Sarah Palin again left us scratching our PR noggins this week. Fan or not, she's crushing it in terms "Going Rogue". So why did her people outright kill her sizable AKGovSarahPalin Twitter account and open SarahPalinUSA to promote the book? Are they people who run the 7-figure Facebook Fan page? The new feed has been languishing all week at between 24,000 to 25,000 followers. You can maintain a following with a simple Tweet announcement after simply changing one's screenname.

We thought it had something to do with public offices or PACs needing to migrate to a personal brand for legal reasons. We checked in with Nicco Mele, founder of poli-digital consultancy EchoDitto in Washington who is nearly as confused:

Continued after the jump:

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The city of Fort Wayne, Indiana (pop. 250,000) is handling public affairs more like a village of 50. Until this week, the city's image was handled by the same guy who owns and edits the weekly paper, and owns a PR firm.

Public Information Director Vince Robinson stepped down from his city job this week, after he and his girlfriend filed protective orders against each other. The two allegedly brawled during two separate incidents in October.

Robinson held the same position for the city in 2000-2001 under a different mayor, and started Diversity Media after leaving the first time. His company owns the INK weekly, and co-publishes the Fort Wayne Reader. It also bills itself as a PR firm with clients including...the city of Fort Wayne. Until re-taking the job with the city, Robinson personally edited INK.

We hope the incident will precipitate a clearer division of church and state.

Account wins in this edition of Spin the Agencies of Record includes large online travel and flower sites, Greek drama for the troops, and an online tool for estate and will planning:

Expedia.com flys with the HL Group as agency of record

MWW's relationship with 1-800-FLOWERS blossoms to bring more Popcorn Factory, Fannie May and Cheryl&Co gift baskets to you and yours

Dan Klores (DKC) goes Greek for the Theater of War, a production company contracted by the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury to bring the plays of Sophocles to military audiences

Executor's Resource hires Impact Communications

Digital Strategists Jackie Titus and Dan Schreibstein joined Ogilvy PR's 360° Digital Influence division today.

Prior to joining Ogilvy PR. Titus consulted on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental platforms for Unilever in the United States and worked with organizations including the National Park Foundation and Boys & Girls Club of America.

Schreibstein will specialize in email marketing strategies. Previously, he headed email acquisition marketing for online financial publisher The Motley Fool.

How much of a role did social media play in powering Barack Obama to the presidency? The topic is still being debated. Regardless, Republicans have upped their efforts in the social space, hiring new media managers and building social networks.

The GOP has also formed a "New Media Caucus." Ryan Walker, chief of staff for Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio), a founding member of the New Media Caucus, told The Hill, "[Latta] saw a void in our own offices communication after the Obama campaign ...and we've been running with it ever since...It's been easier than I thought to get people on board."

Of course, like many learning the ropes in social media, the GOP hasn't been without their stumbles - one of which being party Chairman's Michael Steele's "much ridiculed" blog, "What Up."

The FDA held public hearings just last week to discuss establishing guidelines for pharmaceutical marketers operating in the new world of social media. Already some are complaining that the process is taking too long.

"Does the FDA get it?" If it did, "they wouldn't be having this meeting now, many, many months after it was already apparent how quickly Web communications is changing," Mark Senak, author of the blog Eye on FDA and a senior vice-president at Fleishman-Hillard told BusinessWeek.

John Bell, President of the Board of Word of Mouth Marketing Association and Managing Director, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide agreed that things will take a while. "We're spending time today in initial discussions that is as much about how the process should unfold as it is what should be the precise guidelines," he told PRNewser last week.

PR professionals: one of the "holy grails" in terms of media placements has about two years left before it is no more. Oprah Winfrey told employees late yesterday that she will no longer host the "The Oprah Winfrey Show" after September 2011.

One can imagine Winfrey may have more programming on her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network. Expect Winfrey to talk about the move on her show today. After the jump, the full memo to staff from Tim Bennett, president of Winfrey's Harpo production house. [via ABC News]

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Mopwater PR: How to Get Hired at Edelman

BNET: Eight Ways to Ruin Your Social-Media Strategy

BrandflakesforBreakfast: Free legal lets bloggers take on the Man

MobileContentToday: News Aggregator TechMeme Mobile Viewing Choices: Mini vs. Mobile

ProPublica: When News Falls in the Forest

Razorfish hired a former Fleishman-Hillard SVP of Digital Communications to serve as Director of Word of Mouth/Social Media. The digital agency confirmed the hire but would not disclose the person's identity. Fleishman-Hillard declined to comment.

As our sister blog AgencySpy points out, it's a bit ironic that we heard about the new word of mouth hire via word of mouth, however neither agency would confirm the person via word of mouth. Yet talk to any major digital agency executive and they will gladly pontificate about transparency in social media and PR.

Fleishman currently has a job listing up for an SVP of Digital Communications in their Chicago office, although the agency couldn't confirm if that is a replacement position or expansion.

UPDATE: Well that didn't take long. Readers write in that Cristina Lawrence is the SVP in question. She tweeted today, "Have a few a days off before I start the new gig" and has also posted similar updates to her Facebook page.

First it was Burson-Marsteller. Then it was DCI Group. The latest PR firm facing heat by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is Porter Novelli. In her show last night, Maddow dug into the director of PN's global healthcare practice, Peter Pitts. Pitts also president of The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI), an interest group involved in the health-care debate that is primarily funded by large pharma companies such as Pfizer.

From the transcript:

The Center for the American Progress today documents how CMPI has been a big player in the anti-health reform movement over the past few months. They sponsored anti-Obama tea party protests...They produced a number of anti-health reform online ads and video and even anti-health reform video games

Who runs CMPI, the Center for Medicine and the Public Interest, this group? Well, its president is a man named Peter Pitts. In addition to heading up this ostensibly nonpartisan medical think tank... Mr. Pitts is also the director for Global Health Care at the giant PR firm, Porter Novelli.

Porter Novelli, of course, has a bit of a history when it comes to shilling for the health care industry, having helped that industry kill the Patients Bill of Rights way back in 1994. They said at the time that it was part of a, quote, "big government agenda." Why does that sound so familiar?

PRWeek interviewed Pitts when he first joined Porter Novelli last April, but his role at CMPI did not come up. In that interview he said his biggest goal with the practice was to "stop calling it a healthcare practice" because when people think healthcare they think "big pharma." "I prefer to think of it as the public health practice," he said.

Interested in streamlining that heap of admin required to run your awards program for clients? Interested in winning your own nifty bronze and iron awards named after medieval weapons and tools? Don't have the time to manage scores of submissions? There's a tool for that.

A "marketing modules" company called mBlast Inc. launched a free award information aggregator today called AwardSynch. If you want something more powerful, mBlast's software-as-a-service (SAAS) Awards Management platform allows you to streamline and "automate every step of a global awards program from inviting participants, to judging, to ecommerce, to reporting."

mBlast is all about automation, and in some respects frighteningly so. There are many, many PR firms and trade media publications using mBLAST's marketing and media services. Media companies are using mBlast for data gathering for directories and buyer's guides, PR firms for contact management and media credentialing.

In one mBLAST whitepaper, "The New PR Challenge: Establishing Data Relationships with Market Influencers," the author argues that data relationships, or "machine-to-machine" connections are the new 'ante' for being in business--including PR and IR firms. The examples within pitch the new age of PR right from a Philip Dick story. One IT news publisher tells how information from all online sources--including press releases--is sucked in to create one big data bolis so reporters can write stories quickly without even going online. Another takes no calls from PR people, explaining they "simply don't need any extra context to kick out relevant news stories quickly."

I'm sure mBLAST makes some fine products (over 70 apparently) though if those examples are the future of PR and media, we really should pack up and close shop today.

Online celebrity charity auction company charitybuzz is looking for a PR Specialist

Puma North America seeks a Senior International Public Relations Manager to focus on soccer, golf, sailing, running and womens' fitness and possibly rugby, cricket and handball

A company called Google is looking for a Communications Manager for their Search division

Guttenberg Communications seeks an Account Executive, and a Senior Account Executive

Microsoft is looking to hire a Senior Marketing Manager, Bing Marcom Strategy