site initiatives.

Nicholson was in the communications and events marketing group.

ZIMMER TAKES OVER SAFIRE’S COLUMN

Ben Zimmer, a linguist and lexicographer, has been named “On Language” columnist for the New York Times Magazine.

Bill Safire wrote the column on grammar and word usage until his death last fall. Zimmer begins the On Language bi-weekly column on March 21.

Zimmer is the executive producer of VisualThesaurus.com and Vocabulary.com. He is the former editor of American dictionaries at Oxford University Press and is a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary.

He was previously a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. Zimmer is on the Executive Council of the American Dialect Society and a member of the Dictionary Society of North America.

Gerald Marzorati, editor of the NYT magazine, said Zimmer has an “academic’s deep knowledge and a maven's eye, ear and passion to his commentary on the way Americans write and speak now.”

CHINA, SAUDIS ‘ENEMIES OF INTERNET’

Reporters Without Borders published its “Enemies of the Internet” list March 12, highlighting countries that clamp down on online freedom of expression.

The non-profit group cites China, Saudi Arabia, Burma, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam as the worst offenders.

Burma, North Korea, Cuba and Turkmenistan employ harsh crackdowns and set up technical obstacles to prevent their people from having access to the `Net, according to RWB.

Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan opt for massive filtering that results in a system of self-censorship.

China, Egypt, Tunisia and Vietnam have "wagered on an infrastructure development strategy while keeping a tight control on the web’s political and social content," says RWB. China also demonstrates a "deep intolerance for critical opinions."

Iran has declared many of its ’net citizens to be “enemies of the state.” RWB has added Russia and Turkey to its “under surveillance” list. The Kremlin, which has cracked down on media outlets, has been arresting bloggers and blocking what it believes are “extremist” sites.

Turkey has blocked thousands of sites, including YouTube, that criticize Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish republic and its first president; the military and official governmental policy concerning minority groups like Kurds and Armenians.

Australia, which plans a highly sophisticated filtering system; South Korea, which has passed laws that challenge the anonymity of web users; United Arab Emirates, Thailand and Belarus are also on the list.

JOURNOS CONTINUE S.M. EMBRACE

Nearly 70% of journalists are using social networking sites, according to Middleberg Communications’ second “Media in the Wired World” survey, up 28% from 2008.

Nearly half of journalists responding said they use Twitter and other microblogging sites (up 25%) and the same percentage -- 48% -- said they view online video. Only about one-quarter are listening to podcasts, according to the survey, conducted by the Society for New Communications Research and backed by Marketwire.

(Media news continued on next page)

MIDEAST PR HIT; ARAB YOUTH ‘CONFIDENT’

The Middle East is seen as a largely underdeveloped yet promising market for PR as the communications sector develops there.

There are an estimated 90 PR agencies in the United Arab Emirates, but quantity is far outweighing quality, according to an agency PR executive in the country.

In addition, Burson-Marsteller, which has had a presence in Dubai since 1999, published a survey of Arab youth last week showing a confident, tech-savvy generation growing up in the region and creating a coveted base for marketers to target.

Firas Saleem, director of Virtue PR & Marketing Communications in the UAE, told Emirates Business magazine that PR has been acting like the “poor cousin” of advertising in the region.

“While there is a huge demand for strategic corporate communications counsel, the majority of the PR agencies are still offering shallow tactics,” said Saleem, who noted PR people are following creative ideas set out by ad agencies. “This is hindering the industry’s growth.”

Saleem's views on the lack of mentoring for young professionals, and his view that a PR agency should be more of a family doctor than a general practitioner are also outlined in the EB piece.

Burson, meanwhile, reached in deeper for its second survey of Arab youth by conducting 2,000 face-to-face interviews in the 18-24 demographic in countries like UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, among others.

Karen Hughes, former public diplomacy chief for the recent Bush administration who is a global vice chair at Burson, noted that while more than two-thirds expressed concerns about a rising cost of living, and a shortage of affordable housing was another top concern, Arab youth in general are confident in the region's direction.

SPORTS, FLUFF RULE LOCAL TV NEWS SCENE

Sports, weather, crime and fluff dominate Los Angeles television news, according to a study released March 11 by the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

The study analyzed 14 days of local news programming and more than 11,000 news stories.

The study found that in a typical hour L.A. stations devoted a 22 seconds to local government news (budget, law enforcement, healthcare, immigration, personnel changes and transportation).

Sports and weather grabbed the most airtime (3:36 minutes), followed by crime at 2:50 minutes and “soft news” (human interest, oddball stories and various fluff) at 2:26 minutes. Advertising weighed in at 8.25 minutes.

George Kieffer of the Los Angeles Civic Alliance, which sponsored the study, expressed “serious concern” with the results. Noting that most people get their news from TV, he said if TV “isn’t doing its job, we can hardly expect our citizens to be aware of what is going on with our governments.”

He expects community organizations to “begin to weigh in on license renewals based on the degree of local hard news coverage.”

The survey covered eight stations including KABC, KCAL, KCBS, KCOP, KNBC, KTLA, KTTV and Spanish-language KMEX.

TOYOTA, GOLDMAN ‘MOST ADMIRED’

Two companies which have taken a PR beating over the past year made Fortune magazine’s “Most Admired Companies” list for 2010.

Goldman Sachs, the banking giant that has received criticism for doling out large bonuses after playing a role in the financial collapse, and Toyota Motor, which is reeling from safety concerns, landed at numbers 7 and 8 on the list, respectively.

Apple and Google topped the list, followed by Berkshire Hathaway, Johnson & Johnson and Amazon.com.

Procter & Gamble was No. 6 and Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola rounded out the list at 9 and 10.

Surveys for the list were completed in the fall and winter before the Toyota crisis exploded.

“The public at large may still see Goldman as the poster child for the greed that sparked the financial crisis, but its reputation in the business world is stronger than ever,” the magazine noted.

Goldman was No. 15 last year.

MILITARY FACEBOOK EFFORTS NEED WORK

While the U.S. military is embracing social media tools at a faster rate than most parts of the private sector, its presence on Facebook can be confusing and one-sided because of scores of unofficial pages and a low number of interactions with “fans,” according to a study by Manassas, Va., PR firm Janson Communications.

Janson, which specializes in PR for defense, aerospace and government technology clients, looked at 682 Facebook pages posted by the military and found that 84% of those pages had no interaction with “fans,” while noting recruiting pages answered only one out of every 12.5 questions or comments posted.

That inactivity is notable because the firm found that 33% of pages had interaction among users, even if the site operator never participated, meaning conversations are taking place on military pages without input from military personnel that run the pages.

Janson did find that the Army in particular has moved to embrace Facebook throughout its recruiting command, but that effort needs tweaking as indicated by the low interaction with users and underdeveloped pages.

The Department of Defense released its first major social media policy on Feb. 26 saying its non-classified network would allow access to social media pages.

Unofficial pages, or those not created by the military, are muddying the social media landscape on Facebook for the armed forces, Janson found.

The firm said that the number of fan posts on unofficial pages shows that users are confused about which pages are run by the military and which are not.

The Marine Corps. has the most Facebook fans, followed by the National Guard and U.S. Army.

PIONEERING FEMALE PR EXEC DIES AT 84

Ruth Jacobson, the first female PR executive at Fleishman-Hillard who left a strong imprint on the firm in a 46-year career there, died March 9 after a long illness. She was 84.

Jacobson is credited with mentoring a generation of younger executives at the firm, especially women, as well as expanding the scope of PR to use special events as an effective tool.

Dave Senay, CEO and president of the firm, said Jacobson entered PR when it was a “bastion of male dominance” but he said she “over-matched” most in the industry at the time.

“Long before Oprah Winfrey, the Internet and self-help groups, she became a living patron saint of women in public relations,” he said. “She was a one-woman, women’s rights movement.”

Jacobson was well-known in St. Louis and her friends and confidants included luminaries like August Busch Jr. (Anheuser-Busch) and Clarence Barksdale (First National Bank of St. Louis).

She played a lead role in creating the VP Fair events on the St. Louis waterfront starting in the 1980s and F-H noted she once served on more than 20 local boards simultaneously.

F-H co-founder Robert Hillard once credited Jacobson with showing the firm that there was more to PR than intelligent news releases.

“Before Ruth we thought the only way to publicize was to write intelligent news releases,” the late Hillard said, according to the firm. “It was Ruth who thought up all these neat things to make it a memorable event.”

As one example, she added splash to the St. Louis Cardinals’ opening of Busch Memorial Stadium in 1966 by having home plate flown in by helicopter from the old stadium next door.

The Rochester, N.Y., native attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 1947 and later signed on as F-H’s 16th employee in 1955. She retired in 2001 and is survived by a daughter and granddaughter.

Briefs: MWW Group CEO Michael Kempner is slated to lead a panel discussion on “Building the Customer Experience Culture” at the Conference Board’s 2010 Customer Experience Management Conference in New York March 24-25. MWW is a sponsor of the event at the Inter-Continental The Barclay New York. Info: conference-board.org. Mickey Ibarra & Associates, Washington, D.C., has changed its name to Ibarra Strategy Group and opened a Dallas outpost. Info: ibarrastrategy.com. ...Los Angeles-based marketing firm 72andSunny has acquired social media/PR shop Unlock PR, which handles parenting and lifestyle brands like ugaboo, Oeuf, Appaman, Fleurville, Madewell and The Container Store. Founder Kerry Fitzmaurice takes the title of PR director at 72. The two firms have collaborated in the past.

OTSP VETS SET UP PR SERVICES SHOP

Three former executives of the shuttered broadcast PR company On The Scene Productions, including co-founder Stacie Hunt, have opened Point Media in Los Angeles.

The venture is a unit of Point Enterprises Group, a conglomerate of radio stations, broadband facilities and other businesses.

Joining Hunt are partners Maya Burghardt and Jim Bowling, who serves as creative director of the new shop.

PEG is led by John Hearne, who met the new partners a few years back. “When the opportunity to partner with them recently presented itself, it was a no-brainer,” says Hearne.

Point Media will handle video production, media tours, “sizzle” reels, press junkets and digital PR services work. It has hit the ground running with its work on Giftcraft’s launch of a Marie Osmond collection of home décor, handbags and other products.

Burghardt said the firm will work with clients from the OTSP days and work to forge new relationships.

OTSP was built into a multimillion-dollar PR services business but was sold to a private equity firm in 2006, which stunned staffers by shutting the company down in September 2009. Its closing has created a diaspora of former execs, a handful of which moved to Vidicom in New York, while others joined competitors or set up their own ventures.

STRAUSS TO HEAD ENTREPRENEURS GROUP

Richard Strauss, president and founder of Washington, D.C.-based Strauss Radio Strategies, has been named president of the D.C. chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization.

EO counts 7,300 members with 111 billion dollars in sales and 1.2 million employees worldwide. The D.C. chapter has 107 members.

Entering his fourth year on the EO board, Strauss was previously learning chair for two years and president-elect for one year.

"As a member for the past nine years, I believe that I have the necessary expertise and leadership skills to further enhance the professional lives of this prestigious group,” Strauss said.

He founded his company 15 years ago after serving as the nation’s first White House radio director during the Clinton administration.

BRIEFS: Media Contact Cafe, and media list and PR service provider based in Washington, D.C., said new analytics reports are available to monitor news generated from press releases and social media conversations. Tonya Garter, director of products & services, said users will be provided with a better sense of how their campaigns are performing against competitors, how to better allocate sales, marketing and communication budgets and how their online reputations are holding up. ...SMARTdesks of Baltimore has unveiled a line of video conferencing furniture under the Boomerang brand. Info: smartdesks.com.

O’Dwyer’s Ranking of Healthcare PR Firms

Click here for ranking.

A majority of those voting on odwyerpr.com on the need for a PR library are in favor of it.

Of course! Who could be against a library? The PR Establishment, that's who.

They can't stand the thought of the lower echelons of PR having access to a lot of information and having a regular place where they can meet and actually engage in F2F (face-to-face conversation).

PR groups can work together if they want to.

Sixteen of them got together on Jan. 13-14, 2003 in Madison, N.J., to tackle the problem of the decline in trust in corporations and business institutions.

The cash/savings of 13 PR groups listed at the end of this editorial total $13,783,945 so there's plenty of money available.

Significantly, the group with the lowest amount of money is the Black PR Society of America ($16,324).

Companies like FedEx, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Prudential Financial and UPS are making tax-deductible donations to the Arthur Page Society of $10,000+ and/or buying $14,245 sponsorships at the PR Week/U.S. banquet but have little or no money for the blacks.

Public Loves Libraries

Public libraries are "beloved institutions" and "more essential than ever before," found a study by Public Agenda, 30-year-old public service group headed by famed researcher Daniel Yankelovich.

Politics is the reason for this.

Some PR groups will ask what's in it for their members. That's the wrong question. As tax-free entities, they're supposed to serve their entire industries and not just their members.

PR Once Had a Library

The New York PR community once had a free public library at the NANA (nee PRSA) h.q. at 51st st. and Third ave. But NANA got over-run in 1980 by members from the north, south and west who ousted all New York PR pros from h.q.

Patrick Jackson of N.H. led the charge, becoming president in 1980. His attitude towards the press was direct: “Duck ’em and screw ’em” (said on videotape to Morley Safer of “60 Minutes”).

His very first action in January 1980 was ousting XPV Rea Smith from h.q., where she was ordered never to return.

Jackson et al gave the 22-year veteran of NANA a post at the group's Foundation with offices on upper Madison ave.

Assn. pro Betsy Kovacs joined in January as Smith's replacement. Jackson's philosophy was that with one or two exceptions, all those at h.q. should be association professionals. Previously, about half the staff were PR pros.

Smith was found dead in the bathroom of her New York apartment on May 17, 1981.

Friends said they were unaware of any illness the 63-year-old Smith had. Some theorized that she committed suicide.

The cause of death was never revealed.

The library was closed in the 1990s, shortly after it was discovered that NANA was selling tens of thousands of authors' articles without their permission.

Instead of a library, NANA started offering a wide range of seminars, webinars and workshops as “professional development” with fees attached to each.

Public Agenda says libraries need “a high level of private philanthropic funding” and we agree.

Groups Have $13.7M in Cash/Savings

Cash/savings of the 13 groups (listed at the end of this article) total $13.7 million as of their latest 990 filings.

The Arthur Page Society, headed by Bill Margaritis, corporate VP of global communications and IR of FedEx, sticks out like a sore thumb because it is a 501/c/3 charity, a status usually given to organizations like the Red Cross, United Fund, ballet companies and symphonies.

Only two others in the 13 are c/3's-the Institute for PR which does not have individual members, and BPRS.

The other ten are c/6 trade groups with individual memberships just like Page but which cannot get gifts from corporations that are deductible by the corporations.

Corps. Give Big to Page

Corporations such as FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Kraft, IBM and Staples give Page a total of more than $200,000 each year that can be written off. None of the other ten groups can have such benefactors.

We think the c/3 status is indefensible and is unfair to the other groups.

Page is named after Arthur W. Page, the first VP of PR at ATT. A graduate of Harvard and member of the New York Yacht Club, he was an ardent foe of the "New Deal" policies of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Financial Reporting is Execrable

None of the 13 groups lives up to the standard for financial reporting as set by the Independent Sector, the trade group for non-profits with about 800 members. IS is a c/6.

Proper reporting, which the IS itself provides, is making available to members and non-members both the latest Form 990 and the full audit on the first page of a group's website.

NY Groups Need Meeting Place

New York PR groups including NANA/NY are especially in need of a neutral place to meet.

Chapter events are often held at PR firms including Ketchum, Fleishman-Hillard, Ruder Finn and Gibbs & Soell.

Some PR firm CEOs tell us they would never send one of their people to a competing firm for a workshop.

We understand that because we would never send an O’Dwyer reporter to PR Week or PR News for a session on reporting techniques.

A logical contender as the place for a New York PR library is none other than the 23rd floor of 317 Madison ave. where Page and the Council of PR Firms share 1,700 sq. ft. Vacant on that floor is 7,000 sq. ft. The building has 21 other vacant offices. With office vacancy rates high, now is a good time to sign a deal.

Cash/Savings Listed

Below are the cash/savings of the groups as taken from their latest Form 990 filings. Also provided are their Federal I.D. numbers which facilitates searching for the documents.

--Council of PR Firms, $822,000 (ID: 13-4011840).
--Arthur Page Society, $581K(23-2290568).
--New York Women in Comms., $451K (13-6274650).
--Institute for PR, $305,071 (13-6161619)
--New York Financial Writers, $539K (13-6122376).
--NANA (national), $4,632,985 (13-1582190).
--NANA (NY chapter), $102,073 (23-7150122).
--Int'l Assn. of Bus. Comms., $1,440,488 (94-3046165).
--National Investor Rels. Inst., $4,715,854 (54-1758790).
--Black PR Society of America, $16,324 (58-0135149).
--Publicity Club of New York, $23,681 (13-1605248).
--Overseas Press Club, $64,794 (13-1140459).
--Entertainment Pub. Prof. Assn., $89,676 (95-4386512).

--Jack O'Dwyer