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Harris Diamond, CEO of the giant Interpublic (NYSE: IPG) agency Weber-Shandwick jumps to the number one spot on PRWeek's 2009 Power List, topping Richard Edelman, the top dog for the last two years.

The trade magazine cites the number of fingers Diamond has in IPG's Constituency Management Group (CMG) division as the reason for the jump, as well as his dominion over other IPG divisions that help Weber intergrate including sports marketing agency Octagon and events firm Jack Morton. PRWeek also credits Diamond's thumping on leadership and reputation as the two main qualities helping WS deal with the bad economy.

Edelman sticks around at #2, and the recently-retired Charlotte Otto from Proctor & Gamble maintains third. Leslie Dach from Walmart moves up from 6th to 4th, and Jon Iwata rounds out the top five (down from #2 from 2008).

Power players six through 25 are after the jump, with the full list of 25 here:

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Media services vendor Medialink, known to most PR professionals for its work in broadcast and video PR, has been acquired by The NewsMarket. Both companies issued competing releases. The Newsmarket's lead with the headline, "The NewsMarket to Acquire Medialink," while Medialink's proclaimed, "Medialink Worldwide Announces Signing of Merger Agreement." Medialink told PRWeek earlier this year that it may "cease operations if it doesn't receive third-party investment or attract a buyer."

Romina Rosada, Global Head of Marketing for the NewsMarket told PRNewser, "The NewsMarket is indeed acquiring Medialink and we will own all the outstanding stock once the deal is approved by shareholders."

According to the NewsMarket release, "For the 12 month period ending March 31, 2009, Medialink recorded revenues of $17.95 million." The NewsMarket bought shares at $.20, which represented a 100% premium of the from the last trading price of Medialink's common stock on May 27, 2009. Ergo Medialink was last traded at $.10 per share.

D S Simon Productions President& CEO Doug Simon told PRNewser, "Medialink deserves credit for helping to make broadcast PR a necessary part of effective campaigns. It's a sad day for PR." PRWeek's Tonya Garcia has more.

The Jackson family just hired New York-based PR firm Sunshine & Sachs to handle all duties regarding the death of Michael Jackson.

The firm known for its discretion and serious approach to celebrity representation is run by partners Ken Sunshine and Shawn Sachs. They just released the following statement:

Contrary to previous news reports, the Jackson family is officially stating that there will be no public or private viewing at Neverland. Plans are underway regarding a public memorial for Michael Jackson, and we will announce those plans shortly.

Effective today, the Jackson family has retained the services of Sunshine, Sachs & Associates to handle all public relations for the family regarding Michael Jackson.

The majority of you were correct in answering 7 or more in our poll this morning as the number of Michael Jackson's publicists mentioned in the ongoing news cycle.

Despite her very current relationship with the King of Pop, publicist-turned-manager Raymone Bain was outpaced by 90s publicist Michael Levine by about 4 to one in mentions.

It could be Bain is being careful due to her monster lawsuit against Jackson, or because Levine, as we figured out, spammed countless journalists with an I-knew-this-was-coming statement a little over an hour after TMZ broke the story of his death.

In fairness to Levine, I did nearly do a legit interview with him. After a number of voicemails back and forth of the course of the day, I finally got him on the horn only to be denied an interview because I was using a cell phone. He also declined to answer questions over email. By then the opportunity had passed.

The other five former publicists include:

Stuart Backerman, publicist from 2002 to 2004

Max Clifford, UK PR legend helped launch the Jackson 5 in '67-'68 when working in the press office at EMI

Kevin McLin, Chairman of the Mass Comm Department at Dillard U., publicist from 1996 - 2005. Or is it spelled McLyn? Local Louisiana media has both.

Jonathan Morrish, while at CBS in the 70s, now Director of music licensing company PPL (op-ed in The Independent)

Arthur Phoenix, publicist to the family and advisor to Tito in fact said on 6/10 Jackson would not be able to handle the 50 show marathon planned for this summer

The Firm Voice, the Council on Public Relations house organ has a 9-step program for responding to RFPs in a way that wins business--despite the quality of the RFP--without giving away the store.

Top PR thinker Jerry Swerling, director of the Strategic PR Center at the Annenberg School for Communication at USC says that it's a risk worth taking. If you don't offer a strategic vision, you lose your ticket to the rodeo.

This article caught our eye in light of the survey we covered in April, revealing 90% of our U.K. brethren found ideas within their proposals stolen by potential clients.

Some of the points may seem obvious, yet are pervasive in agency work, such as avoiding typos and boilerplate proposals. A summary of the CoPR's nine step program are after the jump:

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How many of Michael Jackson's former publicists are getting quoted in the avalanche of stories about the King of Pop's career and untimely demise? The poll closes this afternoon.

Boomtown: Yahoo's Extreme Makeover Confirmed with the Hiring of a New Global Marketing Exec

WebProNews: Getting the Media to Cover Your Business

AdAge: What to Do if You Forgot to Register Your Facebook Trademark URL

TVNewser: Laurel Touby on MSNBC Today

NBC Los Angeles: Publicist Who "Discovered" Farrah Looks Back

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was interviewed by Chuck Todd, who sat in for Chris Matthews yesterday afternoon on MSNBC's Hardball. Gibbs came to the interview in a joking manner, laying out some light hearted comments about him and Todd being out of shape.

One of the hot topics covered in the interview was the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which some have said the administration have changed their stance on. They at first opposed it and are now being a bit more vague by "saying they want Congress to do it," according to the Huffington Post's Nicholas Graham.

On a more macro-level, Gibbs did re-enforce the Obama campaign message of change when he said, "the easiest thing for this town to do is the same old thing."

Planned Parenthood Federation of America is looking for a Vice President, Communications

Rubenstein Public Relations is looking for a VP/SVP Consumer/Lifestyle Media Relations Guru

Hunter Public Relations is looking for an Account Supervisor

SoHo Publishing is looking for a Publicity Manager

Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at Maryland is looking for a Communications Manager

Steve Rubel, the man who once famously appeared in a BusinessWeek cover story titled, "Blogs Will Change Your Business," is no longer blogging. Well, ok, he's lifestreaming, which to a layman basically means you can expect shorter bursts of content aggregated from social sites including FriendFeed, Facebook and Twiter, as opposed to solely blog posts. The move is significant, as Rubel is the first high profile PR blogger to move to a full lifestream format. (Please correct us if we're wrong.)

As he wrote in a post explaining the move:

This site will become my primary publishing hub - my new home on the web. Meanwhile the spokes will become the social networks and platforms where we all spend time. Today that's Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. Tomorrow, who knows. My old site will stay online for the archives but I will not be putting any more content up on the old site...After five years of publishing, this seems like the right thing to do.

Rubel stresses that he doesn't thing the blog is dead, "However, the blog format needs a reboot," he said.

RELATED: PRNewser Interview: Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights, Edelman Digital

Mashable: Billy Mays: The Best of Billy on YouTube

WebNewser: YouTube Reporters' Center Debuts

Ogilvy's TechPRNibbles: Now is a great time to be in PR

Communication Conversations: 7 must-have iPhone apps for PR pros

CNET: Hackers blamed for a wave of fake death tweets

[Slash knows that Little Kids Rock, via NAMM.org]

The account wins in the this edition of Spin the Agencies of Record include the real life school of rock, a retail shopping venture in Florida, a chain of affordable accessory stores, a huge insurer, and a company that can help you build multimedia presentations:

Weber Shandwick harvests State Farm

MSR Communications named agency of record by Faculte, Inc., an online communications and video platform. MSR wisely used Faculte's Broadcast Studio to create their presentation.

Stiles Realty of Florida goes shopping for PR and hires Relations PR & Marketing to help with their Shoppes at Avalon in Tampa

The Bateman Group kicks out the jams for Little Kids Rock, pro bono

RBB Public Relations accessorizes with the Bijoux Terner boutiques [we didn't link to RBB because we suspect they've fallen victim to a DNS attack this morning]

[image: MeFind on Flickr]

Ruder Finn today released it's Intent Index, a study that examined online behavior and user intent. Among the key findings:

More than twice as many people go online to socialize (81%) than to do business (39%) or shop (31%).

72% of people go online just to become part of a community.

Women (48%) are much more likely than men (39%) to go online to advocate for an issue or position.

More men (42%) than women (36%) go online to do business.

"Intent is the new demographic," said Ruder Finn co-CEO Kathy Bloomgarden in a statement. "Delving deeper into the underlying motivations of online behavior is critical to developing proactive strategies. Just being online is not enough to leverage digital channels to drive business imperatives. Audiences must be targeted based upon their intent." The agency has posted complete findings on its website.

Just 16 months after joining Ketchum's KIC division and one Twitter gaffe later regarding the FedEx account, James Andrews launches social media consultancy Everywhere with three clients and two partners.

According to his PitchEngine press release, Andrews and partners Danica Kombol, former VP, Ketchum, and Tamara Knechtel, formerly SVP, Operations at Radio One, are launching with Delta, legendary actress Jane Fonda and Hip-Hop producer Jermaine Dupri as clients.

Andrews kicked off the launch with some time with Don Lemon on CNN this weekend, talking Iran, Michael Jackson and the new, Now media.

Good stuff but why didn't the Atlanta-based Andrews drop by CNN headquarters to do the spot in person?

Andrews ...