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My antenna immediately went up yesterday when I received an email from a Trylon SMR staffer asking for my co-editor Jason's contact info. First, I thought, what did he want to tell him that he didn't want to tell me, and second, what exactly was going on here?

I had a hunch, and it turned out to be right, as the Trylon staffer pointed out to Jason the irony of a little feud going on between his agency's CEO, Lloyd Trufelman and Peppercom CEO Steve Cody.

Not to bore with you with the details, but it goes somehting like this:

Trufelman writes a byline (subscription required) for O'Dwyer's saying his firm is a financial backer of The Committee to Protect Journalists, and that other agencies should do more to help the fund, which helps "families of murdered, injured and imprisoned journalists," according to their website.

Cody responds with a blog post on Trufelman's byline saying, among other things, "Me thinks he's sucking up big time to the working press."

Well, duh, he is. But it's more than that. As Gawker's Hamilton Nolan elaborates: Is Trufelman trying to suck up to the press? Probably so! But um, that's a major part of what PR people do on a daily basis. Maybe he's just trying to marginally improve the industry's shitty image amongst both the press and the public.

And about that irony part, brought up by the Trylon staffer and others: Peppercom reps the Columbia Journalism Review.