Brian Stelter, who launched TVNewser almost 10 years ago, is now a published author. “Top of the Morning,” out today, lays bare a tumultuous year for network morning news shows which saw one anchor pack her bags, another face a serious health issue, a ratings leader fall — and lose a quarter of its audience — and an entirely new show launch.

In his first interview for the book, Stelter tells us about the secrecy behind “Top of the Morning,” the access he got, and what he thinks about being called Matt Lauer‘s nemesis.

• Part II, tomorrow: What happens when Brian Stelter Tweets something he shouldn’t?

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In Mediabistro’s latest So What Do You Do? interview, Star editor-in-chief James Heidenry tackles his newsstand nemeses head-on, calling People and Us Weekly “the mouthpiece of celebrity publicists” – and he didn’t mean that in a positive way. 

“They covet these relationships with the publicists, and as a result they don’t say negative things about the celebrities, something like a famous person getting caught cheating, whereas we don’t have any such relationships,” he explained.

Although the pub isn’t necessarily beholden to PR pros, said Heidenry, getting on his team’s good side can sometimes work in your favor. “If a publicist wants to serve their clients, they should have a good relationship with us, because, frankly, we do have stories on certain people that we hold, because we like the relationship with the publicist and we’ve done Q&A with the celebrity in the past or photo shoots with them,” he said. 

Read the full interview in So What Do You Do, James Heidenry, Editor-in-Chief of Star?

We in PR know that bad publicity almost never doubles as good publicity, but exceptions do stand out. Accused/acquitted/accused again murderer Amanda Knox, for example, got $4 million to write a book despite the fact that — according to The Daily Beast, at least — she has “already lost” in the court of public opinion and can never again “control how she is seen.” (And yes, her family did hire a PR firm to manage her image.)

Today brings news that Italy’s top court has ordered a retrial for Knox, who was acquitted and freed after serving nearly four years in prison for the murder of her roommate in Italy (but you already knew that). Our point? This new twist is just icing on the cake for a story that will continue attract millions of eyes around the world.

We’re not too familiar with the details of this case, but we know that Knox is media gold: last month Diane Sawyer scored her first official promo interview and even that announcement was big news. It’s set to air on April 30, the same day the memoir hits shelves — and everyone will be covering it, because the public loves both train wrecks and apology tours (unless they involve Lance Armstrong).

The question: if you have a client like Knox, how do you play off her notoriety while insisting that she was innocent all along?

Our sister site FishbowlNY brings news that former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, who happened to be one of the highest paid communications guys around until he left the White House to pursue his Hollywood screenwriting dreams, will also write a bi-weekly column for The Daily Beast.

Unlike another Obama speechwriter named Jon (Lovett), who left to co-create the flailing NBC sitcom 1600 Penn, Favreau will be a real-life journalist! Here’s Beast publisher Tina Brown‘s note:

I am thrilled to announce that President Obama’s former director of speechwriting Jon Favreau is joining The Daily Beast as a bi-weekly columnist. It’s wonderful to have his combination of writing talent and sophisticated insight as commentary on the political scene.

Says Jon, “I’m excited to join the talented variety of writers and political observers who contribute to The Daily Beast, and hope I can add a new perspective from time to time based on the experiences I’ve had over the last several years.”

Please join me in welcoming him to The Daily Beast!

Best,
Tina

“If you have to backtrack, you need to ask yourself, why did you put it out there in the first place?” That’s what Lizz Winstead, co-creator of The Daily Show, would like to know. She was speaking about being funny on Twitter at an event last month, but her question addresses a broader issue: more celebrities and brands have had to backtrack recently after making controversial comments on various media platforms.

We’re referring to statements or tweets that veer off message, not major blunders that require full-scale apology tours. These foot-in-mouth comments and retractions occur so frequently that the Plain English Campaign established a Foot in Mouth award to highlight “a baffling comment by a public figure”. Mitt Romney lost his presidential bid, but he won the award last year.

With so much material to choose from, we took a closer look to better understand the dynamics. The selected faux pas highlighted below serve as cautionary tales of how easy it is for messages to go awry and reminders to avoid that happening.

1. Being too authentic can cause real trouble. Former Boston Red Sox player Kevin Youkilis, acquired by the Yankees during the off-season, said “I’ll always be a Red Sock” during an early spring training interview. It’s clear that he meant what he said, since he has strong Boston ties. (New England Patriots QB Tom Brady is his brother-in-law). Youkilis’ problem was speaking his true feelings without first hitting the pause button to consider his new team’s reaction.

Read more

Brian Williams took his trademark blend of levity and gravitas to New York’s 92Y last night. There, exactly an hour after his Nightly News broadcast ended, he provided an in-depth look at the highlights and lowlights of his life. He touched on his connection to the Jersey shore, his early jobs working in a DC college press office and as a broadcast trade association typist and his current post as NBC news anchor.

Williams poked fun at NBC’s pharmaceutical advertisers, vented his anger about the handling of Hurricane Katrina and made poignant comments about the Newtown shooting. However, none of moderator Jonathan Tisch’s queries or the audience’s pre-screened questions addressed his network’s recent ratings decline or the status of Williams’ struggling news magazine show, Rock Center.

Here are selected quotes from Williams on a broad range of topics:

His Early Years:

On food he ate growing up: “For us, mixed greens were something that came out of a mower.”

On his fondness for firefighters: “I still hang out at the firehouse. It’s like I’m their human dalmatian.”

On his education: “I did spectacularly poorly at community college. I’m still only a high school grad; I’m not into that completion thing.”

On his reaction when his mother told him he’d be a good TV reporter: “I’d only been on closed circuit camera at 7-Eleven.”

Read more

Have you been following the latest, dumbest political media scandal? We hope you answered “no”, because this one is a real doozy. It’s a classic case of “hack” vs. “flack” that will feel very familiar to anyone who has spent some time in PR or journalism.

To summarize: Bob Woodward, the veteran reporter who was one-half of the team that exposed the Watergate scandal leading to Richard Nixon’s resignation, had a mildly testy exchange with a White House rep over the pending “sequester” drama. Essentially, if the two parties can’t agree on a mix of new revenue and spending cuts, a big rash of cuts that they set up last year precisely to avoid this sort of showdown will go into effect. It’s basically President Obama versus the House of Representatives, so…politics as usual.

Alright, now what’s the “controversy”–and how does it relate to PR? Glad you asked!

Read more

Al Roker, weather guy for NBC’s “Today” Show, can sum up the secret to his success in a sentence, “Don’t be a jerk!” Roker has his own show “Wake Up with Al” on The Weather Channel, owns his own production company “Al Roker Entertainment,” has co-authored three mystery novels, written a couple of cookbooks, and a has penned a couple of New York Times Bestsellers.

So how did America’s favorite weather guy go from being a flannel shirt and overall wearing student at SUNY Oswego to media kingpin? Al said his first big break came from being in the right place at the right time when someone said the wrong thing at the wrong time.

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

Here at PRNewser, we believe ourselves to be equal opportunity chroniclers of the public relations industry: its ups, its downs, its internal politics and its always-active revolving doors. Like everyone else who runs a blog or publication, we also get pitches–lots and lots of pitches. Some are clever and personal, some are informative but bland, some are completely irrelevant and some are just bad–like “why bother” bad.

We post on the art of the pitch with some regularity, and while we certainly wouldn’t call ourselves experts, we know how this game works because we pitch content to other media outlets all the time–it’s part of our job description. So we’d like to encourage a sort of dialogue about the state of the pitch by highlighting examples of what not to do.

On that note, we have a request for all our journalist/blogger friends to consider over the weekend: send us your worst pitches. Not the ones that you scanned and deleted or the ones that didn’t apply to the industry you cover–we mean the ones that made you cringe.

Why do we want to do this? It’s not because we’re mean people (though we may well be). We have no interest in shaming people, and we will not post the names of any individuals or their organizations. It’s mostly because, while the act of pitching isn’t quite a fine art, it is something that requires a bit of finesse–and we would love to inform the PR world on the best ways to go about it.

Also: there wouldn’t be much point in posting on the best pitches, because those are the ones that we in the media turn into “earned content.”

So have at it–send us the worst you’ve got and we’ll highlight our personal choices.

The average American plans to spend $700 on holiday gifts, trimmings, and trappings this year (that’s $465 billion!). It’s no wonder we find our radios, TVs, in-boxes and mailboxes  inundated with ads from retailers, each hoping to get a piece of that hefty sum of cash.

While we frantic gifters try to find the best deals among the glitter and bold print and endless exclamations of “Sale!”, ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer decided to run a different kind of campaign geared toward holiday shoppers. This campaign focuses less on spending money and more on investing it — Sawyer wants each of us to commit to spending at least $64 of our holiday spending budget on American-made merchandise. If we all actually did this, World News says we would create 200,000 new jobs — a new spin on a gift that keeps on giving!

In case you don’t have the time or patience to read the labels on every potential present (who does?), ABC compiled a list of made-in-America gift ideas, organized into categories like sports and games, clothing and accessories, toys, etc. There’s even a form you can fill out to tell ABC you’re “in” that includes space to share your story and upload a corresponding photo or video of your patriotic gifting–a few lucky participants may even find themselves featured on Sawyer’s show. Fifteen minutes of fame, job creation, and holiday cheer? Now that’s a campaign!